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Setting Achievable Goals in Business

Setting Achievable Goals in Business

Setting Achievable Goals in Business

“People with goals succeed because they know where they are going…” – Earl Nightingale

There is an art to setting business goals. When a business fails to achieve a goal, fault is often put on the actions taken along the journey, when in fact the goal itself is frequently problematic. The goal you set is just as important as the actions you take to succeed… So take the time to carefully establish your goals before you begin to chase your dreams!

Before you set a Goal

Articulate the vision and the purpose.

Be very clear in one short paragraph or less of the vision and the purpose of the goal.  Describe the experience you and those affected, impacted, by the goal will experience.  What will be different for you and them when that goal is realised. 

Complete a SWOT analysis.

“Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.” Don’t skip this step! It will get you thinking about your challenges and how to best overcome them. 

Know your Industry.

What direction do you believe your industry is headed? What will the future look like in 2, 5 or 10 years? Make educated predictions about your industry and use this insight establish goals that will move you in the right direction.  What issues have occurred historically?  What has been solved for and succeeded and failed, use these insights to help form your opinions. 

Know your Competitors.

It is vital to understand your competitors. Use them as a benchmark to strengthen your point of difference and set goals to exceed and lead in your industry. What are their strengths, their weaknesses. 

What is your point of difference?

What makes you different, what do you do in your business that is different?  What is it that gives you a point of difference? 

What is your values you will live by and expect others to also do?

What are your values and what are the non negotiables.  The tighter you have this, the stronger your point of difference will become.  Hire to it, partner to it, collaborate to it, align customers via it.  Do not let this be your achilleas heal. 

Setting your Goals 

Objectives:

It needs to be clear with each goal, exactly what is the objective of EACH goal.  The goals you set should by challenging but realistic. Your team will not support and will not be motivated to work towards a goal that is too far out of reach. The goals you set should be achievable within 3 years and you must have the resources needed to succeed.

Measurable – Key Results:

How will you know when you have succeeded? Use figures to make your goals measurable. What percentage do you want to increase sales by? Without this detail a growth of 0.2% and 20% will both be considered an achievement. How will you know you have achieved the goal? 

Relevance and Priority:

Keep a visual reminder of your vision or mission to ensure the goals you set align with your corporation’s values and objectives.  Demonstrate the link between this goal and objective to the priorities of the vision and purpose of your business unit and anything that is bigger or broader than your division.  Connect the dots. Prioritisation is a critical element to gain stakeholder support.  

Timely:

What is the timeframe for this goal? When will you need to achieve this by?  What needs to come before it for success, what needs to come after it for continual improvement? 

Actions & Translate those action to Receiving and Embedding Change Safely and Sustainably .. the thing that will be different:

Actionable steps need to be planned to bridge the gap between now and success with ‘checkpoints’ along the way. If you want to gain more clients, by what percent? By when? What action will be taken? Setting goals is not a task that should be rushed, those involved in the goal setting process must be given ample time to reflect and respond.  Often the receiving and embedding doing the ‘thing’ that will be different is overlooked.  We all need to become masters of change in our current environments.  Dont fail in the last 10% when the receiving and embedding the change is the thing that will determine 100% of the success.

 

Ferne Eliz King

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

Want to learn more?

I specialise in prioritising and sequencing initiatives, projects, programs to facilitate businesses to achieve their aspirational future along with easy and clear practices to manage strategic change and tactical change.

I have over 30 years’ experience as a globally renowned consultant and have managed over 2.5 billion in programs of work as well as set up complex portfolio management offices.

My goal is to help individuals and businesses of all sizes achieve their aspirational future with key focuses on:

  • Prioritising and sequencing to achieve goals; essentially doing the right things, at the right time, in the right way
  • Critical thinking for strategic and tactical change
  • Shift in mindset, principles, and practices
  • Attain clarity in your focus, improved prioritisation and decision making
  • Advice for merger and acquisitions – day one readiness and beyond

To learn more follow me through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/FerneElizKing888

Alternatively, you can contact me for a 1:1 coaching session.

