We’re hurtling towards the end of the year at a frantic pace (again!) so it’s time to start reflecting on what you have managed to achieve in 2019 and thinking about what business goals you will set yourself for 2020. The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective, achievable business goals.

First and foremost, use the ‘SMART’ goal format for defining your business goals. This means that you must ensure that they are:
Specific
Measureable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound

Related article: What are the essential characteristics of an entrepreneur?

How to set SMART business goals for myself?

• State each goal as a positive statement – Express your business goals positively – “Execute this technique well” is a much better goal than “Don’t make this stupid mistake.”
• Be precise – Set precise business goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you’ll know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
• Set priorities – When you have several business goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many business goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
• Write goals down – This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
• Keep operational goals small – Keep the low-level goals that you’re working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
• Set performance goals, not outcome goals – You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be quite dispiriting to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control!

In business, these reasons could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, they could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals, and draw satisfaction from them.

Set realistic business goals – It’s important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media, or society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.
It’s also possible to set goals that are too difficult because you might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.

Celebrate the wins!! Progress is more important than perfection, so all steps forward are a reason to feel a sense of achievement.