Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

A couple of weeks ago I posted about S.M.A.R.T. goals. Guy Kawasaki weighs in today with his take on goals for entrepreneurs.  He says:

Set goals. The next step is to set goals. Not just any kind of goals, but the right goals, and the right goals embody these four qualities:

• Measurable. If a goal isn’t measurable, it’s unlikely you’ll achieve it. For a startup, quantifiable goals are things like shipping deadlines, downloads, sales volume, whatever. The old yarn, “What gets measure gets done” is true. This also has ramifications on the number of goals because you can’t (and shouldn’t) measure everything. Three to five goals are plenty.
• Achievable. Take your “conservative” forecast for these goals and multiply them by .1; then use that as your goal. For example, if you think you’ll easily sell one million units in the first year, then set your goal at 100,000 unit. There is nothing more demoralizing than setting a “conservative” goal and falling short; instead take 10% of your forecast, make this your goal, and blow it away. You might think such a practice will lead to under-achieving organizations because they aren’t being challenged–yeah, well, check back with me after you don’t sell a million widgets like you conservatively thought you would.
• Relevant. A good goal is relevant. If you’re a software company, it’s the number of downloads of your demo version. It’s not your ranking in Alexa, so telling the company to focus on getting into the top 50,000 sites in world in terms of traffic is not nearly as relevant as 10,000 downloads per month.
• Rathole-resistant. A goal can be measurable, achievable, and relevant and still send you down a rathole. Let’s say you’ve created a content web site. Your measurable, achievable, and relevant goal is to sign up 100,000 registered users in the first ninety days. So far, so good. But what if you focus on this body count without regard to the stickiness of the site? So now you’ve gotten 100,000 people to register, but they visit once and never return. That’s a rathole. Ensure that your goal encompasses all the factors that will make your organization viable.

Click Here to read his entire post.

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