Creating a New Years Resolution for Your Business
If you think resolutions for a new year are corny, you aren’t alone; plenty of people have sworn off of the “new year, new me” mentality in favor of less aggressive goal-setting. Whichever way you look at it, however, curating manageable milestones for 2020 will only serve to elevate your business’ success and bring your team closer together.
Without getting too cheesy, here are a few ways you can create doable New Year’s resolutions for your business.
Meaningful Progress
A common pitfall for resolution-goers is creating goals which are too lofty or complex to accomplish; if that isn’t something with which you struggle, you’ll still want to watch out for superfluous or extraneous goals this year. Your New Year resolutions for your business should follow this goal-setting format:
- Determine a need
- Outline steps to take to address the need
- Incorporate employee feedback to create a goal
- Break the goal down into manageable parts
- Verify that you are on-track to complete the goal each week
For some goals, this formula may extend to subsequent years; other goals may require a more compact approach. Whatever the case, make sure that your goals both help the company and involve your employees in order to maximize your returns.
Synchronized Vision
As a business-owner, you’re probably accustomed to setting reasonable, high-reward goals and then accomplishing them. Your employees, on the other hand, will have varying degrees of experience with reasonable goal-setting, and each of them probably has a differing view of how your company could stand to improve. This can lead to an aggravating amount of dissonance in opinions and ideas about moving forward into 2020.
As frustrating as including everyone may initially be, however, leaving your employees out of the loop when making your company’s New Year resolutions will send the wrong message right off the bat. You’ll do well to talk to your employees about what their goals are, find a commonality, and work it into your overall vision of where to go this year; doing this will ensure that employees feel heard, and your company’s progress will feel like a team success rather than a directive.
If you feel like your workplace isn’t conducive to this kind of democratic polling, your first resolution of the year is easy: incorporate employee feedback. As uncomfortable as it may appear at the onset, you’ll find substantially more success in factoring your employees’ points of view into your decisions.
No Achievement Too Small
Once you’ve established your company’s main goals for the year, it’s important to break them down into manageable chunks. The easiest way to do this is by coming up with a small piece of each goal to accomplish each week; for example, if one of your goals for the year is to double your number of social media posts, you might establish a number of posts to have per week and then confirm that you met your quota for the week each Friday.
Regardless of how you choose to break up your goals, though, make sure your employees have easy access to each milestone. You can get pretty creative with how you do this, be it through a wall-sized calendar count-down or a shared document; the crucial part is that employees can see and interact with the goals that you set together.
Examples of Resolutions for Business Owners
- Prioritize balance: Focus on self-care and work/life balance in 2020 whether it be with more exercise, sleep, hobbies, me-time, or time with family.
- Expand your circle: Join a new networking group, business organization, or learn something new.
- Strengthen yourself: Find a mentor or accountability partner.
- Strengthen others: Proactively commit to being a mentor to others.
- Increase productivity: Introduce automation to repetitive tasks, delegate more, or get organized with a new app.
- Define your vision: Set ‘Core Values’ for your business and employees that provide a foundation to make better on-brand decisions.
- Give back more to your community: Pledge to set more volunteer time aside or have a new collection drive.
- Communicate and listen better: Whether it’s personal, with your team, or on social media, engagement is key to strengthening trust and relationships.
- Market/promote consistently: Want more customers? Marketing can often fall to the bottom of a business owner’s to-do list, but aim this year to have a plan and stick to it.
- Revisit plans – Don’t set and forget: If you make 2020 business plans or budgets, revisit them weekly, monthly, or quarterly and adjust accordingly.
Goal-setting can prove challenging in a small business environment, but you have a few advantages that work in your favor. For more information on how you can grow your business in 2020, call Abacus Payroll at (856) 667-6225 today!
