Goal Setting Guide for 2025 – Systems Plans and Processes

As we are wrapping up 2024, it is a phenomenal time to think about your plans and some goal setting coming into 2025. I want to walk you through that process to make sure your goals are aligned with not only your work and your business, but your personal life and your family and your friends and everything that encompass that. Because it’s all about that work-life integration. What we do in business makes it successful and drives us forward.

The things that we accomplish in our work and our business directly impact how we feel about our lives – our personal lives, our family lives, and create a holistic type of approach to what we’re all about. I want you to really think about three things as we go through this process. I want you to think about the systems you have in place, or maybe you don’t have in place just yet. I want to think about what processes you work through to implement those systems. And then I want to think about the plan you have moving forward. That’s really where we dive into those specific goals coming up for this next year.

Let’s define first and foremost, what are systems? Have you identified what is the mission and the things that you want to pursue in your business? What is your business all about? What is your culture that you want to achieve? Have you defined that? Can you rattle that off to anyone who asks, what is the mission of your business? That will help with the foundation for your business and what systems you need to create.

I always like to ask people, business owners and clients in my world, is that if you removed yourself from the day-to-day operations of your business, would your team or your clients or your vendors, whoever you work with, know how they work with you and your company? Can you answer that for yourself? If you can’t, you probably need to get some systems in place. I know I was challenged myself this past year in thinking about that very thing.

How do I onboard somebody? If I’m bringing in a new team member, whether it’s an intern to a full-time staff person, when I introduce them to my company and we meet with them for the first couple days or week or month or whatever, how are they getting onboarded? What systems do I have in place to make sure they are going through the same systems and processes to make sure they accomplish what I intend them to accomplish and integrate them into my culture?

It might be just as simple as: What do you want them to learn the first day on the job or the first week on the job? In 30 days they should be accomplishing this or understanding that. What training mechanisms are you exposing them to? What software systems you need to integrate them into to make sure you’re all communicating on a similar process. The systems are so important because they are the baseline for your business.

Let’s take the next step. Once they understand the systems and what you’re all about and bought into that culture component, processes are next. If they’re taking the systems that you’ve shown them and integrating them, how do they then go out and get the business? What is their role in that mission? Are they someone that it creates the marketing? Are they a prospector? Are they in sales? Are they back office? Are they the ones that when you bring in the business to them, they’re the ones that put it all together and make the deal pretty with a bow on top?

What processes do you have in place? Once they talk to somebody, what’s the next step? What is the line of process that starts them from with businesses captured to closing the deal and ultimately making a sale or income for your company? Define those things, define the process. In my business (Commercial Real Estate), we have a very defined process once we talk to a prospect and work with them to either gain the listing, or finalize a lease or sale.

What’s the next step for them in that process? What’s the follow-up expectation? What are the documentation elements that we need to have in place to make sure we are abiding by our compliance regulations and that they are getting serviced as a client appropriately? Then as the deal progresses, what are those specific steps from offer to closing to after closing. Those different elements that we need to make sure they have in place so that way our client is satisfied and we are taken care of. I always approach the world with a win-win goal in mind. Start with your systems, put them into processes.

Finally, what’s the plan for putting this all in place? This step is about identifying who’s responsible and who’s involved. It might be somebody outside your organization, maybe a outside contract employee or a vendor that needs to make sure and be engaged. I know I use a lot of outside help to run my business, whether it’s marketing, like a printing company, or a promotional products company. It could also be my insurance provider, my legal group, my CPAs who are involved in this process, and at what point do I need to have them on board to make sure the plan gets executed and the business goals are achieved. Those are some overriding things to think about as you plan for goal setting for this next year to make sure your business runs. Always think about those systems, those processes and the plans to implement to make sure everyone on your team, whether internally or externally, knows exactly what the goals are and how to accomplish it or how you want them to accomplish it.