How To Set Business Goals For 2022

It’s that time of year again. A fresh start and a chance to grow your business. Like many people, you probably have had time to think and reflect over the Christmas holidays and your head is full of ideas. But where do you start? How do you start? How can you make sure that you set good business goals and more importantly – how do you ensure that you achieve them? In this post, I’m going to show you how to set business goals for 2022 and give you the best shot at achieving them.

Look At Your Business Through The Business Triangle

It doesn’t matter which business you are – whether you’re Apple or the local cake shop. Every single business can be broken down into these areas:

• Finance
• Operations
• Sales & Marketing
• Culture

I call this the Business Triangle. (Read more about the Business Triangle here or listen to my podcast episode where I break this down even further). The first step on how to set business goals for 2022 is to view your business in these 4 areas. These are the core areas of your business. If you get these areas right, then you will have a strong business. We will create goals in each of these areas.

Set The Big 3

You may have 100 ideas in your head, however you can’t do 100 things. If you try, you’ll spread yourself too thin and not make movement on any idea. Therefore, we have to prioritise. In his fantastic book, ‘Free To Focus’, author Michael Hyatt talks about a structure called ‘The Big 3’.

Simply look at all the ideas you have and ask yourself, “Which 3 things would have the biggest impact?” You will then whittle your bank of ideas down to the few highest-value things. These are the most important areas of focus. If you get these few things right and nothing else, then you can still rest assured that you’re adding value to your business and making movement.

ACTION: Brainstorm all the ideas you have for each area of the Business Triangle. Then for each area, whittle them down to the Big 3. You should have a Big 3 for each area of the Triangle.

Determine The One Thing

Gary W Keller wrote a brilliant book called, ‘The One Thing’. Again it’s about prioritisation – ultimate prioritising. The idea is that if you could get just one thing right, what would have the biggest impact?

You now have a Big 3 for each area of the Business Triangle. Now you have to whittle it down even further to the One Thing for each area. Think about what single thing would make the biggest difference.

ACTION: Determine the One Thing for each area of the Business Triangle.

Craft Crystal-Clear Goals

Now you have The Big 3 and the One Thing for each area of the Triangle. Now you have to set clear goals for each initiative.

I love the goal-setting formula found in ‘The 4 Disciplines of Execution’ by Franklin Covey.

Move [X] to [Y] by [WHEN]

Let’s look at this formula in more detail. For the purposes of illustration we’ll use an example of someone who wants to lose weight.

Move

The goal begins with an action word. This could be something like ‘increase’ or ‘decrease’. Make sure you begin the goal with a verb. In our example, we want to lose weight, therefore we will use the word ‘decrease’.

[X]

This is your starting point. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know their starting point. In our weight-loss example, [X] would be our current weight. Let’s use 13 stones as a starting point.

[Y]

This is our goal or where we want to get to. Let’s say we want to get our weight down to 12 stones.

[WHEN]

Finally, we need a deadline. A goal without a deadline is a dangerous thing. Without a clear deadline, your goal will slowly fade away into the ether. In our example, let’s give ourselves a few months and set our deadline for 31st March 2022.

Let’s put it all together now! Using the formula and our weight-loss example, our goal now looks like this:

Decrease weight from 13 stones to 12 stones by 31st March 2022

How clear does that look?! This goal-setting formula provides you crystal-clear goals. Remember, the clearer you are about your goals, the better chance you have of achieving them.

ACTION: Using the formula, create crystal-clear goals for your Big 3’s and One Things

Conclusion

There you have it! How to set business goals for 2022. I hope you’ve found this useful. Remember, view your business in the 4 core areas, set Big 3’s, One Things and then use the goal-setting formula to create clear goals. Once you have that, you’ll have manageable, clear goals and a better chance of not only setting good business goals, but achieving them.

[FREE DOWNLOAD] Goal Clarifier Tool

To help you create crystal-clear goals, I have created this free Goal-Clarifier Tool. In it, I also show you lots of examples of goals for each area of the Business Triangle.