Now with a better degree of self-awareness, the next stage in making the New Year business goals and resolutions last is understanding how employees think. Motivating oneself can be difficult enough, when you then add employees who can’t read minds into this equation, it gets even more difficult. But the key to success still follows a similar path as understanding oneself.
As with the pursuit of any personal goal, the goals of a business can be achieved in a similar fashion. Both require the right applications of motivation, drive and desire. The key differences being that business goals are more commonly larger in scale and require combined efforts from all employers and employees. Thus, achieving them requires clear communication from top level management to each level of employee.
For example, one goal that a manufacturing business may have will be to reduce operating costs. Whilst this goal is achievable, it fails to communicate what success is, how it may be achieved, and when it needs to be achieved by. It's vague and confusing. There's no clear sense of direction. Thus, employees may be confused about their role in working towards the goal and will likely become demotivated. The use of specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART) goals can prevent this. SMART goals can prevent confusion and provides confidence with a clear and specific goal definition. Therefore, a SMART example of the previously mentioned goal for the manufacturing business would be ‘to reduce operating costs by 20% by recycling and reusing excess materials by the end of Q3 this year.’ Now, the goal has a clear and specific purpose that can be measured and sets a deadline for it to be achieved by. A combination of factors that employees can clearly work towards.