Shawnee Love   •  
January 14, 2011

I follow my personal goal setting methodology when developing my business goals and/or helping clients create theirs with only one small addition:

Business goals usually require involvement and consultation with the people involved, i.e., your employees and colleagues. Some of my clients like to keep the dreaming and discussions of success for themselves and involve their employees in developing and planning S.M.A.R.T. milestones and others involve their employees in the full process. Your business, you get to decide how you do it, all I have to say is Just Do It. You will be amazed with how much you can achieve when you set your mind and the collective energy of your team to it.

One more note about business goals is that as things change, don’t fall into the trap of pursuing a goal for the goal’s sake! If it becomes clear that some of the steps need to change, then by all means recalibrate, reset and move forward. But don’t give up on the dream just because it gets hard. Goals are supposed to be hard to achieve. That is why they are something you are working towards, and why you will feel so great if you accomplish them.

If that big dream is no longer worth achieving for whatever reason, take some time to think about where in the goal setting process you went wrong and take steps to prevent it from happening again. I have seen organizations waste a lot of money and totally destroy the morale and enthusiasm of their people by declaring a dream with great fanfare, focusing all energy on execution and achievement and then pulling the plug before anyone gets the sweet taste of success.