It all Starts with the Company’s Goal

It all starts with the goal.

The most important part of planning is determining what it is you want to achieve - your goal. Unless you can get agreement on your goal, you really don’t need a plan, or budget, or resources, because you have no reason to do anything.

Most communications goals are simply extensions of the goals of the organization.

Let’s say your company wants to be the leader in its niche. Your communication goal then becomes to enable that overall goal by influencing the perceptions and behaviours of key audiences to get your company there. If your employees don’t buy into that vision, you’ll never get there. If your customers don’t view you in that light, you have a lot of work to do.

But without a clear, achievable goal in mind, you have no reason to take any action at all.

And for those of you who get stuck on the debate about whether something is a goal or an objective, I point to U.S. communicator Wilma Matthews, who describes a logical progression from goal-setting to tactics:

• Set a goal: the business outcome. What you want your communications to achieve.
• Establish strategies: The broad approaches you are going to take in order to achieve the goal.
• Define objectives for each strategy: Objectives are the measurable tasks that will be undertaken in order to realize the strategies.
• Develop tactics: The tools that will be used in order to achieve the objectives.

You can find other posts by b5media business bloggers on the theme of Business Goals for 2007 on Mary Emma Allen’s  Home Biz Notes blog.
Wilma Matthews quote courtesy of Shel Holtz and Joseph Thornley.  Photo by Compujeramey.
Tags: business, goals, objectives, strategies, communications, wilma matthews, planning