Love Life Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

My superpower is to ignite change and inspire actions to achieve the imaginable future of individuals and businesses. The first step is facilitating you to unlock your curiosity.

 

Rejig Focus To Take Inspiring Action

Health & A Clean Green Home

Ferne Eliz King Chit Chat

Create the Tiny Life You Crave

Succeeding in your Business Goals

Succeeding in your Business Goals

Succeeding in your Business Goals

The most effective way to progress in business is to set goals. There are many circumstances behind a goal that is never achieved, and often the reason is centred around ineffective planning and a loss of motivation. The road to success is not always a smooth one, but there are a range of methods and strategies to stay on track and to keep motivated when things get difficult.

Remember Your “Why” & What Values Drive You

What is the outcome from achieving this goal? Always remember your why, write it down and display it where you can be frequently reminded, especially when you hit bumps along the road.  Also describe your values, what are the guard rails you will apply to get to your why.   Be acutely aware of your values, this will determine the pace and journey you take to get to your goal. 

Spread the Word

Publicly communicate the goal to ensure you have people to hold you accountable. Accountability is one of the more effective motivators. Set up a digital calendar where those involved in the project can track its progress, know their role and deadlines and access resources.

Use the Stairs

Use a staircase to map out the chronological actions that must be taken to bridge the gap between your now and success.  Break down your goal and determine small, measurable subgoals and celebrate each achievement. As an example, if your goal is to increase revenue by 10% in 12 months, the first step could be redeveloping a revised marketing campaign and launch it within 8 weeks.

What swimlane are you in, what swimlane are others in

When several individuals or teams are involved in working towards a goal, it is important that each of them are clear of their role, their swimlane! Regular briefings are necessary, particularly on large scale projects to reflect on what is and isn’t working, alter the path when necessary and track progress.

Identify the Resources Needed

When the goal is set, the journey to success is mapped out be very clear on the skills required to bring the outcome to life, identify gaps and deal to them early.  Align team with similar or same values. 

Stick to your Deadlines.

Create a realistic timeline, and stick to it.  Be very clear what priorities come before this activity if there are constraints, be clear on where this activity sits within your overall priorities.

Celebrate the successes, and learnings as well.

Reward yourself and your team each time a target is met within the deadline and also when there has been a significant learning. 

Reflect and Revise Along the way.

It is rare to have a completely seamless journey to success in anything we do, being agile, creating a great team dynamic to reflect, revise, regularly, make it part of your weekly ways of working.  Recognise when something isn’t working and needs to be changed – not take weeks or days, address when the issue is identified.

Listen to those around you, even those you dont align to

Listening is a core skill for success, good, bad, indifferent.  Listen to between the lines, listen to the detractors, listen to the advocates.  Form your own opinion after listening. 

Imagine the feeling, the experiences you and others will have when the goal or outcome is realised.  Is the excitement of the goal larger than any fear you have to achieve it?  

If you have a fear that is greater than the feeling of excitement to realise the goal – address that fear now or you will never realise your goal. 

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

Want to learn more?

I specialise in prioritising and sequencing initiatives, projects, programs to facilitate businesses to achieve their aspirational future along with easy and clear practices to manage strategic change and tactical change.

I have over 30 years’ experience as a globally renowned consultant and have managed over 2.5 billion in programs of work as well as set up complex portfolio management offices.

My goal is to help individuals and businesses of all sizes achieve their aspirational future with key focuses on:

  • Prioritising and sequencing to achieve goals; essentially doing the right things, at the right time, in the right way
  • Critical thinking for strategic and tactical change
  • Shift in mindset, principles, and practices
  • Attain clarity in your focus, improved prioritisation and decision making
  • Advice for merger and acquisitions – day one readiness and beyond

To learn more follow me through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/FerneElizKing888

Alternatively, you can contact me for a 1:1 coaching session.

Love Life Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

My superpower is to ignite change and inspire actions to achieve the imaginable future of individuals and businesses. The first step is facilitating you to unlock your curiosity.

