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Having amassed a business empire spanning various industries, Anisuzzaman Chowdhury Ronny is an accomplished business leader and entrepreneur who knows all too well the colossal challenges involved in establishing and scaling a business. This article will look at business goals and why it is crucial for business leaders to keep an eye on the big and smaller picture as they plot a course to commercial success.
Every successful business is launched with a series of short and long-term goals in mind. While short-term goals may have a timeframe of days, weeks or months, long-term goals are bigger visions the company seeks to achieve over the course of months, years and decades.
In order to establish long-term goals, business leaders need to consider what they want for the business three, five, ten or even twenty years from now, identifying key business objectives they wish to achieve by that point. Long-term business goals are often used as mission or vision statements, serving as a compass for the business and helping the workforce to move cohesively in the right direction. Examples of long-term business goals include Patagonia’s ethos of being in business to ‘save our home planet’; Nike’s desire to bring innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world; and Google’s mission of organising the world’s information, making it universally accessible and useful.
A business with weak long-term goals lacks a sense of direction, making it highly vulnerable to changes in market conditions. Such an enterprise will jump from trend to trend without understanding the causes behind them, trying to exploit as much benefit from each trend as possible. Sometimes, that business will succeed. Nevertheless, a business in reactive mode risks running a roller coaster ride in terms of performance, with its future unpredictable and uncertain.
Businesses with long-term goals derived from their vision run a steadier course, benefiting from clarity on what they wish to achieve, with these key business objectives guiding leadership decisions. It is easier for enterprises with a clear strategy in place to spot meaningful trends and take advantage of them, boosting their long-term sustainability.
Short-term goals differ from long-term goals in four important ways. Short-term goals are malleable, measurable, specific and sacrificable. Short-term goals change often, correlating with tactical changes made by leadership in pursuit of the venture’s strategic objectives. They also produce measurable data, enabling leaders and teams to track progress. Examples of short-term business goals include increasing employee retention by 20%; recruiting six new sales assistants; or achieving a 30% increase in staff referrals.
Short-term goals must be relayed clearly and concisely to employees to ensure everyone understands the objectives and their part in achieving them. In some instances, short-term goals may need to be abandoned for the greater good of the business, with leadership recognising the need to make short-term sacrifices to achieve long-term success.
For founders, setting business goals is vital in terms of uniting the workforce and driving the business in the right direction. By outlining what success looks like and providing a strategic framework, leadership can measure the success of their teams. Short and long-term goals provide individual team members with a clear sense of what they need to do and when, helping them to feel more confident and instilling a sense of pride and ownership in their work.
Long-term goals are high-level strategic objectives the business aims to achieve within the next three to five years or throughout the venture’s lifetime. Long-term business goals are milestones for the corporate vision, setting the direction of the company and solidifying its strategy regarding its position in the market and industry. Achieving these high-level targets enables the founder to bring his or her vision to life. When combined with an accurate view of the business’s current state, a corporate strategy is an incredibly powerful tool, facilitating accurate gap analysis and data-driven, informed decisions that lead to better outcomes.