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4 Goal-Setting Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Bottom Line

August 24, 2017 By Kenny Kline 8 Comments

Clear and proper goal-setting is instrumental in business growth. Goals allow a company to identify realistic growth rates, clarify areas in need of improvement, and move toward continued success.

4 Goal-Setting Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Bottom Line
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When it comes to goal setting, we often find the best advice by looking at what we shouldn’t do. Understanding what not to do can help decrease significant time and effort down the road.

Before going into the strategic planning cave, check out these goal-setting mistakes that could ultimately hurt your bottom line.

Table of Contents

  • Focusing on Don’t Want Instead of Want
  • Not Reviewing Goal-Setting Progress
  • Too Many at Once
  • Vague vs. Measurable
      • Kenny Kline
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Focusing on Don’t Want Instead of Want

It is often easier knowing what you don’t want as opposed to what you do. In order to set a goal that includes specific actions to take, what you need to achieve must already be clear.

Identifying what you don’t want can help clarify the opposite. But it is still necessary to be certain, not of the direction the company isn’t heading in, but where it is.

A mission statement goes a long way toward shedding light on a company’s long-term direction. By keeping the mission statement on hand when goal setting, a business will remember what it’s all about, its values, and what it originally sought to do at its inception.

If we consider a mission statement a company’s personal manifesto, it becomes easier to identify where the company stands on certain ideas and strategies.

The topics and principles the mission statement covers are excellent starting points for clarifying goals and then how to go about getting them.

Not Reviewing Goal-Setting Progress

In order to be sure you are reaching your goals or hitting your target markers, a progress review is imperative. It takes time to accomplish a goal, and it can often feel like you aren’t getting anywhere.

This is why it’s important to set aside regular times to take stock of everything you have accomplished. Doing so will help you to maintain consistency and motivation.

Celebrate when you fulfill small sub-goals, and analyze what you need in order to keep moving toward overall the finish line.

Regular check-ins are also opportunities to discover necessary updates or tweaks to a goal. In fact, companies that accomplish the most are ones that do their strategic planning on a quarterly rather than annual basis.

This greater attentiveness allows them to increase their responsiveness to changes in the environment. Are there particular activities that required extra time? Have any priorities changed? The time to direct your attention toward these possibilities is now.

Too Many at Once

It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to do everything at once. You want a sexy body, to make millions, have your Twitter account make it onto a “Companies to Watch” list, and the list goes on.

It makes sense to tackle more than one goal at a time—otherwise, everything would take forever. But overloading goals is a sure way to fail. When there are too many tasks on the horizon, it’s easy for the importance of certain items to become muddled. Then many goals end up downgraded to to-do tasks.

According to iDoneThis, there is a major gap between what we want to do and what we actually accomplish. In fact, people never finish 41% of tasks, while 85% of completions are tasks for which they did not plan.

Discovering that sweet spot number of manageable goals might take time. Until then, keeping your list at three main goals for a particular quarter will increase your probability of success.

Vague vs. Measurable

The best way to know if you have achieved a goal is to quantify it. Click To TweetNo one’s ever stuck to a vague goal to “lose weight.” Instead, it’s essential to work around a regimen with progressively heavier resistance for the purpose of strengthening the body.

Nutritional guidelines, resistance training, and adequate recovery will also help you make specific steps toward your ultimate goal.

In the same way, a company’s goal to “increase social media engagement by 25%” is specific and helpful. This goal will have a better chance of marking progress as time goes by over simply saying “increase social media engagement.”

Yes, social media engagement might increase in both cases. But without a target number in mind, how can a company know how much engagement has grown or whether it needs to increase its efforts?

Measureable goals should answer questions such as: How much? How many? How will I know when I have accomplished it? The best goals will be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, results-driven, and time bound.)

By keeping SMART goal setting at the forefront, your likelihood of not only setting realistic goals but also seeing positive results increases as well.

No matter the technique you use to set goals, however, your most important priority is ensuring that clarity, focus, and motivation are the forces driving you toward achieving results.

Ultimately, it’s remaining clear on the “why” behind your goal and staying positive and encouraged that will enable you to succeed in getting your company to the finish line.

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Kenny Kline

Founder and Managing Partner at JAKK Solutions
Kenny Kline is the founder and managing partner at JAKK Solutions, a New York City digital marketing agency. He primarily focuses on traffic generation, lead capture, and conversion for small businesses.
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Latest posts by Kenny Kline (see all)

  • 4 Ways Freelancers Should Act Like Regular Businesses - September 17, 2017
  • 5 Free Tools to Streamline Your Digital Marketing Strategies - August 30, 2017
  • 4 Goal-Setting Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Bottom Line - August 24, 2017
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Filed Under: Increasing Productivity, Small Business Advice Tagged With: business goals, efficiency, goal-setting, productivity, small business advice

Comments

  1. Max says

    November 12, 2019 at 8:34 pm

    Goal Setting is an important part of one’s life. Biggoals is helping people in goal setting. Set your goals and work hard to accomplish them,
    Max would love you to read ..#1 Activity Making You Fatter & WeakerMy Profile

    Reply
  2. Noelle Addison says

    August 31, 2017 at 11:41 am

    This post is really helpful. Make sure that your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.
    Noelle Addison would love you to read ..One Half’s Offshoring Accounting ServicesMy Profile

    Reply
  3. Denver Business Coach says

    August 30, 2017 at 3:53 pm

    As a small business coach, I talk a lot about goals and goal setting. I appreciated that you spoke about focusing on the wrong thing can lead you further away from your goals. Too often I find business owners that spend more time and energy avoiding what they don’t want, instead of focusing on what they want to achieve.

    Also, I love that you included reviewing the process. I feel that the strategy you develop to reach your goals needs to be more flexible and adaptive.

    Reply
  4. Buta Singh says

    August 29, 2017 at 11:51 pm

    i like this post dear thanks for sharing it goal setting is must for ideal dream life

    Reply
  5. Alan Clark says

    August 28, 2017 at 5:19 am

    Nice to read this post according to goal setting. Because we always set the goal but not implement on it. But your way is good to adopt for growth. Nice sharing, thanks for sharing with us.

    Reply
  6. Patrick Wilbur says

    August 26, 2017 at 2:18 am

    I like this post. It really boils down to setting SMART goals (i.e. goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound)
    Patrick Wilbur would love you to read ..39 Natural Home Remedies and Treatments For Knee Pain ReliefMy Profile

    Reply
  7. Jarvee says

    August 25, 2017 at 12:28 am

    It’s very important to be realistic with our goals. The worst option is to set impossible standards on start – then you’ve failed at the very beginning.

    If you are realistic, confided and focused on your goals, you are almost half way there.

    Thanks Kevin.

    Reply
  8. aman tripathi says

    August 25, 2017 at 12:09 am

    Really great post, Thank you for sharing This knowledge. Excellently written article, if only all bloggers offered the same level of content as you, the internet would be a much better place. Please keep it up!

    Medical helpline

    Reply

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