 

Rejig Focus To Take Inspiring Action

Health & A Clean Green Home

Ferne Eliz King Chit Chat

Create the Tiny Life You Crave

The link between curiosity and success

The link between curiosity and success

The link between curiosity and success

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”- Albert Einstein

The curious mind is an outstanding tool for professionals and business. The strong desire to learn and understand unfolds the intellect for innovation and resourcefulness. Curious individuals make more rational decisions, more creative solutions and tend to form stronger interpersonal relationships.

How curiosity can excel your career or business or just your zest :

Improve business practices. The more knowledge you obtain about your business or industry, the higher your insight will be on methods to increase your revenue and improve customer and employee satisfaction.

Better Decisions. Curiosity guides versatile thinking. Understanding the entire picture before putting a plan to action leads to improved decision making.

It makes you more likeable. When you seek to increase your knowledge and understanding about a topic you are more confident and intelligent. When you show curiosity towards other people you will become more likable and relatable to them.

Relationships with stakeholders. Showing a genuine interest in customers, employees and other stakeholders is the foundation to a strong, satisfied, and loyal relationships.

Resolve customer difficulties. When a customer has a problem, the curious employee listens, considers why this problem has occurred and develop an innovative solution to help the customer and prevent future complications.

Learning from sales mistakes. If you aren’t making sales or your customers are not coming back and you haven’t being curious to discover why, you will never learn from the errors that have been made.

Negotiation. Curiosity for what both stakeholders want or need, helps negotiations that result in two satisfied parties. The curious mind will be interested in all perspectives.

Reduced Conflict. As above, considering the perspective of other parties and encouraging others to do the same supports collaboration and improved group achievements.

Developing products or services. The curious mind considers how things work, how they can be improved and what people want or need. This is essential to develop high demand products or services.

Encouraging Curiosity in the workplace:

Research indicates that leaders who encourage curiosity create a more wholesome work environment where employees have higher job satisfaction and performance.

Open Mind. When a suggestion is made or a question is asked, regardless of what it is… keep an open mind, branch off the idea and see if it can take you to new heights.  Choose how you respond – think about your response!

Try new things. Sometimes the reason we don’t change is because we don’t feel there is a need, but when we change, wonderful things can happen. Once a month, try something new. Go to a different restaurant, try a new sport, watch a movie from a different genre than your preferred. When you try new things you trigger curiosity within your mind.

Hire Curious Individuals. Consider the way you advertise roles. Consider the questions you ask during an interview. Listen to the question’s candidates ask. Provoke their curiosity during this process and select some naturally curious individuals for your company.

Demonstrate Curiosity. Express curiosity in the interests and opinions of your employees. Ask individuals about improvements they would make. Use their responses to develop a new way of operating. Employees will respect a leader that values and listens to them.

Ask your employees. Questions about what they would do differently or what could be improved. They will respect a leader that asks and listens. Use these responses to redevelop a new way of doing. Solutions to your problems could be sitting in the mind of your colleague.

Focus on learning not performance. To increase confidence, skills and motivation it is more effective to set and work towards learning goals than performance goals.

Encourage employees to expand their skills and knowledge. Support employees to complete further study, expand their network or experiment with new ideas or ways of doing. Leaders and companies will benefit from their knowledge and increased performance.

Arrange innovation days. Organise regular meetings with employees to brainstorm ideas for change. Ask questions such as why… what if… and how do we…? Don’t just accept things as good enough, or because it is how things have always been done. Focus on the experiences people wish to have and the why.   

An individuals curiosity tends to decrease the longer they stay in a job due to being progressive tied up in the daily workload. Try to set some time aside each day to open your mind, listen to someone else or try something new.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”- Albert Einstein

Ferne Eliz King

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

Want to learn more?

I specialise in prioritising and sequencing initiatives, projects, programs to facilitate businesses to achieve their aspirational future along with easy and clear practices to manage strategic change and tactical change.

