Effective Goal Setting for 2023

The New Year often brings new beginnings and a focus on the year ahead. Goal setting is often part of people’s New Year’s resolutions whether it be in business or their personal life.

Many people want to start the year off by losing weight or getting fit while companies often set targets for their staff. If you’re an employee your targets may be set by your boss but if you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner then you’ll often have to come up with these goals yourself.

In this blog post, we’re going to give you some tips on how to set specific goals and how to be accountable for hitting them. We’re going to talk through a system of SMART goals, which is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound.

Specific

For goals to be effective, they have to be specific. The analogy being that without a specific destination on your map, you’ve got no real idea where you’re trying to get to. This destination, or specific goal, could be a financial amount, a set number of new customers or any other specified amount. The more specific the better.

Measurable

Goals have to be measurable. Without being measured there is no accountability and the goal is somewhat worthless. It needs to be pinned to an exact amount, cost, number or any other recordable amount.

Achievable

The goal has to be realistically achievable. For example, if you’re a start-up then setting a goal of creating a million pounds in turnover in 1 year may be both specific and measurable but in the vast majority of cases, it is completely unrealistic and therefore would be nearly impossible to achieve. While goals should be challenging and should definitely stretch you they need to be based on reality.

Relevant

The goal has to have relevance to you or your business. It needs to fit in with the overall objectives of your business or company. If you’re setting a sales goal for a product that your company is moving away from or is discontinuing then that wouldn’t really make sense. The goal must be congruent with the direction in which your business is moving.

Time Bound

There has to be a time frame specified to make the goal-setting effective. For example, you may set a goal of getting 20 new customers or clients. How likely you are to reach this target will depend on whether you have 6 months to do it or 5 years. The difference between the two is huge so putting a specific time frame on the goal is vital. This can be as simple as setting a deadline or specific date in the future when you’ll review the results of your goal.

So there you are, whatever goals you have for 2023 apply the SMART principle when you set those goals and your chance of hitting those targets will go up massively.