New Year’s Resolutions are easy to make … and very hard to keep.

In fact, a study a few years ago examined 800 million user-logged activities that showed most people are likely to give up on their New Year’s Resolution by January 19.

“The difficulty of the goal you set isn’t nearly as important as whether or not you develop the kind of habits that allow you to achieve that goal,” wrote Inc. contributing editor Jeff Haden. “Otherwise, you’re just wishing and hoping. Your intentions are great, but unless you develop new habits … your chances for success are basically nonexistent.”

This is important advice for small and medium-sized business owners, as well, who not only need to be goal-setting as the calendar turns from 2022 to 2023 but need to have a framework in which to channel the goals into reality.

“Goals without routines are wishes; routines without goals are aimless,” says the Growth Institute which points businesses towards “Rockefeller Habits” for goal setting.

Of course, not everybody on their couch this Jan. 1, watching the Rose Parade and endless college football games, will put an effort into making resolutions, and some businesses make that same mistake.

“Many organizations fail to understand the importance of goal setting, and as a result, they fail miserably,” says Engagedly.

The Importance of Goal Setting for Your Business

Goal setting is important for your business because it allows you to take a step back from the daily grind of your enterprise and create a vision for your company’s success.

“In business, we often get so caught up in the day-to-day that we forget to step back and think about the bigger picture,” says business consultant Ann Marie Puig. “We get bogged down in tactics and lose sight of strategy.”

Puig says goal setting is essential to your business strategy.

“Take some time to think about your company’s long-term goals and develop a roadmap for success. This should include short-term and long-term goals, as well as specific action items for each goal. Be sure to involve your team in this process so everyone is on the same page,” says Puig.

Goal setting, far from an isolated exercise at the top of the management chain, is crucial to your employees and work teams with Engagedly citing these seven benefits of goal setting for your business:

• Teamwork: If you have ever been on the winning side (or losing side!) in a tug-a-war battle, you know it is essential for everyone on your team to be pulling not only in the same direction but at the same cadence. Communicating company goals to your managers and employees will give everyone a clear vision of how they can work together as a team to achieve the milestones.
• Motivates Employees: Today’s employees, especially the younger generations, want a sense of purpose in their work and goal setting will give your staff direction and help keep them motivated in the workplace. Engaged employees will be less likely to quit or look for other work.
• Prioritizing Work: There are limited hours in each workday and setting goals allows your employees to focus on actions and activities that prioritize work that will allow them to focus on what is essential for your company’s success.
• Decision Making: With clear long-term and short-term goals communicated to staff, they can make decisions based on which outcome will best allow them to reach their goals. 

• Measure Success: Setting goals will give management and employees clearly defined ways to measure their progress towards achieving the goal. By measuring results toward the goals, both your employees and the company will become more efficient.

• Guides Employees: Goal setting can not only be good for a company as a whole, but for individual employees, it can help guide them on their career path within the organization, showing them avenues and methods of achieving personal and career-oriented goals.
• Time Management: The business adage that “time is money” is always true and goal setting will help your employees focus on using their time wisely, focusing on activities that help them achieve the goals that have been set. 

Name Game: Different Goal-Setting Frameworks

There are many different names for goal-setting frameworks in business, but they all have the same aim: to help your company prioritize what needs to be accomplished so that your business can be successful.

Some of the goal-setting frameworks or methodologies you will see include:

• Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) Rocks: According to Whale, “In EOS, Rocks are similar to quarterly goals. Setting Rocks is a business leader’s process to decide which tasks to prioritize in 90 days.” Why the name “Rocks”? It originates from an analogy used in Stephen Covey’s “First Things First” book where he says a workday is made up of:

o   Sand (interruptions)

o   Gravel (day-to-day responsibilities)

o   Rocks (main priorities)

o   Water (everything else!)

• The Rockefeller Habits: Based on the leadership and management principles used by business magnate John D. Rockefeller is based on three pillars with the first being “priorities” including “the company have objective Top 5 priorities for the year and quarter, and a clear Top 1 priority.” Rockefeller's Habits are based on his famous 10 Rockefeller Habits.
• SMART Goals: Another framework for goal setting is SMART which can help you focus your efforts and increase the chance of successfully completing them. SMART stands for:

o   Specific

o   Measurable

o   Achievable

o   Relevant

o   Time-bound

• Scaling Up: Another goal-setting methodology that expands on The Rockefeller Habits. Scaling Up focuses on four main areas:

o   People: Choose the right people for the right roles and set them up for success.

o   Strategy: Create a crystal clear strategy that aligns your company goals and methods to create efficiency.

o   Execution: Streamline business processes to reach goals.

o   Cash: Ensure the cash flow to support business growth.

• Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): This framework has been around since Intel shepherded it in the 1970s but is still extremely popular with big tech companies with everybody from Facebook to Amazon to Oracle using some variation of it.

Business consultant Ken Larson says that whatever goal-setting methodology you choose, it should help your organization:

• Develop a concrete plan for 2023
  
  
• Align your business from top to bottom
  
  
• Help your staff meet tangible, quantitative goals within a set timeframe

And the time to set those business goals is now!

“If you don’t already have business goals for 2023, now is the time to start setting them,” says Grow Think. “If you want your business to be successful in 2023, it’s important to set goals and create a plan for achieving them.”

Contact Partners HR today for direction in setting business goals for your company, and other guidance to help make 2023 a success.