Setting Small Business Goals
Long-range business goals will be the cornerstone of your
small business planning process. To achieve these goals, you must have a method
to communicate them to your managers and employees.
One way is to bring managers and employees into the process by asking them to
help formulate the company's short- and long-range goals. If they have a role in
establishing the goals, they will
be more committed to achieving them.
All goals should relate to and support the long-range objectives of your small
business plan. In this way, you can ensure that the goals of everyone involved
in your business are consistent. If goals are incompatible, you may find that
employees feel like the middle manager of a research and development company who
exclaimed in a seminar, “How can I set my goals when I don't know where top
management wants to go?”
Types of Goals
What areas of your employee’s work are suitable for goal setting? You or your
managers should identify the most important aspects of their work. In each area,
they should set both short- and long-term goals. Carefully developed goals, if
attained, should give everyone in your business better control of their jobs.
You or your manager should define one or two goals in each of the following
categories:
- Regular work goals.
- Problem-solving goals.
- Innovative goals.
- Development goals.
By asking your managers to set at least one goal in each of these four areas,
you may open their eyes to new possibilities they had not seen before. The
goal-setting process can be a very useful educational step in your small
business development.
Regular Work Goals
These include the major part of you or your manager's responsibilities. For
example, the head of production should focus on the quantity, quality and
efficiency of production and the head of marketing should concentrate on
developing and conducting the market research and sales programs. In defining
their regular work goals, employees should include ways of:
- Operating more efficiently.
- Improving the quality of the product or service.
- Expanding the total amount produced or marketed.
Problem-Solving Goals
These provide you or your managers an opportunity to define your major problems
and then set a goal to solve each one. There is no danger of ever running out of
problems; new problems or new versions of old problems are always present.
Innovative Goals
Because of the push for new products and new methods in today's marketplace,
innovation now gets much attention in seminars on small business planning and
development. You and your workers should seek new and better production methods,
explore better ways to serve customers and propose new products for the company.
Managers will need to use innovative approaches to make the company competitive
in a fast-changing national and international economic
environment.
Development Goals
In setting development goals, you and your managers recognize the importance of
acquiring new skills. You should plan for the continued growth of each employee,
both in technical areas and in work relations with fellow employees.
