Help your organization reach its goals with these tactics from our team.
Corporate goal planning is like a north star for your business: it points you in the right direction and helps you navigate through choppy seas. Of course, setting company objectives isn’t as simple as deciding, “Let’s do XYZ this year — done!”
There’s an art to it, with some tried-and-true methods that make your architecture, engineering, construction, or manufacturing organization more likely to successfully achieve its goals.
Our top corporate goal-planning tips include:
- Considering the specifics
- Breaking a large goal into smaller pieces
- Training your teams
- Utilizing knowledge-sharing tools
- Setting realistic timelines
- Tracking your progress
- Celebrating each success
Let’s learn about how these steps can help you create a smooth and effective process for setting clear, deliberate goals for your AEC & M organization.
Considering the specifics
Many people often think of “corporate goals” as the big, overarching objectives like “expand into this new region/market” or “prioritize more sustainable design and construction.” It’s great to have this concise, high-level summary of your goal, but ultimately that should just be the tip of the iceberg. Once you have an idea, it’s important to flesh out all the specific details.
Your plan should include who will be involved, their individual roles, and what success looks like for each member or team. It should also address any potential risks or issues, and provide guidance on how to address them should they arise. This ensures everyone is working towards the same goal and is clear on what needs to be done to achieve it.
Breaking a large goal into smaller pieces
This is another element of a detail-oriented focus. When working towards any goal, it can be helpful to break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces. This allows for more accurate gauging of progress and provides more opportunities to pivot and make adjustments if certain benchmarks don’t happen according to the original plan. It also makes it easier to assign specific tasks to individuals or teams, as they can focus on one piece at a time instead of the larger goal (which can feel more abstract and difficult to envision in the context of their day-to-day work).
Training your teams
Another question to ask during the corporate goal-planning process is, “What tools will we use for this?” And then the natural follow-up is, “Are our teams proficient with these tools?” There’s almost always room for improvement, which is why training solutions are so important. Providing universal training materials to everyone on your staff means everyone will have access to the same answers and be able to work with shared knowledge.
Pinnacle Series is the ideal e-learning solution for AEC & M organizations. Our training content is developed by industry experts and covers dozens of the software programs and skills your teams need to know to accomplish their pieces of your organizational goals.
Utilizing knowledge-sharing tools
You also need a hub for project members to share knowledge with one another. As a Pinnacle Series user, you’ll have this capability built right in with our Work Groups feature. When you’ve broken down your goal into smaller, achievable objectives, you can create project groups for each of those objectives, where team members can document their progress and collaborate with each other. This will help reduce confusion and help everyone execute their tasks effectively.
Setting realistic timelines
When setting goals, it’s important to set realistic timelines and milestones. This helps to keep everyone focused and motivated in the short term and ensures goals are achievable. It also helps to provide a clear path to success with a calendar attached. Gather input from team leaders about how realistic your timeline and milestones are, so you don’t create stress and discouragement from impracticable scheduling.
Tracking your progress
Before work begins toward your goal, it’s important to plan how you’ll measure progress. Tracking progress can be done in a variety of ways, from marking the completion of individual tasks to measuring overall progress toward the goal. The best strategy will incorporate a mix of both. You can use a project management tool, a calendar system, data visualization software, or any other type of tracking program, depending on your team’s preferences.
Celebrating each success
Achieving a goal is not a one-person job. It takes a team of individuals, each contributing their own unique skills and perspectives, to make each objective a success. Showing gratitude to those involved is essential to boost morale, foster a sense of collaboration, and ensure everyone feels valued in their contributions. Sketch out a plan for celebrating each successful milestone and rewarding participants.
Now it’s time to sit down and start planning your own organizational objectives. If you’re in the construction space, we’ll get your brainstorming started with these five ideas for construction company goals!
Get in touch with our team to schedule a demo or pilot program see how Pinnacle Series can become a key part of planning and executing your corporate goals. If you’re already a Pinnacle Series subscriber, log in now to start using features like Work Groups and custom content to make your corporate goals a reality!
