I certainly don’t need to tell you how difficult or challenging it is to be in business today. How much stress there is and how many hours you are putting in to your business. But it’s important to be in positive control of your business and understand what is going on. Especially in this turbulent business economy.
As a CEO, company president or business owner, you should have at least an outline of a business plan for the next six months stating goals you want to accomplish, looking at sales projections, analyzing costs and clearly thinking through what needs to be done to survive, prosper and keep secure the vision you have for your business.
But are you so busy that you’ve forgotten how important goal setting is for your business, for each employee, department as well as for yourself? Take a few minutes and review the goals you have set for the year. See if you are reaching them. Do your goals need to be revised or updated? If you are not reaching the goals, why?
Goals are just marks on a piece of paper unless you are tracking and analyzing them to make sure they are being met. Don’t get a surprise six months from now and find out that your business is in financial difficulty because you didn’t have the time to analyze the goals you set. Or, worse yet, you never found the time to determine or set any goals. The reason for setting only a six month goal is the volatility of the economy. In this type of economy you need to constantly update goals and expectations because the marketplace is so uncertain.
The first half of 2010 is now behind us. What are your goals for the second half of 2010?
It doesn’t matter what you did in the first half of the year even if you had a great profit. Now it matters what you do going forward.
Though you may be enjoying the summer weather, now is the time to start planning for the rest of the business year. No matter what season it is or what month of the year there is always business out there. Without planning it is unlikely that you will reach your goals.