How to Identify and Plan for Yearly Goals

ComplianceBiz Ops

Jan 15

Setting clear, measurable goals is absolutely crucial for the success and growth of your company. When you create well-defined goals, you ensure that your team is aligned on priorities, motivated to achieve targets, and accountable as you track progress. In this blog, we will provide you with some valuable tips on establishing and sticking to impactful goals throughout the year. Let's dive in!

Identifying Impactful Goals

Being intentional when setting yearly company goals is essential for the prosperity and expansion of a business. It allows business owners and managers to prioritize objectives that will have the greatest impact, align teams towards a common vision, and ensure accountability throughout the year. By setting clear and measurable goals, businesses can stay focused, motivated, and on track to achieve their targets and drive overall success. Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing your yearly goals:

Quality over quantity: Identify 3-5 big-picture goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Focus on objectives that will have the greatest business impact if achieved.
Align with stakeholders: Before setting your goals, get input from key stakeholders across teams to ensure you are all in alignment.
Consult your mission, vision and values: Your company’s mission, vision and values should be the guiding force for all decisions and goals. Tie your goals back to them and be sure to reference them often.

Dividing Yearly Goals into Quarterly Goals

Once you have broader yearly goals established, break these down into quarterly benchmarks that teams can focus on accomplishing each quarter, bringing you closer to hitting those ambitious annual targets. Here are a few tips to help this process:

Make sure that all quarterly goals are in line with your overall yearly goals. By consulting the main company goal when creating quarterly goals, you will eliminate the chance of erroneous work.
This is another opportunity to revisit quality over quantity. Having a multitude of quarterly goals may look impressive on paper, but it can easily lead to unfinished projects, clutter and confusion. Setting the minimum amount of clear, actionable goals will help your teams stay on track, and make it easier to communicate progress.
Communicate with the team. Make sure each department and stakeholder understands the company’s overarching yearly goal. This will ensure that individual contributor, departmental and company wide goals are all working to achieve the same thing.

Tracking and Monitoring Progress

Building out a goal tracking dashboard is instrumental for monitoring achievement throughout yearly and quarterly periods. Teams and individuals should have clearly articulated objectives indicating how their work ladders up to yearly and quarterly goals. Some key things to keep in mind while monitoring and tracking goals:

Set up recurring check-ins to review progress made toward quantifiable targets. Routinely assess what's going well and where teams may be struggling so you can provide additional support and resources. A little bit of accountability goes a long way when working toward ambitious goals.
Create a goals tracking spreadsheet that lists out each goal, metrics/KPIs associated with the goal, owners, and status each quarter. Track progress towards quarterly benchmarks that will contribute to annual goals.
Build dashboards in business intelligence software like Tableau, Power BI, or Google Data Studio to visually track KPIs and goals. Refresh dashboard data each quarter to monitor progress.
Schedule quarterly business reviews where leadership analyzes goal progress. Identify what's working well and any gaps or issues preventing goals from being achieved.
Remember to celebrate wins. Acknowledging and celebrating progress can come in many forms, from a personalized congratulation to a company wide party. Whatever shape it takes, recognition is key to keeping teams and individual contributors invested and recognized while working towards your goals.
Automate reporting where possible through analytics platforms rather than relying on manual updates each quarter. Schedule email reports to be delivered to key stakeholders.
Establish a rhythm for regularly checking in on metric progress. Track both company-wide objectives as well as team-specific goals. Tools like Google Data Studio, Klipfolio or Geckoboard can help create goal tracking dashboards.

Adjust Goals When Necessary

Be agile and occasionally revisit goals to determine if adjustments need to be made based on business conditions and progress achieved. Key performance indicators falling behind targets indicate a yearly or quarterly goal may need modifying or shifting resources. Missed goals don’t necessarily equal failure but rather opportunities to take stock and potentially pivot strategies.

In Conclusion

Setting and tracking well-defined yearly and quarterly goals will keep your entire company focused, accountable and working cohesively toward shared objectives critical for taking your business to the next level. We hope that this blog helped provide clarity and inspiration for setting your company’s yearly and quarterly goals.

HENSLEE would like to thank our community for your continued support. If you or your organization need assistance with goal planning, reach out to HENSLEE here, and remember to Do What You Say You’ll Do.