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Is Your Small Business A Success?
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Article 5: Create Yardsticks Based on Your Business Goals
You can’t measure a piece of cloth without a yardstick. A rough guess about the length of a sleeve won’t be much help – unless you have an experienced tailor’s eye.
The same thing applies to measuring success. If someone asks about your level of success, how can you answer unless you have a reliable yardstick to see how your business measures up?
That’s easier said than done, of course. A yardstick for measuring business success won’t be as obvious as a flat wooden stick with numbers and notches.
Most of us think of one common yardstick right away: the profit and loss statement. Seldom though, does a financial report provide a completely reliable measure of success.
While the bottom line is a universal measure of financial health, it’s only one element of business success. Many entrepreneurs who rely solely on an earnings report to measure success eventually burn out and sell their businesses.
We have to come up with additional mental yardsticks to lay against the businesses we have created. And those yardsticks have to be based upon the business goals we have established – goals which, in turn, are based upon our personal values.
Here are some examples of goals that have been translated into measurable forms:
Hours spent attending a child’s musical performances during usual work hours Afternoons devoted to golf with family members Instilling a love for business into high school students enrolled in an intern program Promoting and helping found a child care facility that allows single mothers to take jobs Expanded knowledge of other peoples through an extended vacation in a different country Graduating more immigrants from an independent school’s course on English as Second Language
Keeping these value-oriented goals in mind can prevent you from overreacting when you miss more traditional financial goals.
“Maybe you are not achieving a certain number in terms of your sales goals,” offers Kathleen Barton, president of The Success Connection in Colfax, Calif. “But you may be successful in reaching other goals. Then you can say, ‘I am able to spend quality time with family. I am working with interesting clients. Maybe I have reached three out of four of my most important goals.’ When you measure high on other yardsticks of success, missing a sales goal is not so bad.”
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