I have over 30 years’ experience as a globally renowned consultant and have managed over 2.5 billion in programs of work as well as set up complex portfolio management offices.

My goal is to help individuals and businesses of all sizes achieve their aspirational future with key focuses on:

  • Prioritising and sequencing to achieve goals; essentially doing the right things, at the right time, in the right way
  • Critical thinking for strategic and tactical change
  • Shift in mindset, principles, and practices
  • Attain clarity in your focus, improved prioritisation and decision making
  • Advice for merger and acquisitions – day one readiness and beyond

To learn more follow me through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/FerneElizKing888

Alternatively, you can contact me for a 1:1 coaching session.

Love Life Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

My superpower is to ignite change and inspire actions to achieve the imaginable future of individuals and businesses. The first step is facilitating you to unlock your curiosity.

 

Rejig Focus To Take Inspiring Action

Health & A Clean Green Home

Ferne Eliz King Chit Chat

Create the Tiny Life You Crave

The connection between Emotional Intelligence and Success

The connection between Emotional Intelligence and Success

The connection between Emotional Intelligence and Success.

Did you know…

  • 90% of the top performers in business have a high emotional intelligence?
  • In 70% of cases, people with average IQ’s outperform those with a higher IQ? (This is linked to the individuals emotional intelligence)
  • People with high emotional intelligence earn an average of 29k more each year
    (Source: Inc)

Your emotional intelligence is an element of your emotional strength. Your emotional intelligence involves how approachable, observant, and empathetic you are, how well you listen, the way you handle interpersonal problems or failures, and the way you lead or work in a team. Your emotional strength goes beyond that to daily behaviours and habits to continuously improve your quality of life. While your overall emotional strength is important for a healthy work ethic you need strong emotional intelligence to succeed. The great news is unlike your IQ, your emotional intelligence is like a muscle and by doing the right exercise, you can improve yours.

Exercises to Improve your emotional intelligence

Before we begin, understand that increasing your emotional intelligence involves hard work and dedication. It is hard work, but it is worthwhile.

Small beginnings

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Don’t try to change too much too fast. Focus on one or two of the below areas to begin with and as they become natural to you, move on to other areas.

  • Tomorrow is a new day. It might be a cliché but reflecting on your performance each day is one of the most effective ways to improve your emotional intelligence. Recognise what has gone well and how you have made yourself proud, but also reflect on what you could improve on. Start fresh each day knowing you will be better than yesterday.
  • Set goals for yourself. Use your daily reflections to start setting personal and professional goals for yourself. Display them visually to keep yourself on track. Having a goal means your are always working to improve.
  • Be accountable. This one is a bit confronting, when things go wrong it is human nature to find someone or something to blame. You are in charge or your life and your decisions. When something goes wrong, challenge yourself to take responsibility. When you hold yourself accountable you begin to discover why things have not gone to plan you are more likely to learn from your experience.
  • Give your Emotions Time to Process. We all have different personalities and with that comes different reactions to the same experience. Immediately reacting is not going to do you any favours. Reacting with anger can cause you to ‘shoot yourself in the foot’ long term, reacting with excitement can cause you to overcommit and does not create trust with peers. Regardless of your feelings, always stop and give your emotions time to catch up and try to consider reason before you react.
  • Handling Stress. Discover healthier mechanisms to cope with your stress. After a hard day, there are some common habits a lot for us use to relieve stress such as alcohol, devices/TV, or unhealthy eating. Find a healthy alternative that you personally enjoy. For example, light exercise, reading a book, a relaxing bath, cooking a meal, calling an old friend, spending time with the family or journaling.
  • Work on your mindset. Consciously start choosing not to let problems beyond your control affect you. Choose to push negative thoughts aside and focus on something positive or at least productive. Your mindset affects your relationships and your motivation, so make an intentional decision to improve it.
  • Increase self-discipline. Try to improve your discipline by a small amount each day. You can teach yourself to be more disciplined, but the mistake is to go too hard too fast, the only pitfall is making too many plans and only taking 1 action or minimal actions.  Make less plans and action all your plans. 
  • Decisions. Think every decision through. Challenge yourself to think from different angles, from the perspectives of others and before you make your final decisions consider the risks associated and how you will manage them. Consider consequences, consider the feeling and emotion you will experience when that decision is realised – is that feeling greater than the fear of not making the decision? 
  • Just do it. It is normal to have apprehension when trying new things. If you have an idea to progress in your business or career, don’t let that fear hold you back! If you want to start creating memes for your socials, start a newsletter or develop a new product- go for it!  Test, learn, refine .. but above all – take the first step.
  • Know your limits. Business can be challenging, know your capabilities. Don’t allow yourself to burn out because you have too much pride to admit you need help or support.
  • Take the challenge. Aim to do 1 difficult task each day. Experts claim that challenging yourself once a day will significantly increase your mental strength, resilience, knowledge and overall success.

