Planning business development shouldn't merely be a long list of activities - rather, effective planning must be based around clear goals.
Goals are important parts of doing well - and striving to do even better - in just about every aspect of life, including developing business in professional practice.
Get smart about business development goal setting with the help of this succinct distillation from a plethora of academic research, supported by lots of practical experience.
Goals should be realistically attainable. An over-ambitious goal won't help much.
The right level to set a goal is where you stretch beyond what's normal and comfortable at your current level of achievement.
Research confirms that goals tend to be self-limiting. So if you want improved performance, you must stretch. The unintended consequence of an insufficiently challenging goal may be performance or achievement which falls some way short of what might otherwise have happened.
A goal which you see as attainable, but challenging, is most likely to positively impact your performance. Set goals accordingly.
If an objective is necessary and important, but simply so far away that it seems too hard to reach - or impossible, try working out an achievable interim goal, as the first step on a path to your ultimate objective. Same goes for goals which will take quite some time to realise: identify milestones along the way to help you track progress.
Don't juggle too many goals at once. Around five to seven clear goals is sufficient for most of us at any time. Plan to focus on these targets, achieve these goals, then set a limited number of new objectives and work towards them.
Getting smart about goal setting - whether goals for yourself, or goals for your team - will help you produce your best results.
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