Setting Goals for 2011

So you, like the best business leaders in the world, will spend time in the next week developing the goals and visions for your company in 2011. Let me take a few minutes of your time and give you my advise for maximizing your success in 2011.

First lets make sure we are on the same page in the reality of our expectations in 2011. If you are setting business and company visions for2011, your employees are the entire key to your success in the New Year.
No matter what size of organization or company you manage it is the staff, employees, sales people and mid level executives which will determine your ultimate satisfaction in fulfilling your goals for 2011. It is the employees that bring the attitude of, success or failure, every day to work. It is the people you have hired that feel entitled to their paychecks and personal goals in life that your company will help them achieve.

If you can realize that simple fact then you have hope in 2011. Today’s employee is likely to carry around a definitive amount of entitlement in your organization. The expectation that they get paid no matter what the results are from the company. I won’t try to pinpoint why or when this happened but this is not the generation that believes that they owe their employer anything for just employing them. My point here is to help you succeed with what you have, be it a highly motivated or highly dysfunctional staff.

How to achieve your company goals in 2011:
1. Empower the vision – Set a challenge for the staff or team to help you design the goals of the company in 2011. Empowering the voice of your team is the most important step in engaging your team to the success of the company in 2011. Each employee must have a chance to establish a voice in the company that is encouraged and listened to in the process. Employees that have a voice will establish a deeper since of purpose to the companies’ success. This does not mean that every idea is used, it simply is a communication tool that will help employees feel empowered to help with company success.
2. Set up benchmark rewards – once the vision has been articulated; roll out a rewards system that is based on the growth and success of the new vision. (In the last weeks we have heard of the team from Hot Tamales which won a trip to Fargo ND instead of Hawaii.) Important here is that this reward can in no way have a chance of decreasing already earned bonuses or pay structures for it to be considered a true reward.
3. In smaller organizations meet with every member of the team 1 on 1 to discuss how they feel they can best help the company reach this new goal in 2011? Then turn around and ask what you can do to help them be most successful in achieving this task. If you work for a larger corporation then to do this with your immediate management staff and ask that they do it down the org chart in a like manner. Then ask them to report up in a simple document an employee vision sheet and additional tasks they will need to achieve to help the staff reach goals.
4. Post company visions and goals, success stories, celebrations that occur on company social media sites. Give employees a way to show the world the great work they are achieving. If you have not started a company Facebook page, Start one immediately. In my opinion it is a company requirement for any business with more than one employee.
5. Review often and repeat the process with staff often. In this age of entitlement employees need to be constantly feed encouragement and given the opportunity to express opinions in a free environment, to do this once and never return to it would be considered just another management tactic that makes them work harder with no reward.
6. Look for opportunities with in your group to allow your staff to run the show. How often do we fail in letting our organizations grow by trying to keep it under our control at all times? Trust and celebrate the growth of your team. Help them be successful and coach them up when they stumble.

These simple but yet time-consuming tasks will help you be successful in 2011. Have a wonderful New Year and enjoy getting to know your team and watching them grow in 2011.