Exercise your emotional strength each day, gradually improve your emotional intelligence celebrate the long term benefits in your career and personal relationships.  Track your progress !

Ferne Eliz King

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

Want to learn more?

I specialise in prioritising and sequencing initiatives, projects, programs to facilitate businesses to achieve their aspirational future along with easy and clear practices to manage strategic change and tactical change.

I have over 30 years’ experience as a globally renowned consultant and have managed over 2.5 billion in programs of work as well as set up complex portfolio management offices.

My goal is to help individuals and businesses of all sizes achieve their aspirational future with key focuses on:

  • Prioritising and sequencing to achieve goals; essentially doing the right things, at the right time, in the right way
  • Critical thinking for strategic and tactical change
  • Shift in mindset, principles, and practices
  • Attain clarity in your focus, improved prioritisation and decision making
  • Advice for merger and acquisitions – day one readiness and beyond

To learn more follow me through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/FerneElizKing888

Alternatively, you can contact me for a 1:1 coaching session.

Love Life Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

My superpower is to ignite change and inspire actions to achieve the imaginable future of individuals and businesses. The first step is facilitating you to unlock your curiosity.

 

Rejig Focus To Take Inspiring Action

Health & A Clean Green Home

Ferne Eliz King Chit Chat

Create the Tiny Life You Crave

Why employee values should align with employer visions

Why employee values should align with employer visions

Why employee values should align with employer visions.

“When you do what you love and love what you do, you will have more energy at the end of the day than the beginning.” – Dr. John DeMartini

Companies need to employee people that will love what they do. When employees have passion, they will be inspired to work towards bigger goals and have increased productivity. All of this comes down to values.

Our values are the foundational to our thoughts, actions, and decisions. Everyone has a unique value system. The higher the value on our personal hierarchy, the more confident and knowledgeable we tend to be. When we engage in something high on our system of values, we become enthusiastic and extroverted. The opposite can be said for things that are lower on our value system, we tend to procrastinate, become introverted, and have less knowledge and confidence.

Aligning the value system of each employee with your company is a recipe for success. While experience and skills are important on paper, a ‘cultural fit’ is more important in practice. You will not receive the highest effort, passion or innovation from the employee that is there purely for the pay cheque. When your employee’s values align with your companies, their will be increased motivation and passion in their work, they will want to improve by setting goals and working towards them. They will have fulfilment in their role and work in collaboration with you towards a shared vision each day.

When interviewing prospective employees, ask questions to gain insight on their value system. Select employees not just on their skills and knowledge but on how well their value system aligns with your company’s vision.

For a series of questions designed to emerge the value systems of your employees, get in contact with me at [email protected]

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

Based on insights from Dr John DeMartini whom has been a mentor of mine for years. Amended by Ferne Eliz King.

Want to learn more?

I specialise in prioritising and sequencing initiatives, projects, programs to facilitate businesses to achieve their aspirational future along with easy and clear practices to manage strategic change and tactical change.

I have over 30 years’ experience as a globally renowned consultant and have managed over 2.5 billion in programs of work as well as set up complex portfolio management offices.

