Most of us take some time at the end of the year to reflect on the past 12 months and make goals for the next. If our approach is well-rounded, we’ll ponder a variety of life elements:
- Physical health & well-being
- Financial
- Social / interpersonal
- Educational
- Emotional
- Spiritual
Our personal lives are not the only area in need of reflection and goal-setting; our business lives and professional organizations benefit from the same exercise.
In a business setting, financial goals are typically the first and easiest to set. For example, what are your revenue and net income goals? How will you manage your assets? Do you have a cash flow target?
Educational goals are also easy, because they relate to training. What training will you and your team participate in to “sharpen your saws”? Training may come from a variety of sources, such as online courses, classroom training, and books or even sharing best-practices through networking.
Social / interpersonal goals can be translated into how well your team works together or perhaps how well they work with customers. Do you have a way to measure those perspectives? If you don’t have a measurement system in place, it may be hard to set goals or know with confidence if relationships have have improved.
Spiritual goals may not seem to fit in a business world, but I submit they can be related to your values. What are the specific values for your organization? Are they clear to all – your staff and your clients? Are they explicit or implicit? Do you know if they are being followed, and if so, how?
Emotional goals may relate to how satisfied your employees are. Do you know if they are content and happy to stay with your organization or could they be looking for alternative employment? How often do you check in with them to understand their perspectives? With a hot job market available, getting and keeping good staff members is critical.
Finally, let’s talk about health and wellness. All the other goals play into the health and wellness of the organization. However, I submit that an additional measure of health is related to clarity. How clear are roles and responsibilities? How well understood are your processes? Are they streamlined? Do people know how they are measured? Do they know what success looks like? These are some of the elements that determine how healthy your organization really is.
Sometime an independent third-party perspective can help uncover and identify issues that employees have simply learned to accept. As you reflect on 2017 and look forward to 2018, please consider all these elements. TopLine Results offers process consulting options including an organizational health check. Don’t hesitate to give us a call if you’d benefit from our assistance.
As 2017 comes to a close and 2018 is upon us, we wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!
About the Author
Melanie R. Varin specializes in business process consulting for organizations across many industries. With more than 30 years of business expertise, Melanie focuses on providing clients with winning strategies for improving their sales, marketing and overall business processes from assessment to implementation.
Melanie’s certifications include: Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Silver Certified Microsoft partner and Registered Salesforce partner.
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