It’s hard to believe but, pretty soon, sprinklers, swimming pools, and sleeping-in will be replaced with backpacks, binders, and early mornings. Is it just us, or does that “back-to-school” feeling just never go away no matter how old you are? Without fail, when the calendar flips to September, there’s just a certain mood shift; perhaps it’s impossible to un-train our brains from the first fifteen to twenty years of our lives where September meant back-to-school. Either way, now that we’re adults, why not use this time to take stock and re-evaluate the goals you set earlier in the year? Here at Take Roots, we love a “fresh start” and take every opportunity to take a step back and assess our progress.
Here are a few simple steps we like to follow to re-evaluate our goals:
Think of the journey
In business, we can get so bogged-down with the idea of achieving our goals that we can forget to look beyond that. While we do have to set goals in order to be successful (after all, we wouldn’t want to aimlessly go about our 
business with no direction) we can’t forget about the journey. It might sound cheesy, but if we’re always looking at getting to the end result, we’ll never enjoy our current situation. More specifically, the only control we have is what can be done today, so, remind yourself to stay focused on the now. Ask yourself, what can you do today? What can you do this week? It could be something small in order to set yourself up for future plans, but it’s still an important step in your journey. Sometimes a reminder is all we need to gain some perspective.
Think beyond yourself
Whether you’re b2b or a consumer-based business, you can’t forget about the most important part of your company—the customers. While you’re in the re-evaluation process, you can’t forget to ask yourself if your customers’ needs are being met. After all, without them, your business would cease to exist. We’ve had clients who looked at their sales and automatically assumed their customers were completely satisfied. Now, strong numbers are an indication that your customers are, at the very least, content with your services, we cannot look at numbers alone. We’ve often suggested a short survey to really see how your customers feel. There may be a lot of positive feedback, for sure; but you could also learn of few areas that you could improve that you never even thought of. Remember—no matter how successful you are, you should always check-in with your customers to ensure that they’re satisfied.
Think specifics
At this point in the year, you should have a pretty good idea as to how you’re doing when it comes to achieving your short-term and long-term company goals. Perhaps you have a specific sales number in mind. Perhaps you had a plan to change the culture of your company. No matter what it is, we must always look at the specifics of these goals to help us inch towards actually achieving them. Since we’re treating September as the opportunity to do just this, why not quickly jot down a few new specific things you can do to help you with your vision?
For example, if you’re looking at improving communications with your customers, your list could look something like this:
- Arrange for phone conversations with a few customers to check-in
- Review past newsletters to see what “works”
- Scroll through your website to see if anything stands out
You can achieve everything on this list in one afternoon and they are specific things you can do.
Goal-setting can be complicated. Sometimes, the goals originally set don’t end up working out; this can be for a variety of reasons. Maybe your vision changed. Maybe your original goals weren’t entirely realistic. Or maybe another opportunity presented itself that forced you to shift your focus.
Whatever the reason, it’s important to remember that adapting to these changes is essential. In life, we can’t always control the outcome (as much as we would love to!) but we can control how we react to our current situation. This is why the re-evaluation process is so essential. We have to ensure we’re either staying on track or making the necessary adjustments (or both!)
Take Roots can help you set, re-evaluate and achieve your communications goals. Contact us now to find out how we can help!