The change of year invites us to renewal. Although it may sound like a cliché, the truth is that both in business and personally, along with the blank spaces of the new agenda, we prepare for the start with the expectation of achieving new goals, or not so new ones.
For a start that boosts us to achieve our goals, I propose this four-step menu. In this note we deal with step 1.
- PREPARATIONS: BENEFITS OF DEFINING GOALS. AND THE RISKS OF NOT DOING IT
- PRACTICAL GUIDE TO DEFINING GOALS WITH INTELLIGENCE
- INGREDIENTS FOR THE ACTION PLAN
- THE RECIPE FOR HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE
"The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what your destiny is and then do it."
Whether you're a businessman or an entrepreneur, you need to value the risks of not proposing clear goals and the benefits of defining them appropriately, beyond the obvious statements of "sell more", "grow", "improve customer service" , "generate greater profitability", etc.
What are goals?
- They are the concrete results that want to be achieved in a certain period of time, investing the available resources: money, people, efforts, activities.
Risks of not formulating goals
- Difficulty measuring success obtained: so the assessment may be incorrect or misleading, lacking measurement and comparison parameters.
- Impossibility of generating articulated strategies in the short, medium, and long term.
- Difficulty in setting up an action plan: actions appear disorganized and inconsistent. There is a tendency to pursue small shiny objects one after another without perseverance or evaluating the result achieved.
- The activities may be contradictory and counterproductive with respect to the objectives. For example: while some may seek to position the brand as prestigious, others sell by lowering the price.
- It is not possible to guide the agenda according to priorities, it is managed reactively to circumstance, urgency, chance, or coincidence.
- As a consequence it may bring: demotivation, fall of projects, low productivity or not to develop maximum potential, poor distribution of resources: money, effort, time, people,disorganization and lack of control.
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The benefits of defining goals
- They provide a clear direction to work, focusing effort toward a certain destination.
- Allow to plan and establish strategies and action plans to achieve them.
- Help to establish a schedule of priorities. It is managed proactively seeking and creating opportunities.
- Make to take better decisions, choosing those that respond to achieving the goals sought and avoid the least effective.
- Generate organization and control at different levels: operational, tactical, and strategic, as a consequence uncertainty decreases.
- Enhance the coordination of actions and consistency.
- Facilitate the optimal distribution of existing resources.
- Foster motivation and commitment.
- Give rise to evaluations by comparing results with proposed objectives. And can make adjustments to the course to achieve sought goals effectively and efficiently.
- The pursuit of defined goals increases creativity and synergy to establish the necessary actions for it.
- Produce satisfaction of achievement once the goal is reached.
To know the destination, to define the point of arrival, before undertaking the journey is fundamental to know if you have arrived.
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Leer "Preparativos. Beneficios de definir objetivos y los riesgos de no hacerlo" en Español