Everyone knows that to start and run a business successfully you need to have clear goals. The trouble with goal setting is:
- Most people don’t do it
- Most people that do do it, don’t follow through because they:
- write too many goals
- make unrealistic goals
- forget what their goals are
Of course, it’s probably just me that has a problem with this – you wouldn’t do any of these things!
But in case your goal setting is not quite working for you, I want to share something I’m trying at the moment.
About a year ago, I had just run my first Ready Set Startup course with 6 participants. I was having lunch with a friend who is pretty savvy about startups and he said to me, “Now you have to work out how to run it with 60 people, then 600, then 6000.” That comment really made me stop and think.
I like it because:
- It’s simple
- It’s easy to remember
- It’s easy to measure
- It requires me to think innovatively to reach each goal.
Instead of growing incrementally, it forces me to work out how to grow exponentially. I can’t use the same thinking and solutions to run a course for sixty participants that I used to run a course for 6. I can’t grow the business by pedalling harder with this kind of goal – I have to find a new kind of transport, if you like. And that mindset will lead me to create something exciting, but allow me to do it by taking baby steps. And to me that is the essence of entrepreneurship.
So I’ve decided to adopt it as my goal setting tool and give it a trial. Of course for it to be effective, the goals have to be around key metrics for the business. I’ll let you know how it goes…
What do you do to create effective goals? Share in the comments
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