Some people say that achieving goals is the hardest part of the process and they could be right.

However, if you set your goals correctly, (for tips on how to do this, go to ‘Setting your Goal: The Know How’ in the blog section of the website) then achieving goals become easier because you will be motivated enough to achieve your goals especially in business if you have underlying personal goals.

Having set your goals correctly, achieving them becomes the important step, they will not happen just by thinking about it…although this helps! A great way to maintain focus is to get them written up and stick them somewhere that you see frequently as this will remind you.

Even if you don’t stick them on the wall etc, make sure they are written down as this will cement them into your everyday reality.

Having established your goals, you need to think about the key things that need to be done to achieve your goals. These will be your objectives. They are broad, brush statements and the things you need to do or the processes you need in place that will enable you to achieve your goals. For example; if you need to increase the number of customers in your business in order to achieve your goals, then the key objective would be to have a robust sales process in place. In most cases, you would be trying to identify five or six key objectives, which if acted upon, would result in you achieving your goal.

Having done this you should ask yourself one more question and that would be “what would stop me from achieving my goals?” these are the constraints or challenges you will face along the way to completion. By asking questions like this you should be able to identify two or three areas that if not dealt with, will stop you achieving your goals. A common constraint in the business that would definitely stop you achieving your goals would be a poor cash flow.

So this is actually throwing up two or three more objectives because the constraint would then result in finding more objectives that need to be acted upon within the business. Constraint of poor cash flow would result in an objective of putting in a proper credit control process.

This system of setting objectives i.e. things you need to do in order to achieve the goal, also applies to personal goals, for example if one of your personal goals was to buy a large house in the country, you would need to have some objectives in place to identify an area to live in and maybe objectives to generate a large enough deposit etc.

If you feel you need any more help with knowing where to start when it comes to achieving your goals then please get in contact with me at doug@exec-tc.com.