Great news! You’ve made it through the first month of 2021, hopefully without too much fuss. Back in December, we introduced you to a few tips and tricks to prepare your business for the new year. As we all know, keeping up with resolutions can be a bit of a struggle. And as your business and the market are continuously changing, it’s a good idea to adapt your goals and objectives to these changing circumstances. In order to help you keep up with your business’ resolutions, we made you a list with some helpful tips.

1. Re-evaluate

Have a critical look at the missions, visions and cultural values of your business, and determine whether they are still relevant in the context you’re operating in. Make changes where necessary to ensure your business remains sustainable

2. Define & Share your goals for 2021

Based on the challenges your business experienced in 2020, combined with your current strategies, you can set your goal for 2021. An effective way of doing this is by applying a goal setting framework by using OKRs, or Objectives & Key Results. This will enable you to align the entire company with your organizational objectives and make them measurable. Don't mistake OKRs with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), which are still useful and should be monitored at all times, but aren’t as focused on specific objectives and the means to achieve them as is the case with OKRs. After you’ve defined your OKRs, assign them accordingly. This can either be to teams or individuals.

No matter if you’re planning business objectives or personal goals, sharing with your others is a great way to keep yourself motivated to reach these goals. Your entire team should be up-to-date with the objectives you set for your business, and regular meetings to review progress towards these goals ensure that you and your entire team are aligned and working towards the same milestones.

3. Plan your milestones

By when do you want to achieve what? Make this realistic and get commitment from your whole organization to achieve these key results. Try to take external events or trends that can affect your business into account, and use them to your advantage by acting upon them accordingly. By setting specific objectives you want to achieve at a certain point in the year, you and your team have a deadline to work towards. It starts with pinpointing the exact goals you want to achieve, and a detailed plan that describes the steps that need to be taken in order to get there. Once the plan is there, the execution begins. During your road towards the deadline, it’s essential to continuously check if your business is moving into the right direction. Also keep in mind that breaking your milestones down into bite-sized pieces increases your chances of successfully achieving them.

4. Keep track & adapt where necessary

The big advantage of OKRs, is that you set Key Objectives that are measurable. Make sure your organization is structured in a way that enables you to actually measure these objectives and update them frequently to see your progress. For example, implementing Lean Analytics in your organization allows you to closely monitor the status of your business by tracking the metrics that matter most. Tracking your progress is essential to know if your resolutions and objectives are still relevant and making an impact on your business. As mentioned before, you and your business are continuously changing, and your goals should change along with those changes. Perhaps your new strategies have paid off and you’ve already managed to achieve a milestone you expected to take place in a later stage. If that’s the case, congratulations! This gives you the opportunity to set the bar a bit higher.

The continuous adaptation of your business’ objectives are necessary in order to maintain a realistic and achievable plan. If you notice that your business is struggling to meet its planned milestones, it might be time to dig deeper into why and possibly change the milestone. While ‘stretch’ goals are great, having unrealistic goals can greatly impact the motivation of your team to work towards growth, which is something you want to avoid.

5. Implement rewards

A great way to keep up with your resolutions is to implement rewards for when you and your business achieve a milestone. This doesn’t only push you to stay on top of your game, it also motivates your team to stay productive. This reward can be as simple as a note of appreciation in, for example, a company newsletter or social media post. Or you can raise the bar with physical gifts, or a Covid-friendly gathering with drinks to celebrate the successes. The possibilities are endless, and it greatly improves the long-term morale and motivation among your team members.

6. Embrace Failure

Failure is an opportunity to learn. You might have noticed that you’ve set the bar too high when planning your business’ resolutions and objectives at the start of the year. Maybe the current market circumstances or factors out of your control are making it difficult for your business to meet your milestones. Perhaps an unexpected internal problem popped up, and you’re busy with fixing the existing rather than pushing towards the set milestones. No matter the reason why your business isn’t meeting its planned objectives, it’s essential to not make it lose your motivation and focus. Instead, look at what went wrong, learn from the potential mistakes that have been made, and make sure your new strategy is designed in such a way that it avoids these mistakes in the future. After all, you learn by doing and failure is the best way to learn and improve.

Need a hand?

Are you struggling to grow your business in a durable and sustainable way? At Lizard Global, we’re experienced with helping businesses grow to the next level. By focusing on practices like growth hacking and lean analytics, we guide you through the process of creating a killer business plan with realistic goals and strategies. Interested? Get in touch, and we gladly partner up with you to give your business the spotlights it deserves!