How to Set and Achieve Business Objectives

Business objectives are the foundation of your business. They dictate the goals you set and what you want to achieve over time, as well as showing you where you stand at any given point in time. The easier it is to define your business objectives, the easier it will be to manage your business goals and make sure you’re on track to achieving them. This guide will teach you how to come up with your own effective business objectives, so that you can keep your business on track to succeed.

Define your business objectives

Every company has an overall objective, but sometimes it’s easy to get distracted by day-to-day tasks and lose sight of what’s important. As a business owner, you need your team focused on meeting (and exceeding) goals. But how do you go about defining them? According to Michael E. Gerber, there are three things that define a business objective: clarity, commitment and accomplishment. To be effective, each business objective must be: clearly defined; compelling enough for everyone in your organization to support it wholeheartedly; and directly actionable. Having clear objectives will help increase your chances of success over time—and give you something tangible for which to aim at any given point in time.

Create an action plan

After you’ve articulated your goals, it’s time to develop an action plan for achieving them. Choose one goal at a time, give yourself a deadline for meeting it, then flesh out your plan. It might help to take notes on paper in order to see your progress over time.

Ensure you have everything you need

Before you get started, make sure you have all of your documents, such as incorporation paperwork or business licenses, ready. You don’t want these delays holding up your start date. No matter what type of company you’re setting up, be sure you know how much money it will take to launch (many startups fail because they run out of cash). Get funding if necessary—the Small Business Administration (SBA) provides low-interest loans for small businesses—and plan accordingly.

Have deadlines but give yourself some leeway

Like with exercise, there’s often a benefit in just getting started. Use real deadlines, but give yourself some leeway by setting a due date that is a few days before you need something done. This will help you stay on track, get important tasks completed early, while still leaving some wiggle room in case something comes up. It’s better to have everything done by Thursday than it is to try to cram it all in on Wednesday night.

Get feedback as you go along

One of the major challenges of starting a business is how difficult it can be to predict what works in terms of strategy or marketing. Regardless of how experienced you are, it’s wise to get feedback from people who know what they’re talking about as you go along, so that you can alter your course if necessary. This will allow you to avoid a lot of headaches later on down the line.