This is the forth in a set of articles designed as a series to complement the initial post… Strengths in your business The aim being to provide a simple “How to” guide for people daunted by the prospect of “how to” as it can be too easy to read and say “Oh yeah that’s it, I need to do that”, and then forget it and let it go.

Goals (If you know where you are going it makes it easier to get there.)

In the story of Alice in Wonderland the Cheshire cat sat in the tree smiling widely as Alice asked which road to take at a fork in the road, the cat replied “It depends on where you want to get to” The goals we set will assist us in finding the right roads to take and in business the wrong road can cost us dearly.

Setting goals is easy, making them a reality is a different matter again…

• Get smart about your goals -  specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and tangible. If these can not be thought out readily you will find the achievement of the goal nearly impossible. Write out the details in DETAIL… leave nothing to chance.
• Work on small goals first and build up from there. - Often these are the basis for a “to do list” and chipping away at the small bits will make the big bits come to fruition.
• Take action, avoid talking about what you are “going to do” and get on and do it. The world loves people who take action.
• Consider how well you have done with goals in the past… Easily achieved them or… make sure you build up these skills if they are a challenge, then you can get more automatic in setting and achieving them.
• Use your calendar - set time lines for the achievement of the goals, then tick them off as they are achieved, the sense of achievement is often a cause for some small celebration.
• Use a project plan - These help you to break up a big goal into smaller ones and fit the details to a time frame. There is specific software for this or  you can create a table in a word-processing that can give you the basics to work with manually.

Go get ‘em tiger should be your catch phrase at this point and with the basics of goal setting up your sleeve the results should follow on soon after that.

Stumble it!