A little while ago, we published a post about goal setting, where we suggested that you start setting some short-term business goals that will help deliver your long-term business goals. The majority of people are familiar with long-term goal setting; it’s a prerequisite for anyone creating a business plan, financial plan or marketing plan for their business. But few people realise the value in setting short-term goals for their businesses.

Keeping Your Business On the Right Course

That’s not to say that you can’t achieve your long-term goals without setting any short-term ones – after all, many businesses are still successful despite a sort of adhoc approach to achieving their goals, but it how long does it take them to achieve those goals? Importantly, how many times have those businesses veered off track or found that they’re flailing about, before getting back on course to becoming successful?

The Benefits of Goal Setting

What goal setting does, at its very core, is keep you accountable and productive — and for anybody in business for themselves, this is crucial to your success, your cashflow and your sanity!

“What Do I Do Each Day?”

Without short-term goals, it’s hard to know what you’re meant to be doing each time you wake up in the morning. Yes, you have work to do and somewhere in the distant future you hope to achieve something, but what are you meant to be doing right now to achieve it?

If you’ve set short-term goals, particularly ones that need to be achieved weekly, you should never find yourself without anything to do — and this is especially important if you employ staff.

Giving Your Business — and Staff — Structure

Setting goals provides structure to a business, which allows your staff to easily complete their daily tasks without ever having to come to you and ask, “What do I do next?”

If you have staff coming too often and asking what you would like them to do next, it might be a good idea to start looking at setting goals for also filter into the daily or weekly tasks and duties of your employees. And make sure your staff set some goals for themselves, too.

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Remember that goal setting is all part of business planning, so if you and your staff have a plan (or roadmap) of where you are heading, everyone will be more motivated and eager to get there. That’s great news for your business’s morale — and great news for your productivity! We cover goal setting and myriad other facets of running a small business in our Small Business Management Course.