With the new year comes new goals!
Of course, creating goals seems a lot simpler than achieving them. There’s a reason that up to 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February. Achieving goals requires planning, follow-through, and accountability.
Luckily, there are research-backed strategies that businesses and nonprofits—as well as individuals—can use to increase our chances of achieving goals.
1) Make sure your goals are specific and motivating
Effective goals are both specific AND motivating. In business, a lot of folks use tools like SMART Goals or OKRs. But you don’t necessarily need an acronym to create a good goal. Instead, just be sure that your goals are:
🎯 Specific yet Challenging: According to multiple research studies, “specific and challenging goals [lead] to higher performance.” If you want to increase your organization’s revenue, be sure to put a number on it! For example, a business might set out to increase revenue by 30%, or a nonprofit might want to add two new major grant funders.
🎯 Motivating: Knowing your “why” can transform a goal from overwhelming to achievable (according to the research). For example, WHY do you want to increase revenue or add new grant funders? Be sure to dig deep, and don’t settle for generic answers. And make sure your team is also invested in this motivation. It’s all too common to see leaders driven by deep motivation and staff members driven by worry about staying employed.
🎯 Include Process: According to Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy, one of the most common goal-setting mistakes is that people “focus only on the outcome, not the process.” To achieve an organizational goal, you need a lot of people working together, which is where planning becomes essential!
2) Create concrete plans to achieve your goals
Much like setting goals, when making a plan to achieve your goals, you need to be specific.
According to James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits:
Research has shown that you are 2x to 3x more likely to stick to your goals if you make a specific plan for when, where, and how you will perform the behavior. For example, in one study scientists asked people to fill out this sentence: “During the next week, I will partake in at least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise on [DAY] at [TIME OF DAY] at/in [PLACE].”
This approach holds across all kinds of goals, including your business and organizational goals.
For example, if you want to increase earned revenue by 30%, where will those funds come from? How many additional client intake calls do you need each month for different products or services? What marketing methods will you use to get more clients in the pipeline?
For a nonprofit that wants to land two new anchor funders, you’ll need to work through each step of the grant process: prospect research, initial outreach, relationship-building, proposal submission, follow-up, and more.
If you’re struggling with this aspect of goal-setting as an institution, strategic planning can be a great way to bring your full team along in connecting vision, goals, and action plans.
3) Invest in accountability (science says it pays off)
Too often, we think of accountability as a punishment. But in reality, it is the secret to achieving ambitious goals.
According to research from the American Society of Training and Development, those who share their goal with another person—creating an accountability partner—have a 65% chance of success. Add accountability check-ins, and your likelihood of goal achievement rises to an astonishing 95%.
For businesses and nonprofits, that means you can’t just create goals in January and file them away until November.
Instead, be intentional about creating accountability partners and accountability check-ins across your organization—including for yourself. You should also regularly check in on organization-wide progress toward goals, looking at both the outcomes (such as new revenue) and indicators (such as number of intake calls).
4) Invest in your people (and yourself)
Research has shown that public companies that invest in their people actually perform better on metrics, including shareholder return.
Professional development can come in many forms—from coaching to consults to skills-building and training programs. At Funding for Good, we offer a wide range of professional development resources specifically designed for nonprofits, including a 12-part Leadership Development Webinar Series.
But regardless of whether you’re taking advantage of our resources or finding support elsewhere, the key is to ensure you and your team have the support that research says will help you accomplish your goals.
