How to Set Reasonable Goals for your Business to Ensure Success.

A smart CEO understands the inherent value of goal setting in steering a growing business in the right direction. Goal setting involves establishing specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-targeted goals.

Goals are a form of motivation that set the standard for success; achieving the goal that one has set for one's business is a measure of success, and being able to meet challenges is also a way one can measure success in his or her business.

Speaking with Dennis Isong; IT Consultant, Professional Web/Mobile programmer, Author and Entrepreneur,he
gives some useful tips on how one can get started on goal setting for ones business. He says: ' By definition, your business should be efficient, profitable and operate without you having to be there. If it doesn't, then perhaps you don't have a business; but instead, just a job.

More than 80% of business owners don't keep track of their business goals, and 77% are yet to achieve their visions for their business. 80% of businesses do not survive their first five years. Many business owners and entrepreneurs find themselves becoming disappointed and discouraged at their apparent inability to control and prevent the cyclical ups and downs of their business efforts.

Hence the great and noble dream they originally conceived for their business quickly disintegrates into a heavy burden and a stressful slog. Suddenly, they no longer own the business, the business owns them.

Now, how do you set a workable business goal?

Step 1: Start with a Dream

The first stage of goal setting is about considering everything you dream of accomplishing. It doesn't need to be realistic at this point, so avoid limiting your thought process to what you think may actually be possible. Now is the time to consider every possibility, as if there are no boundaries.

To get started, grab a piece of paper and think about what you want to be in one year, five years and ten years. Don't worry about how you will get there, just write down every possibility - big and small.

Step 2: Brain Storm the possibilities

Once you have written down your clearest dreams, it's time for a brain storming session to access some of the ideas waiting in your subconscious.

Step 3: Sort the Options

The next step involves taking all of the dreams and ideas you have down on paper from step one to step two and making sense of them. It's useful to sort out ideas into a few categories based  on measures that are important to you. For example you might create categories based on your priorities, ranking your ideas by how important they are in your life. Once you create meaningful categories, and start to put your ideas into groups, you may be surprised at how much overlap there is.

In some cases, once the step is complete, you may find that you have a few consistent themes that continue to reappear in the process. This is a sign that you are on the right track in identifying your most important goals.

Step 4: Create a Plan

After step 3, you should be able to identify one or two loose business goals that you want to focus on ( if not, go back and start brainstorming again) SMART goal setting - which means setting goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based - is a powerful to move your rough goals from abstract ideas into specific action steps.

Step 5: Focus on today

Striving towards a specific business goal can be overwhelming but if you have broken the goals into bite-sized chunks as suggested in step 4, then you should able to take a series of small digestible steps each day to get closer to your goal. While you don't want to lose sight of the big picture, if you take an ambitious goal one step at a time, one day at a time, you will start to build momentum and confidence in yourself and with steady and purposeful progress, you will reach your destination. You are in business to make money, if you set realistic, workable and achievable goals it will show in your business and it becomes very easy to fulfil your company's vision and mission.

Original Article @ success digest newspaper