Are You, Your Partners and Staff Heading in the Same Direction?

There are many reasons why businesses achieve less than they should – poor planning, lack of resources, unfocussed marketing, a disconnect between the product offered and market requirements and even poor products in some cases.

But one key factor that rarely seems to get the attention it deserves and seems to be holding back so many businesses is: articulating and agreeing the key objectives and plans to achieve them. This includes confirmation of the company’s objectives from management to staff and even confirming that managers and directors share the same objectives.

Agreeing Objectives
During the last year I have been amazed to find husband and wife teams who have never agreed service standards, business partners who admit that they instruct staff to perform tasks in different ways to achieve different objectives when doing identical tasks and partners who actually want different outcomes: one who wants to sell in 12 months whilst the other sees the business as a job for the next 20 years.

Perhaps equally confusing are those directors and managers who do not know where their business is heading or have any targets for it. This begs the old question – If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?

It also highlights one other big business issue: can your business actually achieve the results you want? In other words if you have a target for financial security in 10 years and can identify what your monetary target is, is your business actually capable of achieving it?

The lack of clear objectives, poor planning and working on assumptions rather than facts, seems to me to be holding back many businesses.

As the New Year starts, isn’t it time to agree your objectives with those who count and then agree the action to be take? If you do, then 2008 could be your year.