Don McIntosh, principal at Rea & Associates and the firm’s incoming CEO, has been a longtime advocate of the goal-setting process. Today he joins Dave on unsuitable on Rea Radio to talk about how setting effective goals promotes a culture of accountability across a company. The best place to start in your goal-setting initiative is to decide what is really needed to help propel your organization forward. Ask yourself what it is that you want to accomplish in the year ahead. Additionally, Don says if you really want to be effective – don’t try to do too much. It’s easy to want to turn everything into a goal – it’s just not reasonable. Instead, focus on one or two goals at a time. In fact, statistics show that you are more apt to accomplish your goals if you focus on only 2-4 goals at any given time. Any more than that and you will just be spinning your wheels in place … going nowhere quick. When it comes time to set goals, be sure they relate to your company’s overall strategic plan in an effort to help move the needle. And if you don’t have a strategic plan, maybe your goal for the year ahead should be to finally establish one! Finally, your goals should dictate an action that has predictive results. Your goal, for example, isn’t to increase revenue. Instead, revenue is the end result of achieving your goal (also known as lagging indicators). In order to meet specific lagging indicators, it is essential that you devise a plan to help you reach this mark – and that means you have to look at the leading indicators. “The goal is not the end in sight. It’s more what you are doing to try to reach that goal.” Over the next year as the firm’s new CEO, Don’s hopes to increase the number of a specific client base over the next year. To do this, he says the firm will: • Communicate the goal internally to ensure the company is moving together in the right direction. • Work with strategic partners to identify ways to identify the targeted client base while enhancing the relationship with other new and existing clients. • Design a plan that will help govern how the staff engages with clients in an effort to help them achieve their individualized goals. It’s difficult to set meaningful goals for a business, and it can be hard to define goals right out of the gate, but Don has spent many years working with others across the organization as they attempt to set and meet their own goals. Now, he is on track to transfer this goal-oriented mindset to the company as a whole. When a business owner introduces new goals to their team, it’s important to ensure that the goals are SMART goals to ensure that they are attainable in a way that can positively measure successes over a reasonable period of time. Once established, you can fuel accountability by coaching them onward to success. This culture of accountability can take many forms. A few of Don’s favorites include: • Be a coach • Encourage one-on-one meetings • Give others the opportunity to bring new ideas to the table. Don’t dominate the conversation. • Ask others how you can help them reach their goals and the best way for you to hold them accountable. Different people respond to different drivers. If you want to know what works, just ask. Want to learn more about goal setting for business success. We’ve got more helpful resources up and ready to go at http://www.reacpa.com/podcast. If you liked this episode, please like it and share it with your friends. And please consider subscribing to unsuitable on Rea Radio on SoundCloud and iTunes.