How to Create an Action Plan to Achieve your Business Goals 1

Goal planning is one of my favorite things to do throughout the entire year. But when it comes to the end of the year, I love reflecting and seeing just how many goals that we as a company and I personally was able to cross off. I have two long lists of professional and personal goals.

And thanks to my Business Woman’s Circle, that I’ve been apart of over the years, I’ve figured out how to break those goals down into action plans so the top, big goal doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming.

We met as a team at the end of 2019 to go over the past, think forward to the future and come up with our 2020 goals and just how we’re going to achieve them. Today I want to walk through the exercise we did if you’re looking for ways to create your action plan to achieve your business goals.

Table of Contents

What Worked in 2019

I love to storyboard when it comes to goal planning, especially when it’s with a team. Being we always have Builder Paper on hand, that’s what we used to roll out in long sheets and hang on the wall. But any large sheets of paper will do just fine. Then, grab your markers and get ready to let those thoughts pour out.

The first thing we thought about and walked through was, what worked in construction2style in 2019?

First things, anything that pops into your mind write it down. I told our employees, don’t overthink it, nothing is off the board…whether it was with clients, internally, personally but affected work, etc. Jot it down. And try not to read what your co-workers are writing either. It’s ok to overlap ideas, that’s when you know it’s a strong idea!

Now, Answer Why?

Go back to that same sheet of paper and answer why to everything you wrote down. Why did that work in 2019? Again, not overanalyzing anything.

Where Did We Miss the Mark?

Now do the same exercise but on another sheet of paper. Instead of what worked in 2019 or the previous month, day, or week, write down all of the things that failed. Where did you miss the mark? Whether it comes to projects, client relationships, internal relationships, payments, debts, etc. Jot down everything that comes to mind on how you personally or professionally missed the mark prior.

Answer Your Why?

Think about why you missed the mark or where goals fell short and answer the things you just wrote down.

This is about the time your mind will really start to think a bit deeper and realize why something was successful or why it failed.

Talk Through This

Now, as a team, talk through this. Each of us on our team walked and talked us through the good and the bad and the why, and we had a group discussion around it.

These first few exercises are just to get your mind flowing and opened up to think a bit deeper when setting your upcoming goals and to be more intentional.

The Sky is the Limit

Pull out that third sheet of paper and on here, title it: “Where do you want to go? The sky is the limit!”

Here, have everyone (without over-analyzing and overthinking) jot down all the things they want to do if the sky were the limit. Whether that’s making a certain amount of money, building their team, working remotely, or as Jamie put it, “Playing golf and drinking beer every day!” Ha! As I said, nothing should be off-limits.

Have everyone dream big and jot it down!

Circle SMART Goals

Now go back to sheet three and circle all of the things that are jotted down that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Realistic, Time Orientated) goals, even if it’s just one of the four. Talk through these as a team and now define them to make into SMART goals and actionable items.

For example, I had a goal of adding more tutorials to our website. Then we went back and added to it by saying how many tutorials and by when. In the end, I said throughout 2020; I want to add 24 tutorials. We now had ourselves a SMART goal, it was specific, we could measure it, it was realistic as that would become two tutorials per month and by the end of the year, being time orientated, we would complete our overall goal.

Breakdown your SMART Goals

From here, we took all of the fully SMART goals and transferred them into an excel spreadsheet. At this point, we recommend breaking them down into quarterly, then monthly goals. Some can even be broken down into weekly goals.

Another goal of ours was to cross off one goal at every Monday team meeting. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the goal is accomplished; it just might means that one of the mini-goals is crossed off that will eventually get you to that top goal!

Create five tabs and label them:

1. All Goals

2. Q1

3. Q2

4. Q3

5. Q4

Then on the first tab, list ALL goals, what quarter you want the goal completed by, who is in charge to get this accomplished. Since we want to cross off a weekly goal each week, we had a column that said, “follow up weekly.” Then at each team meeting, we can quickly see if the action (that I’ll talk about next) was taken care of the week prior.

Here’s just an example of 6 of the 50 goals that we have jotted down on this spreadsheet. Sort the spreadsheet by “End Goal by?” to group them by the quarter you want them completed.

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Then you’re going to copy and paste each of the “End Goal by?” into their quarter tabs. So copy and paste all of Q1 into the Q1 tab, Q2 into Q2 and so on.

Then add in the months for each quarter. As you can see below for Q1, we added in January, February, March. Q2 we added in April, May, June and so on. We also renamed the weekly follow up column to “Completed Goal by.”

Now, break down what you’re going to do each month to make sure you hit that end goal by the end of the quarter, or maybe you want to hit that end goal by the end of that first month. For example, one of our goals is to hire another HVAC guy. So in month one, we are going to do our research and make a list. Then in February, we’re going to call around to these people and see if we like them. Then come March we’ll hire. This way, it’s not overwhelming, you have action steps to do each month, and if you’re looking at your goal list each week, it’s staying in front of you, and you’re staying on top of it to reach that end goal.

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Then move on to Q2, Q3, and Q4 and do the same. We keep Q3 a bit lighter, being that’s summer for us and one of our busiest seasons. But we really load up Q1, as we’re all a lot more motivated and ready to tackle those goals. Q4 we try to keep a bit lighter too as sometimes things might not get done and then if they don’t, you’ll have to move them into the next quarter, and you don’t want to end the year with this overwhelming list of goals to do that will never get done. Also, be practical about your ambitions, goals, and to-dos.

The last thing to do is take a look at those goals in Q2, Q3, and Q4 and see if you need to add deliverables to do in the quarters before to ensure you hit the overall goal come Q4. For example, we have revenue goals for end of year. So these revenue goals are listed in each quarterly tab as we broke down what our quarterly sales goals need to be to hit that one large goal come year-end.

YAY! Make sense? If not, drop a comment below and we’ll be sure to help! Otherwise go get that goal planning started and we can’t wait to see what you do this next year!