As a startup founder, its easy to get stuck in the day-to-day, and forget why you love being in business in the first place.
Its also easy to lose your way, drifting from one project to the next without a real sense of purpose. Ultimately, you might find yourself in a stagnant business and lacking passion for what originally lit a fire inside you.
If you’re a startup founder that’s looking to grow your organization, but are struggling to keep your priorities straight or find direction, then read on. The process below can help you put a strategic action plan into place and build a process for keeping yourself accountable to your goals.
Like most things, this isn’t rocket science, but it does take commitment and focus.
Setting the Stage:
In order to be successful in achieving your goals. You first have to define WHAT YOUR GOALS are.
Its best to do these exercises when you are free from distraction. I.e. don’t try to fit it in between meetings. Don’t answer emails that pop up in your notifications. Put your phone on silent.
Its best if you can find 3-4 hours to step out of your office and work in a quiet area that is free from distractions. For instance, you may want to go to a local library, a quiet coffee shop, or rent out a meeting room at a co-working space.
If you have a leadership team, include everyone on the team and encourage open and honest discussion.
1). Set a Long Term Goal:
Paint a picture of your organization at least three to five years into the future. What do you want it to look like? How will it be different from your business today? Make a bullet-point list of your “picture.”
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- What is your revenue goal?
- What is your profit goal?
- Will the products or services you sell be the same as they are today? If not, what has changed?
- What types of customers will you serve? Will you be serving a specific niche? Is it the same customer base that you are currently serving?
- Does your current brand and message support your long-term goals for your product/service/market mix?
- What types of employees will you need on your team? Will you need to add sales people? Marketing? Administration?
- How do you want to interact with the business? Do you still want to be part of the day-to-day operations? Do you want to focus on strategy? Do you want to be an absentee owner?
- What types of processes will you need? Think about where your process bottlenecks are today. What would need to change in order to meet your goals?
- Will you need to add any equipment or make large capital purchases?
- Will your current office space be large enough? Or will you need to move locations?
- Will you be able to fund your growth internally? Or do you need to look for outside investors?
- Don’t overthink it at this point. . You don’t have to know how you are going to implement all of these goals right now, the idea is to get you thinking about your long-term vision and to set the stage for an action plan. At the end of your session, you should have a list of somewhere between 15-25 bullet points.
Develop an Action Plan:
Now that you have a long-term vision in place, start thinking about how you can move forward on your vision today. Decide what you need to do in the next twelve months in order to make progress on your three or five your plan.
2). Bring That Long-Term Goal Down to the Ground.
Review your bullet point of 15-25 things that paints the picture of your long-term organization. Next, decide on the top 5-7 things you want to accomplish this year so that you can be on track to meet your long-term plan.
Remember, you can’t accomplish everything at once. You must fight the urge to overload your list because ultimately this will lead to failure. Remember, when everything is important, nothing is important.
As an example, lets say that you want to start with revenue growth, maintaining profit margins, building processes, and clarifying your message. Your one-year goals might be something like:
- Increase revenue by 10% from prior year.
- Improve operating profit margin to 20% by the end of the year.
- Implement regular financial reporting and identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by Q2.
- Build and implement a secure file-sharing solution by Q2.
- Build & implement a customer onboarding process by Q3.
- Build and implement an account management process by Q4.
- Identify your ideal market niche and develop a content plan to target that niche.
3). Break it Down into 90 Day Goals:
Now that you know what you need to accomplish in the next 12 months, your next step should be to determine what you need to do to make progress in the next 90 days. Its usually best that these “90 day priorities” coincide with the start and end date of each quarter.
The idea is to continue looking a layer deeper, to determine what you need to do today to accomplish your goal tomorrow. The best goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. For more details on how to write SMART goals, see here.
Lets take a look at a couple examples.
Revenue: How are you going to increase revenue by 10%? Will it come from increasing prices? From generating new leads that eventually convert to paying customers? Lets say it will come from raising your prices. A 90 day goal might be something like:
Determine new price for each product/service offering (be specific to your offerings), publish new prices and communicate to existing clients about pricing change by X date.
Customer Onboarding Process: Is there a current process in place, and if so, whats broken? Are you looking to streamline the process? Automate it? A SMART goal may be something like:
Conduct process assessment with current onboarding specialist. Identify bottlenecks in current process and opportunities for improvement. Document and map workflow for the new process. Get buy-in from the onboarding specialist by x date.
Note that since your one year goal is to complete the new onboarding process by Q3, its not important that you cram everything in to one quarter. First, you need to be realistic about what you can accomplish given everything else going on in your business and second, understand that some things just take time. In this example, your Q2 priority might be to automate the process, and then in Q3 to fully roll-out and implement.
4). Keep Yourself (and your team) Accountable.
Now that you have your goals in place, you should have a process in place to keep yourself and your team on track.
If you have a leadership team, make this part of a regular weekly meeting. First, make sure that each goal that you outline has someone that “owns” it. This is the person that is ultimately responsible for completing the goal. Even though they might utilize other members of your team to help them achieve the goal, the person that “owns” the goal has to speak to why it was or was not accomplished. At each meeting review your 90 day priorities and make each member of the team say whether or not they are on-track or off-track. If you are off-track, discuss why and what you need to do to get back on track.
5). Rinse and Repeat:
To keep yourself on track throughout the year, review your goals quarterly. Are they still on relevant? Are they still on track?
Each quarterly, you can start chipping away at your one year plan and be on track to reach your strategic goals by year end.