Learning how to set goals as a female founder is essential. Let’s face it, more often than not, we work more in our business than on it. As a result, important habits such as goal-setting fall to the wayside. If you want to see growth in your business you have to set goals. Hope is not an effective strategy for growth.
Stop thinking small and start setting big goals! And more importantly, actually consistently work towards them.
Setting goals doesn’t have to be a long and complicated process. But it is something you have to be good at, as goals help you to move your business forward. If you don’t set goals, how will you measure and track success? So, the earlier you get in the habit of setting the goals needed to succeed, the better.
There are a variety of methods to set goals as a female founder such as SMART goals or HARD goals. My preference is OKRs, which stand for Objectives Key Results and can be used by any business regardless of size.
What is an Objective?
An Objective is a description of something that you’d like to achieve in the future. It sets the direction and shouldn’t contain a metric.
What is a Key Result?
A Key Result is a measurable outcome required to achieve the Objective. It contains a metric with a start and target value.
What is an Initiative?
These are all the projects and tasks that will help you achieve a Key Result.
The big difference from traditional planning methods is that OKRs are frequently set, tracked, and re-evaluated – usually quarterly. This method is all about pushing boundaries and stepping outside of your comfort zone.
Whilst this may seem counterproductive, in actual fact adopting an aggressive OKR strategy can help you to achieve growth faster and more consistently. Why? Even if you achieve 70% progress towards your objectives, the amount you gain is likely to be more significant than if you’d set a safer goal.
We use a quarterly OKR cycle to set goals, as quarterly targets provide more manageable objectives. When we only plan 90 days in advance it allows us to be flexible and make changes if needed, as well as get really specific and strategic. It increases our productivity since the end date is in sight, while also motivating us to hit the ground running to achieve the objective!
The process of setting goals as a female founder using OKRs.
1. Set Your Objectives
Write down what your top 3 objectives for the quarter will be. Objectives should be simple, short and easy to memorise.
Examples of objectives
- Launch new program/service
- Generate new bookings pipeline
- Increase monthly recurring revenue
2. Decide on Key Results for your Objectives
How do you know you are advancing towards your objectives? Key Results answer this question by describing specific outcomes or results.
For each objective, come up with no more than 3 key results, when reached, would confirm you’ve achieved the objective.
Key results should be numerical and specific, so there’s no room for interpretation.
Here’s an example:
- Increase monthly email sign-ups from 100 to 150 by the end of the quarter
On the other hand, a bad key result would look like the following:
- Get more email sign-ups
Setting the right key results is just as important as nailing your business objectives. Both components work in tandem, therefore, it’s crucial to set key results that work well for your business.
Remember, these are not tasks (e.g., post five times to Facebook per week), but outcomes (consistent posting to Facebook increased our lead generation results by 5%)
3. Review your objectives and key results and ask whether they’re ambitious enough.
Asking yourself these questions will assist in setting the best OKRs for your success.
- What are two things that will help you reach your OKR
- Is there anything that may get in the way of achieving this goal?
- What does accountability look like this month?
- Any habits you need to upgrade to achieve your OKRs?
- Are there any additional/specific resources you need to help you achieve your OKRs?
Conclusion
OKRs are all about metrics—by setting measurable key results, we can more easily assess the progress of initiatives, and understand whether we have achieved our goal. If done correctly, you should be able to conclusively say whether or not you met each objective at the end of your OKR cycle.
We Are Emersyn uses an inclusive definition “female” and “women” and we welcome trans people, women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who identify, have identified, or have been identified as female, women, or non-binary.