Business plans can be difficult to write. I'm not just talking about the potential workload of putting one together, I'm talking about the difficulty of forecasting and goal setting. In our business planning, I suspect that we easily make 3 mistakes when developing goals:
- Aiming too high. This is probably the area I have the biggest challenge in. As an optimist with a passion for business and a healthy dose of experience, I may set my goals unrealistically high and never achieve them. High goals are good… after all, even if we miss them, we'll still likely do very well. But goals that are TOO high may not be as good. We need to see some success at some point.
- Aiming too low. Alternatively, aiming too low could be a challenge that some people face. We need to have goals that we achieve only by working hard at them. If a goal becomes too easy, we don't work at our full capacity.
- Non measurables. Sometimes we may end up creating goals that are not measurable, such as, “be successful” or “make a lot of money.” In these examples, what is success? Or what is a lot of money? Your ability to measure your goals is the only way to determine the success of your goals.
