Business owners work hard and achieve a reasonable income as the business achieves its original objectives but the original energy and passion appears to have waned. What can be done to reignite the excitement and passion?

Business owners know they should stand back from the business and set goals and objectives to review. They know the goals should revolve around marketing, sales, operations and finance. But how many find the goal setting does not have a structure. Goal setting is easy when a business is growing rapidly but as it reaches a steadier growth rate a structure to goal setting is vital to make the reviews meaningful otherwise the reviews deteriorate into a purposeless uninspiring routine.

To avoid this, I suggest the goals for each function are divided into short term and long term goals. For example, staff resources to deliver next month’s orders are short term and a succession plan would be a long term goal.

The goals should then be divided into Internal and External. So the preparation of a quote would be an internal goal but securing a number of new leads from new sources would be an external one.

By doing this a pattern emerges for reviews for each function and the purpose of the reviews becomes clear:

• Short term – internal
• Short term – external
• Long term – internal
• Long term – external

If the review of the long term external goals is carried out annually then everything then falls into place and the goal setting and reviews regain their purpose. External facilitation of the annual review can help to reignite the excitement and passion for the goals.