Year end is the perfect time to reflect on and celebrate accomplishments made during 2018. Yes, year-end is time to enjoy your success. It’s also a great time to plan for the accomplishments you want to achieve in 2019. Whether you are expanding or launching something new, setting objectives is your starting point.
First, identify a few specific areas of your organization you’d like to change or improve in 2019. Want higher profits, cash flow or client base? Need a new employee or system? No change or improvement will happen without a plan to get it done, starting with clear and detailed objectives.
Follow these three tips for objectives that give you a head start toward the finish line:
Gather the Numbers
Quantify all the applicable aspects of your objective. This task will require some research
and could entail making estimates and assumptions. For example, how much profit or client growth do you want to achieve? Can you express that growth as a dollar amount and as a percentage? How much would a new system or employee cost? How much of that cost would be one-time and how much would be ongoing? The more numbers you can nail down or estimate, the better.
Be Realistic
Keep market conditions and your resource capacity in mind when setting growth objectives. It’s important to be realistic in order to ensure that your objectives are achievable. Setting unrealistic objectives is not only discouraging, it can result in allocating resources – aka time and money – on activities that are unlikely to succeed. Better to target those resources on realistic, achievable objectives.
Adjust As Needed
No matter how well you research, estimate and focus on the achievable, any view of future events is imperfect. Market conditions and other factors that you depended on when setting your objectives could change. Periodically assess progress on meeting your objectives. Are you on track? Why or why not? Based on those answers, you may need to make some adjustments to the objectives that you set at the beginning of the year.
Year end is the perfect time to reflect on and celebrate the year’s accomplishments and to plan for the objectives you want to set for next year. Identify specific things you’d like to change, set detailed and clear objectives, and you’ll have a great head start to improve your organization in 2019.