Seven Goal Setting Imperatives for Great Performance
Do you actively set goals for your business? Are they written down? Are you tracking your progress against them? If you’re a successful small business owner, you know the importance of setting specific goals that can help you move forward.
As we approach the end of the year and businesses are setting goals for 2022, remember that goals create focus and direction. They build motivation, enable you to measure progress and serve as a powerful communication tool when it comes to mobilizing your team around a common purpose.
Here are seven key points that will help you make the goal setting process more effective.
- Set them. Yep. That’s the first recommendation. But surprisingly few people take the time to set goals. And, as a result, few people accomplish the things that they believe are important in life or in business. The act of setting specific targets creates a sense of commitment and direction that propels you to focus on their accomplishment. If you want to achieve more in 2022, set meaningful goals (beyond your New Years’ Resolutions).
- Remember the SMART acronym. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Bound. Well-written goals are detailed and provide a clear picture of what is to be accomplished and how. They contain metrics that can be evaluated, are reasonable, are relevant to the final outcome that’s desired and have specific deadlines. The combination of these elements provide clarity on how performance matches the desired end-state.
- Stretch. In order for goals to be effective, they need to create some degree of stretch or tension. Otherwise they will be put on the back burner. When managed properly, stretch goals will often improve the competence and productivity level of your team. They can be transformative. The key is to balance the “stretch” with the “attainable” factor mentioned above.
- Write them down. A goal that’s not written down is merely a wish. Writing your goals down not only helps you clarify what you want to achieve, it also creates the record against which you can measure your progress. That is what helps you repeatedly and regularly shape your daily activities toward the accomplishment. Remember that tenacity and resilience are key.
- Create an underlying strategy for each goal. It’s one thing to identify a goal that you’d like to accomplish and something altogether different to plan specifically how it’s going to be accomplished. What are the specific actions that you must take in order to accomplish them? What resources will be required? What is the timeline? This is where the rubber meets the road as it keeps the focus on the key behaviors and action items required over time.
- Share them. When you share your goals with others, you increase the likelihood that they will be accomplished. This is because people generally want to present themselves as being accountable. Of course that means that if you don’t progress, you will have to “own-up” to it. Most often, it provides the incentive needed to keep yourself moving forward.
- Celebrate incremental progress. Most worthwhile goals require attention from your team over a significant period of time. The celebration of incremental wins builds dopamine feedback loops within their minds that can help keep their level of focus on progressing toward the final goal. Dopamine is a powerful brain chemical that reinforces action with positive feelings.
Setting goals and objectives is an essential part of small business success and the practice is worthy of your time and attention. As a matter of fact, setting and adjusting your goals and the required supporting actions is a never ending process.
Plan it out. Commit and drive an effective vision that’s clear for everyone on your team that keeps them focused on great things ahead. Build the motivation that leads to your team’s overall success and allow that to become a significant part of your culture and employee experience.
Brian Wallace • December 13, 2021
From Theory to Execution - Building a Culture That Demands Leadership If leadership excellence isn’t about knowledge, then what is it about? It’s about building an environment where leadership is required, visible, and unavoidable. Most organizations never get there. Here’s how the ones that do think differently. Step 1: Define Leadership in Behavioral Terms “Be a better leader” is meaningless. Instead, define leadership like this: “Addresses performance issues within 48 hours” “Delegates decisions with clear ownership and authority” “Drives clarity by aligning team priorities weekly” If you can’t see it, you can’t manage it. Step 2: Make Leadership Measurable What gets measured gets managed. Ask: Are decisions being pushed down or pulled up? Are leaders developing successors or creating dependency? Is accountability consistent across teams? Are new ideas being generated? If leadership isn’t measured, it becomes subjective - and subjective standards don’t scale. Step 3: Align Consequences with Expectations This is where most organizations fail. They say leadership matters, but they tolerate: avoidance of difficult conversations inconsistent accountability leaders who produce results but damage culture siloed and self-optimizing behavior You can’t have leadership excellence without consequences for non-leadership behavior . Step 4: Build Leadership into the Operating System Leadership isn’t a program. It’s how the business runs. It shows up in: how meetings are conducted how decisions are made how performance is reviewed how feedback is delivered If leadership only shows up in training sessions, it won’t stick. Step 5: Create Cultural Pressure for Leadership The strongest cultures don’t rely on top-down enforcement. They create peer-level expectations. Leaders hold each other accountable, teams expect clarity and ownership, and underperformance is addressed quickly and directly Leadership becomes the norm, rather than the exception. The Payoff When leadership becomes part of the system, execution speeds up, decision-making improves, teams take ownership, and senior leaders get out of the weeds. And the organization finally operates at the level its strategy demands. Final Thought Most companies are trying to teach leadership. The best companies build environments where leadership is the only way to succeed . That’s the shift. And once it happens, everything else gets easier.
Let’s address the uncomfortable truth: Most leaders already know what they should be doing. They just don’t do it consistently. Not because they’re incapable - but because something is working against them. What’s Really Holding Leaders Back? It’s not a lack of awareness. It’s a combination of three forces that quietly shape behavior: 1. Success Has Trained Them to Stay the Same Leaders are promoted because they deliver results. So they double down on what got them there: solving problems themselves moving quickly by making decisions solo stepping in when things go sideways The problem? Those behaviors don’t scale. But letting go of them feels risky. So they don’t. 2. Short-Term Pressure Overrides Long-Term Discipline In theory, leaders know they should: coach instead of direct develop instead of fix empower instead of control But in reality? Deadlines hit. Clients escalate. Revenue matters. So they revert to speed and control because it’s faster right now. And just like that, long-term leadership development loses to short-term execution pressure. 3. The Organization Quietly Rewards the Wrong Behavior Watch closely and you’ll see it - the leader who “jumps in and saves the day” gets praised. Or the leader who builds a self-sufficient team gets overlooked. Or perhaps the leader who avoids conflict keeps the peace and avoids backlash. Organizations say they want leadership excellence. But their reward systems often reinforce the opposite. Why This Matters More Than You Think When leaders don’t change: their teams don’t grow decision-making stays centralized innovation slows burnout increases at the top And eventually, the business hits a ceiling that no strategy can fix. The Real Work of Leadership Development If you want leaders to change, you have to change the environment around them. That means: redefining what “good leadership” looks like aligning incentives with the behaviors you want creating consequences for avoiding leadership responsibilities Because people don’t rise to expectations. They rise to what the system reinforces .
Most companies don’t lack leadership knowledge—they lack execution. Discover why leadership fails and what it takes to turn insight into results.
