Set Your Small Business Goals for the New Year

Tis The Season To Set Goals

With the New Year upon us, if you haven’t already done so, it’s time to sit down and map out your business goals for 2016. As the captain of the ship, you, as a business owner obviously won’t create the final list in a vacuum, but if you haven’t already charted your course for the new year, there’s no time like the present, so grab a notebook and a pen, or your tablet and your favorite note-making tool, put your thinking cap on, and get started!

If it’s been a while since you’ve conducted this exercise, the main goal here is to be sure that the things you map out to accomplish over the course of the New Year are attainable and measurable. It does you little good to set a very large goal that you can’t realistically hope to meet, and it is likewise of little value to set goals that don’t have clearly defined metrics, otherwise, how will you know what kind of progress you’re making toward them?

Remember too, to break your goals down into smaller action steps and incremental milestones. Reaching a given milestone on the path to some larger objective is always cause for celebration, and will give you a feeling of progress and momentum as you work your way relentlessly toward those larger objectives.

Once you’ve got your basic list hammered out, it’s time to bring in the other members of your management team, and collaborate on the list’s refinement. List making and goal setting is all well and good, but even if you’re a sole proprietor, the process almost never happens with only a single person involved. With only a single pair of eyes looking at the strategic objectives for the New Year, it’s’ far too easy to overlook something. This is one of those times where collaboration can enhance the process in ways you never imagined.

Perhaps you got an early start, and you’ve already mapped out your goals for 2016. If that’s the case, congratulations, and give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back. If you haven’t, however, make today the day to take this step in the right direction for your business.