My goal is to help individuals and businesses of all sizes achieve their aspirational future with key focuses on:

  • Prioritising and sequencing to achieve goals; essentially doing the right things, at the right time, in the right way
  • Critical thinking for strategic and tactical change
  • Shift in mindset, principles, and practices
  • Attain clarity in your focus, improved prioritisation and decision making
  • Advice for merger and acquisitions – day one readiness and beyond

To learn more follow me through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/FerneElizKing888

Alternatively, you can contact me for a 1:1 coaching session.

Love Life Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

My superpower is to ignite change and inspire actions to achieve the imaginable future of individuals and businesses. The first step is facilitating you to unlock your curiosity.

 

Rejig Focus To Take Inspiring Action

Health & A Clean Green Home

Ferne Eliz King Chit Chat

Create the Tiny Life You Crave

Finding balance Between Autonomy and Dependency

Finding balance Between Autonomy and Dependency

Finding balance Between Autonomy and Dependency

Workplace culture is fundamentally about cooperation and security. A negative workplace culture, where people don’t feel safe or have a sense of belonging is generally the cause of major resistance to strategic change. It is all too common for cultural change to be overhauled AFTER a major change initiative has failed. Learn the lesson, review your culture and the tools to inspire and engage as a precursor to change events saving precious time and resources in the process, plus realising the benefits of change earlier than later.

Addressing culture in the most practical and effective way should be a priority before you implement change.  Take the time to observe the culture, ask questions and communicate with those involved, note down the current culture, both positive and negative. Celebrate the positive cultural behaviours and use them to your advantage. Select a few critical negative behaviours, then with your employees work to improve them by agreeing on a set of values, the behaviours that will demonstrate these values.  There are lots of tools available and great advisors relating to cultural change and the time is ripe!!

When you are ready for strategic planning ask yourself the following

    1. What will those involved in the change gain? (If the only answer is save or gain money for the organisation, try again with the other stakeholders in mind as this will undo all the work you have done building and strengthening the culture)
    2. What culture is needed to succeed?
    3. Is the current culture aligned with the direction the strategic change will take us? (If not, what needs to be changed or improved?)

Studies show that only 10% of patients that have received a heart bypass have made long term diet and lifestyle changes. My point being, change is hard, even when your life depends on it, even when you know it’s needed. Don’t make it harder by underestimating how much of your strategies success relies on cultural alignment.

This blog has been centred around my experiences and insights from The Human Science of Strategy : What works and what doesn’t by Dr Bob Murray and Dr Alicia Fortinberry. Executives and Leaders of change- Check this book out, it is gold!  

Best of luck to you as you endeavour to unlock your life’s purpose and your businesses goals. Check in with yourself and hold yourself accountable regularly. The future you deserve is there for the taking. If you wish any extra support or guidance on this journey, please get in contact with me at [email protected].

 

Love Life, Love YOUR Life

 

Ferne Eliz King

Want to Learn More?

I specialise in prioritising and sequencing initiatives, projects, programs to facilitate businesses to achieve their aspirational future along with easy and clear practices to manage strategic change and tactical change.

I have over 30 years’ experience as a globally renowned consultant and have managed over 2.5 billion in programs of work as well as set up complex portfolio management offices.

My goal is to help individuals and businesses of all sizes achieve their aspirational future with key focuses on:

  • Prioritising and sequencing to achieve goals; essentially doing the right things, at the right time, in the right way
  • Critical thinking for strategic and tactical change
  • Shift in mindset, principles, and practices
  • Attain clarity in your focus, improved prioritisation and decision making
  • Advice for merger and acquisitions – day one readiness and beyond

To learn more follow me through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/FerneElizKing888

Alternatively, you can contact me for a 1:1 coaching session.

Love Life Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

My superpower is to ignite change and inspire actions to achieve the imaginable future of individuals and businesses. The first step is facilitating you to unlock your curiosity.

 

Rejig Focus To Take Inspiring Action

Health & A Clean Green Home

Ferne Eliz King Chit Chat

Create the Tiny Life You Crave