Business Planning:- Goals

Step 6

Goals

Having completed your Discovery, your goals really should drop out automatically. They should be taken directly from your vision. It is a matter of prioritising and being more specific about what you want to achieve for your Business.

Goals need to be SMART. They need to meet the following criteria

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable with stretch
• Realistic
• Timeline based

Having a goal to be a better farmer does not meet the criteria of being SMART. It is not specific, will be difficult to measure and has no timeline attached.

However lifting lambing percentage to 150% by 2017 is specific, measurable, and has a timeline attached. Whether it is realistic or achievable will depend on individual circumstances.

A story

During my banking career, I got a call from a young couple moving to their first lower order sharemilking job. They were looking for a Banker who would help them achieve their goals.

During our first meeting, they showed me their goals. They had written down a number of goals. I can remember two goals in particular.

1. After 3 years of lower sharemilking, they wanted to be able to progress to a 50/50 sharemilking job.
2. Following that, in a further 10 years, they wanted to own their own farm.

These were very admirable goals, and I was impressed with their planning, motivation and drive. The Bank lent them the required funding to set them on their way.

What I had failed to uncover, was that out in their garage they had an $80,000 private vehicle on hire purchase.

Their goals were based on what they thought I wanted to hear, and were not realistic given their liking for expensive vehicles.  They had not confronted the brutal facts.