How to Set Business Goals That Get Done: Dreaming to Achieving in Five Steps

Every owner has goals. Grow sales, hire better people, finally take a proper holiday. Few of them make it past January, and the reason is rarely laziness. A goal like "grow the business" has no finish line, no named owner and no date, so nothing in the week ever asks you to act on it.

This guide shows how to set business goals that survive a busy quarter. It follows the first pillar of the Zaffarology method, Dreaming to Achieving, which turns a dream into a goal with five parts: the target, the reason, the plan, the owner and the deadline. Along the way, it draws on research that explains why each part matters.

Why most business goals fail

Four problems show up again and again. The goal is vague, so nobody can tell whether it was met. The reason behind it is weak, so it loses to every urgent task. The plan is missing, so the first step never gets taken. And nobody owns it, or nobody checks, so it drifts.

Fix those four, and you've fixed most of the gap between wanting something and getting it. The five steps below take them one at a time.

Step 1: Pick one specific, challenging target

Start with a single goal, and make it measurable. "Grow sales" becomes "book 12 new maintenance contracts by 28 February." The difference matters. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham spent 35 years reviewing goal research, and their summary in American Psychologist found that specific, difficult goals consistently lead to higher performance than urging people to do their best, because "do your best" gives no standard to measure against.

Difficult doesn't mean impossible. Aim for a target that stretches you but that you believe you can reach, since a goal you don't believe in won't get your commitment. Pick one goal for the next 90 days rather than five, because every extra goal splits your attention.

Step 2: Write down the reason

The second part of the pillar is the why, and it's the one owners skip. A reason is what keeps the goal alive when the week gets hard. Write one or two sentences: why this goal, why now, and what changes if you reach it.

The Zaffarology method starts from the idea that your thoughts shape your feelings and your actions, which is why this pillar begins with mindset. A goal attached to a real reason, such as paying off a loan, hiring your first employee or getting your weekends back, gets a different kind of effort from one attached to a vague wish. Test your reason with a simple question: would it still matter on a bad Tuesday in the middle of winter? If not, find a better one.

Step 3: Build the plan and the if-then triggers

A plan is a short list of actions, usually three to seven, in the order you'll do them. For the maintenance contract goal, it might be: list the 40 best past customers, write a one-page offer, call ten customers a week, and follow up on every quote within two days.

Then attach each action to a time and a place. Psychologists Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 tests and found that people who decided when, where and how they'd act were more likely to follow through, with a medium-to-large effect (d = .65) on goal attainment. "Every Tuesday and Thursday at 9:00, I call five customers before opening the inbox" is a plan your week can't ignore.

Step 4: Name one owner

Every goal needs one person who answers for it. Shared ownership usually means no ownership. If the goal belongs to the whole team, choose one lead and add a backup, which is the idea behind the How to Achieve pillar. The backup checks the plan against reality and can take over if the lead is away.

Say the owner's name out loud in the team meeting. A goal that's been spoken in front of colleagues is harder to quietly drop.

Step 5: Set the deadline and the review dates

Give the goal an end date, and then add check-in dates between now and then. A 90-day goal with no checkpoints is just a hope with a calendar entry. In the Zaffarology method, progress is checked daily through the huddle and the AM/PM routine, and every two weeks through the fortnightly review.

Reporting on progress works. In a study by Gail Matthews at Dominican University, people who wrote their goals, committed to actions and sent weekly progress reports to a friend accomplished significantly more than those who only thought about their goals. The participants were friends reporting to friends, so treat the numbers as a pointer, but the lesson holds up: write it down, commit to actions and report regularly.

A worked example: one page for a café owner

Here's a complete goal on a single page.

Target: Lift weekday lunch sales from $2,800 to $3,500 a day by 31 March. Reason: Pay down the equipment loan a year early and stop working Sundays. Plan: Survey 30 regular customers by the end of week one. Add two lunch combos in week two. Promote them to the nearby offices every Tuesday and Thursday. Track daily lunch takings on the whiteboard. Owner: Maria, the owner, with Tom the supervisor as backup. Deadline and reviews: Reviews on the 1st and 16th of each month, with the final result checked on 31 March.

Everything needed to start Monday sits on that page. A stranger could pick it up and know what to do.

When the goal gets knocked off course

Setbacks are part of the process, and how you read them decides what happens next. Steve Jobs, in his 2005 Stanford commencement address, described being fired from Apple at 30 as devastating, then explained that what kept him going was loving what he did. He chose to start over, and later called the firing the best thing that could have happened to him.

You don't need a dramatic story to use the idea. When a goal stalls, ask what's still true. Is the reason still real? Is the target still right? Then change the plan, move the date if you must, and restart. Quitting the goal and revising the plan are very different decisions.

Mistakes to avoid

• Too many goals. Three goals at once usually means none finished.

• Targets without numbers. If you can't count it, you can't know you've reached it.

• Plans without dates. An action with no time on the calendar is a wish.

• An owner in name only. Check that the owner agrees and has the time.

• No review. A goal nobody looks at for a month is already off track.

Put it into practice

The free 5 Pillars workbook walks you through this exercise for your own business, and the 5 Pillars page shows how the first pillar connects to the other four. The daily routine that carries a goal forward is covered in the AM planning and huddle pillars, and the podcast discusses the ideas in conversation.

To work through a goal with someone holding you to it, the 90 Day Business Transformation Challenge is the mentoring program, built around a quarter of weekly accountability. You can also read about the founder or get in touch with a question.

Information here is general and educational, and isn't financial, legal or investment advice.