Goal setting & problem solving in small business

Octopus 21/02/2013

Goal setting & problem-solving in small business

This article is titled goal setting & problem-solving in small business. Small businesses experience problems. They must be effectively solving these business problems.

Identify problems

Identifying the problem seems a self-explanatory step but many businesses who don’t do this work very hard on resolving the issue only to find they come up with the wrong result. A classic example is a drop in sales is causing the company significant problems. The sales team get blamed, heads roll, and they bring in a new sales manager. Still, the sales do not grow. Now the problem may be a competitor has a better product or your customers don’t like your product any more.

Goals

When you develop goals for the isolated problem to ensure they will be useful in a small business, they should be SMART. That’s specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. When they set goals, they must consist of all of these five attributes. If not, it will not efficiently address the problem. These goals should be written down and agreed by all parties involved in the problem, the action required to solve the problem and those using the solution.

Develop an action plan

Write a step-by-step action plan for every SMART goal. The purpose of the action plan is to inform those of your teams. So they understand what is expected of them when to do something and the standard required. Again, as with the goals stage, the action plan must be written down.

Alternative planning

When setting the goals for challenging business problems, it is crucial to have an alternative set of goals. Goals need to be able to adapt and change depending on what happens in the business.

Considerations

In business, its a requirement to continually work on goal-setting and problem-solving, and it’s essential to understand that problems are part of running a business. Once you solve one problem, another comes along. As long as the new challenge is not a result of the actions taken from the last issue, but either way, a business must take them as opportunities. And the worst thing possible to do is ignore it and hope it will go away,

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