In this video, I will talk about how you can make sure that you’re on your way to fulfill your vision. Hi there. Matts Rehnstrom here, Shaper of Business Excellence. This is another video where I talk about the business excellence components and the relationship between those components. And when you understand them all and how to use them and how to connect with them, then you will be truly on your way towards business excellence and the success of your improvement work.
What We Have Learned So Far
So in this video, I’m going to talk about strategic goals, but before I do, I want to do a quick recap. in my first video, I said, welcome and talked about, all the connections here. Then I talked about the big WHY. The WHY we’re doing what we’re doing. Then I talked about the base model that we have in our business that shows us different things that we need to work within our business or our improvement work. Then we talked about the owner’s perspective. I’ve talked about the business idea that tells us what we do, what value we create, and for whom we’re doing it. And then the vision, this shiny beacon in the night that gives us the feeling of being on the right path, heading in the right direction, and now we’re taking the vision and we will put up strategic goals.
Without Strategic Goals, You Can’t Be Sure That You’re Heading in the Right Direction
If you don’t have a strategic goal or several strategic goals, then you’re not sure that you’re heading in the right direction. If you have this shining beacon division over there, the strategic goals will help you ensure that you’re going by step-by-step in the right direction. So you don’t have the vision there, but you have what you’re working with is going in this direction over here. You want these goals to be leading you in the right direction.
If you don’t have this, then as I’ve been using the word before, you will have confusion and fuzziness. We’re doing all this because we want clarity in our organization because clarity gives us a feeling of being sure that we’re doing the right thing and then we can focus on delivering that value for customers. Instead of having a lot of friction within the organization where we are struggling for understanding what’s happening. We have different opinions about different things.
And instead we’re smoothly sailing in one direction and that is what all these components do and that it was the strategic goals as well gives us. So without them, you will not be sure that you’re heading in the right direction.
So what do you need to do then in order to get this?
- Look at your VISION– First of all then look at the vision. What is it? How can you then backtrack from the vision to where you are, things, steps, that you need to take in order to move to or towards the vision.
- Make Strategic Goals out of these steps that you identified- And when you find these steps, make goals out of them.
- Describe these Strategic Goals In Detail- So you know what they mean
SMAR Goals (Don’t need the “T)
And these are called then strategic goals because when you find all these goals, you don’t really need to describe them in the detailed level of a smart goal. I assume you’ve heard about SMART, and that stands for specific, measurable, accepted, realistic and time-based.
And the last part is the thing that makes smart powerful, but when we’re talking about strategic goals, we can actually leave out the “T”, the time-based, because we’re more moving in a direction. We’re showing that we’re moving in a direction.
“I Had a Dream”
So if we take, for example, a vision that will then be split into different strategic goals. I just came up with a pop up in my head, a Martin Luther King and his speech about “I Had a Dream.” That dream is the vision over there. He painted a beautiful dream about how he saw the future and that has helped millions of people in wanting to go that way.
Then the movement divided things up and said it’s important that all are equal, treated in this area and this area, they all need or are able to vote and all are able, all those things depending on what part of the society you work with, but that’s our small goals or, they’re large goals, but there are small steps going towards that “I have a dream” vision over there where all are equal.
We’re walking that path still today even though Martin Luther King said that 50 years ago or something, and that is helping us then move in that direction towards the vision and the same goes for your business.
So what do you need to do then is to take the vision, backtrack it as I said, and find these different steps and you describe these strategic goals as specific as you can, but if you don’t, if you can’t have a time-based goal, don’t bother about it. Leave the T. You can still have it as specific and measurable depending on what the goal is.
We will talk more about goals. So if you say, “Wait a minute Matts. A goal should be SMART.” Yeah, I agree. A goal should be SMART, but we’re talking about goals down here as well when we come down to goals and measurement and that will take care of everything regarding the SMART part of a goal.
Do You Have Strategic Goals for Your Business?
So the question for you then is, do you have strategic goals in your business? Do you have, do you have the vision and have you then goals that are going on a strategic level to tell you that you are on your right path? Or are you without these goals?
Please leave a comment down below. I’m interested to see how you’re doing things in your business, and also if you like, to have a copy of these posters so you can follow along better when I’m talking about these important components, just click here and it will take you to a page where you, for free, can download it and you can read it closely and you can follow along when I’m talking about it. And until next time, let’s go and shape our businesses for excellence.
