Goal setting helps to keep your employees motivated and helps avoid activity without productivity, fostering communication, and transparency within an organization. All with the aim of improving the business performance and by extension making more money. Below is a list of hands-on approaches to improving your goals and ensuring that they are actualized and do not just remain “dreams.”

Rewrite Your Vision and Mission Statements

The vision and mission of any organization have to be directly in line with the long-term goals of the business. The Vision statement of a company indicates where the company aims to be in the near future (the company’s) goals. In comparison, the mission statement of the company defines the objectives and approach to reach those aims. The vision and mission statement of a company is a representation of the company’s core values.

The terms may be used interchangeably many times, but it is clear that the Vision and Mission statement is just another way of highlighting “Goals and Objectives.” Identify the core beliefs of your company, your purpose, what you do, and how you do it. Rewrite your vision and mission statement, and ensure that it contains your targets for the next five years, well articulated. Place it in obvious places at work so that every employee reads them as often as they can, let it register in their subconscious, and be a form of a daily reminder of the goals to achieve. 

This will serve as a source of inspiration and motivation to the employees and will bring you closer to setting your long term goals.

Practice Visualization

There is a popular saying that says, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Well, for obvious reasons, the statement is correct. In fact, a building cannot be built in a day, talk more of a city. When there is a building construction project, it starts with a building plan, which is usually the blueprint for the civil engineers, builders, mechanical engineers, and every other person to work on the project.

This plan will give an insight into the expected outcome, making the workers see the end from the beginning and work towards what they see.

This is the concept behind the visualization. Visualization is similar to the pre-mortem analysis; it enables you to see things that you didn’t even think of in your planning process, giving you a mental picture of what you want to achieve. In the end, you have clear expectations, and upon evaluation, you can make further improvement by noting where you did above expectations and where you couldn’t do enough, and you fell short. This makes you see your strong points and where you need to improve.

 Give Feedbacks to Your Employees

Communication with your staff is a great way to meet your targets faster. You should relate well with your staff and ensure that you work as a team, despite having responsibilities in different capacities. This will allow your employees to genuinely open up about what they feel is wrong or unrealistic about the goals and objectives you have set.

They have made several observations, and their experiences working elsewhere may prove vital in re-strategizing these goals. Ask for their inputs and give them feedback on them; this will show how much you value the opinions of your staff, and they will even give better and more honest advice, ensuring that you edge closer to your goals.

It will also propel a very healthy working environment and boost the morale of your staff, and goals will be easily achieved when there is happiness within. For the successful accomplishment of set goals, it is very important that your staff remain happy!

Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Key performance indicators are present standard metrics that are data-dependent. They have figures you can track to see if you are in line to achieve your business goals. The most common way of measuring whether or not you’re on track to achieve a business goal is to set KPIs.

As it has been mentioned severally in this guide, evaluation is very important in goal-setting. You need to always take a double check to see if you are still on track. Your KPIs are standard measuring yardsticks that would have been in existence from the point that you set your goals.

You will have different KPIs for the entire business, as several segments of your goals will have their key objectives; hence, different yardsticks for measuring progress.

Judge Employees By Productivity, Not Activity

You may have your business hours set from 9 am to 5 pm, or 8 am to 4 pm. However, it is important that you don’t see these working hours as a metric that says your staff is doing enough or not. Let there be a personal goal for each employee to meet within a particular timeframe. This will bring about an increased rate in productivity because they aren’t working to pass the time; they are working to meet their targets.

Let every individual face a personal challenge, and all staff will work well with minimal supervision, unlike when they have to wait for the next instructions from a team leader, giving them room for excuses. You might be tempted to reward staff members that are doing well with incentives, but this may not be a good idea. It is important to keep your staff happy; however, they shouldn’t be incentivized. Instead communicate, and let employees know when they are doing well.

Attaching some form of incentive to performance won’t produce honest work; it will only create bring about employees who want the benefits and will just go at any length to get it.

Hire only the cultural fit

During recruitment, the company core values, mission, and vision should be shared with potential employees, and communicate with them, be sure to ask questions that will help determine if they key into the company’s goals. If you hire people who do not key into your goals, you will have a huge hill to climb if you really want to achieve those goals. Ensure that teamwork is an attribute present in all employees, including yourself. Everyone must be able to share ideas and align with the ultimate company goals and avoid prioritizing personal goals. 

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