How are you helping your business achieve its goals?

by Malcolm Gallagher FCIM

You’ll likely have set your personal goals for this new year, perhaps even the decade. But if your business could talk to you what would its personal goals be? After all, especially if it is a limited company, your business is a “living thing” – an entity.

And if you were to give your business guidance on setting its goals (tongue-in-cheek!?) what would be your advice to it?

Let me give you some suggestions to may like to make!

5 worthy and better business goals.

You could advise your business to aim for the following

Be Caring.
Be Productive
Be Ethical
Be Alive
Be Feared

Let’s consider each of them

Be Caring. Your business wants to play its part in the community, after all it lives there even if you don’t! It wants to “do good” for the community, its people and the environment. A good start is to implement a Living Social Value (LSV) policy. This is not just something to achieve third-party compliance but a truly embedded and enthusiastic activity. Let me know if you need help on understand and creating your LSV.
Be Productive. Your business is not daft. It wants to be around for a long time and knows that productivity feeds profitability. It wants to keep working and relies on you to have a Productivity Improvement Plan in active use. What’s one of those? Well, it starts with a simple but thorough “enterprise audit” to identify loss and opportunity. It wants you to be agile in 2020, adaptable and ready to embrace change.
Be Ethical. Your business’s people are important, along with its customers, suppliers and influencers so it wants to trade ethically and with integrity. If you haven’t yet helped it develop a Business Culture then it’s time to do so. A Business Culture goes beyond the typical employee handbook and, properly done, it sets your business soundly apart from others.
Be Alive. Too many businesses have become gloomy. Possibly as a result of global uncertainty and indecision. Possibly as a result of inactive leadership. Your business wants to “be alive” and buzzing. It wants you out there proactively telling its story and giving confidence with a solid communications plan.
Be Feared. Your business knows that if it can achieve the previous four it will not only be resilient but will make competitors tremble when they hear its name. That’s something that will make your business proud!