Setting the most practical business goals is not the end of it. How you treat them and how you handle failure when you are not able to achieve your organization’s objectives also makes a lot of difference. Remember, the human factor is prevalent all across your company. There will be times when you will not be able to fulfill your monthly or even quarterly targets.

This is why it is important to set the most practical and attainable business goals. In the event of failure, you have all the reasons to feel a little low but even from that defeat you should learn what not to repeat in the future. Let’s talk about it:

• Decide On Your Priority

Now, you will have your long-term goals and your short-term objectives, both in front of you. The point is to prioritize and work to achieve the goals that matter to you the most at the moment. Do not be one of those business owners who struggle to differentiate between their ultimate objectives. Begin with your quarterly goals and then set out to achieve your annual objectives. This is the only practical way forward.

• Give Them A Number

Let’s just say that you are handing out responsibilities to the various team members within your department. What are they going to work towards? How are they going to know what figure to target? This is where you have to come in and give them a specific figure or statistic to achieve. For example, if you talk about your monthly clickthrough rate, give them a target of a 25% increase over the next 3 months. Similarly, you can encourage them to increase the number of downloads of your online product catalog by 50% in the next 6 months. Clearer numbers are always easier to achieve.

• Hold Yourself Accountable

Now, this is a very critical responsibility that you have to shoulder yourself. If you are at the top managerial level, you have to show some accountability and responsibility. For example, if your monthly Sales performance goals were not met, it is not the right thing to do to corner your sales executives or put the onus only on the sales manager. You guys have been working as a team for a very long time. It is time you understood that this was the responsibility of the entire department and not just a few individual team members.

• Measure Your Progress Regularly

Among those failures above, there will be a lot of successes too. What do you do then? You measure your progress and success rate against the benchmarks that you had set right at the beginning. Discuss the plan further with your team. Come up with even more difficult goals to achieve in the future.

Final Thoughts

In the end, it is always advised not to beat yourself up over a few minor failures or perhaps a few shortcomings. Like pointed out above, you are, after all, human and it is alright to not be able to achieve the exact numbers. There is always the next time.