How to determine short term goals for your business?

Business goals are key objectives set to be accomplished within a fixed period. Setting these goals demands time and planning so that they can be achieved in time. They represent an organisation’s larger purpose, and establish the end-goal that employees can then work towards and accomplish.

A  short-term business goal is usually set to be realised in a short span of time. These are the milestones that are spelt out on the way to realising the long-term goals, and therefore they need to be SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-framed.

Ways to determine short-term goals

1. Identify the long-term goals

Short-term goals are mostly determined to achieve future targets. Therefore, the first step in determining short-term goals is to chart out the long-term business plan.  This will help you build an effective roadmap that supports your vision.  

2. Identify your business’ short-term goals

The first step towards setting short-term goals is to figure out which goals are achievable within a shorter time span.  At this stage, consider what you want to achieve in the next few days, weeks, or months and translate these into action plans.

3. Link the short-term goals to the long-term goals of your business

The long-term goals reflect the vision of what your business could be in  5 or 10 years. They can be called your destination, and the short-term goals, therefore, become the roadmap to reaching this destination. Your short-term goals are the stepping stones that bring your business closer to attaining the larger vision. By not aligning the short-term goals to the long-term objectives of your business, there arises the risk that employees consider the short -term goals as nothing but busywork leading to non-performance. . Therefore, to engage employees productively, it is important to give them the idea of the bigger picture.  

4. Know your goals

It is necessary to identify your goals since only after that you can start working towards them. Goals can vary from business to business, for example, for a business, recruiting 50 employees might be a goal, while for another, providing a salary raise to its employees may be important.

5. Breakdown the goals into actionable and measurable business objectives

Business objectives are clearly defined as measurable steps. They are specific and easy to keep track of and, therefore, significant to establish.

They are different from business goals in that they define the ‘how’ of a business purpose, outline actionable steps, are specific and measurable unlike the all-encompassing business goals, and have a typical set time-frame.

Breaking down goals into business objectives is determining the actionable steps that need to be taken to realise these goals. For example, if the goal is to attain at least 20 more customers by the end of the month, then specific steps and actions need to be determined and taken to attain the objective, like posting an advertisement, etc.  

It is significant to ensure that these objectives are measurable.   For example, if the objective is to post more on social media, then a specific strategy needs to be formulated to achieve that objective. It could look something like this - posting 4 times a week on Twitter and 5 times a week on Facebook.

6. Take action

This means putting together an action plan that details who will do what. You need to make every employee take charge of a particular task for a week or a month. Assigning tasks to employees ensures accountability and motivation, both of which are significant in transforming business goals into reality. With this in place, it is also important to follow-up with them,  listen to and solve their problems,  change plans if necessary, and check in regularly to ensure they are on track.

7. Visualise plans and actions

Visualising plans and actions is necessary to ascertain the need for changes and identify alternatives to existing plans and tasks. It also incorporates the need to notice; notice the different ways of doing a task or attaining an objective. It is critical to measure the time taken to achieve that objective and the efficiency and accuracy with which it was completed. This is important because it becomes repetitive and monotonous when a task is done the same way each time and by the same person/employee.  

8. Keep diverse short-term goals

Diverse short-term goals is an extension of the effective visualisation of plans and actions. It refers to employing a different individual each time for the same task and finding alternative and quicker solutions to a repetitive task or objective. Human beings tend to do the same task over and over again in the same manner out of habit. This could lead to other possible solutions being ignored.  Thus mental stagnation and monotony can easily set in. This can be tackled by assigning different goals to different employees or departments. Furthermore, arranging learning and development activities and brainstorming sessions can help identify new methods of work.

9. Measure progress

After assigning tasks to people, one needs to regularly follow-up.  This can be done each week or each month by tracking and monitoring.  At this stage, employees can be rewarded for their hard work and dedication. A change or resetting of the business goal that proved to be more challenging or had been neglected due to unforeseen circumstances could also be considered.

Progress can be measured by keeping a journal of the steps taken each day towards the goal and the time spent on each activity. This can help you as well as your team feel motivated to reach the next milestone.

10. Use a consistent goal-setting framework

Mostly, SMART, BSQ, and OKR goal-setting frameworks are used in setting goals, be it short-term or long-term. SMART is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-framed, while BSQ thinks big, act small and move quickly. And OKRs refer to objectives and key results. They work on slightly different principles, but ultimately, their objective is the same, and that is to create achievable goals for businesses and individual business units. A particular goal-setting framework should be considered and applied consistently to ensure that the goals created are both meaningful and easy to interpret. Changing the goal-setting framework with every plan or objective would confuse employees and other stakeholders as they would be unable to understand the reasons for such change.

Thorough planning is thus needed to determine the short-term goals of your business.

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