Yes really, your business MUST have organizational goals!!!

I find it somewhat amazing the resistance you can encounter by just mentioning “goals” in a business setting. Are they really that bad? Ok, I’ll admit they can be. If the overall approach to goal setting process is reactionary then it will be a painful process for everyone involved. The situation can become worse if the business itself and its executives don’t have goals. If this happens, a chaos of conflicting expectations and misinformation can occur. This is actually something I encountered last week.

A business that I work with has been pressuring me to take on a project for them. Something about the project made me very resistant but I didn’t examine my reasons too closely. When the pressure continued, I gave in and looked at the project. What I found disturbing was that the only reason the business had to put this major change in place was that the business’s larger competitors used it. When I probed deeper and asked questions such as, “what is the expected ROI” and “what proof do we have that the customers want this,” I was met with this classic response “I just KNOW it will work.” HAH! How many times have we heard that! A business cannot implement changes on what they think their customers want – they need to be proactive in obtaining proof. How does this fit into setting goals? If you have goals, then you will use research to know what projects you need to meet those goals! In this situation, the questions I had opened an even bigger can of worms.

As I was asking these questions the executive I was working with, he diverted my attention to another issue he was having. He was being pressured to set goals and needed help with the numbers. Looking at the budgeted numbers, it became clear that annual revenue number was set without any real thought to how it can be obtained. It was merely a calculation off of last year’s number. Saying that a business will reach X amount of revenue dollars is fine but a complete plan on how will the business get there also needs to be in place. One of the basic questions in this process is: will the revenue number be obtained through existing customers or will new customer acquisition have to be stepped up? In this situation no one could answer that question for me! When I probed deeper, I found that most of the business’s efforts went towards obtaining new customers but these new customers only accounted for less than 10% of the annual revenue! If goals for advancing the business had been put into place, if the budget had been built with a thought of how it was going to be accomplished – if, if, if – the list of what should have been done goes on and on.

The executive didn’t, and probably still doesn’t, see the correlation between organizational goals and organizational projects. Don’t let your business have the same disconnect. Look at the big picture. Ask yourself where you want your business to go and what steps are going to be needed to get there. From there, you can determine realistic revenue targets, project initiatives, new hires and so on. It must start with goals and it must begin at the organizational level. Without them, the employees are on a rudderless ship just trying to take on every wave as it hits. Clearly that’s a business just waiting to be sunk.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”