Creating Long-Term Goals
Canadian educator and management theorist, Laurence J. Peter, once stated, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” How often do you find yourself wrapped up in producing results in the moment that you lose sight of the bigger picture ahead? As businesses grow, professional and personal aspirations tend to become larger and more complex making it hard to choose what to focus on. While it’s important to cater to your needs in the present time, having an extremely clear vision of where your business is going and the goals needed to achieve such success is the key to being prosperous in the long term. If you don’t set goals for yourself, it’s almost certain that you will be disappointed with your results. Be prepared for today but always be planning for tomorrow.
Don’t know where to start? Define your vision so you have a clear sense of direction on how to align your goals with what you want to accomplish. Think of where your business currently is and where you want it to be in the next five to ten years. Is your company currently in a position to accomplish such? If not, write out the goals you want your business to achieve in the time period you decide on in order to help you identify the necessary actions you’ll need to get there.
After you’ve established your goals, create a realistic timeline to ensure you’re staying on track to accomplish what you set out to do. Long-term goals can take an extended period of time to reach which makes it easy to lose sight of the end result. Prioritize the long-term goals you want to accomplish first and make sure you’re allocating the right resources to stay on track to meet them, regardless of the unforeseen circumstances your business is sure to encounter across the next couple of years.
Once you’ve defined a timeframe to meet your goals, breaking them down into smaller, short-term objectives can help you stay on track to reach them. This helps narrow goals with broad outcomes into goals that are specific, actionable and measurable. For example, say your goal is to release two new products. What are the steps necessary to accomplish this? You may not be able to accomplish this overnight but you can start creating timelines for product research, building a prototype, retrieving feedback and so forth. Instead of having broad outcomes you merely wish to achieve, you have to break down your long-term goals into actionable objectives you can regularly monitor and make changes to when necessary. Most of the time, it’s critical you get the low hanging fruit accomplished first so you can build on it in the future. Not only does this help you measure success, it establishes an end goal for your employees to work toward.
