If you lead an organization or a group of people you probably struggle with having more to do than there is time to do it. As a business owner I struggle with this all the time. There are constant demands on our time and attention. One of the most effective tools in managing the chaos is to establish clear goals and objectives with your teams.

I don’t have time nor do I want to micromanage my teams. The best way to avoid that is to create a plan together and measure its success periodically. At Taylor Studios the marketing and sales department reports to me. That team operates very autonomously and doesn’t take an unreasonable amount of my time. I attribute that to the fact that we are clear on what we want to achieve and how we are going to do it. I described how we operate that department via goals and objectives here and here.

You probably already have some goals and objectives. These would include budgets, time frames, or your organization’s mission. How could you clarify these to provide more direction to your team? For instance, our goals include how many phone calls and emails sent to clients we want to achieve each quarter. When reviewing them last quarter, I realized I had not reached out to clients enough. The fact we had the objective and reviewed it caused me to change my behavior.

Here are some benefits of goal setting:

1. Provides Direction and Focus – in our marketing efforts we know creating a relationship with a potential client, ahead of an opportunity to work with them, increases our odds of success. Therefore, we know spending our time reaching out to them and getting to know them is a high priority.

2. Creates Motivation – when I see that I’m not hitting an objective the group is reviewing it not only creates peer pressure, but also self-motivation to hit those metrics. 

3. Establishes Accountability – in our monthly review of strategic tasks, if a team member doesn’t meet a date on an action item, they are required to buy the group donuts for the next meeting. If they do that twice, they buy the company lunch. If it’s three times they are probably off the leadership team. No one wants to buy donuts, so the work gets done.

4. Improves Decision Making – if a tradeshow we’ve attended doesn’t produce any opportunities it’s a pretty easy decision to not attend it again next year.

5. Enhances Communication – since our goals and objectives are documented, tracked, and reviewed, we aren’t as likely to go off track in our communication and actions.

6. Sets Boundaries – goals provide guide-posts for behavior. In our marketing department it takes each person working diligently to hit our goals. If someone is not performing their role it would show.

7. Better Time Management – establishing priorities helps you decide what are the most important things to work on. You are less likely to go off on a tangent in your daily tasks when you have this sense of purpose.

Ultimately, setting goals and objectives is going to help you and your team achieve better and faster results. It also helps create camaraderie, ease of working together, and fun. Our marketing team is a well-oiled group that is motivated toward constant improvement. It helps us bond and move in the same direction.

“In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.”– Author Unknown

Here are some past blogs on setting goals for exhibits:

• Setting Exhibit Goals

• Interpretive Planning Objectives

• A Worthy Objective