Day-to-day vs. Yearly Objectives

We all have yearly objectives for our companies. Be it reaching a certain financial milestone, growing the team, or increasing the number of products or services offered, the list is endless.

In order to achieve these objectives though, there are certain steps that need to be followed, and necessary activities that need to be done to a specific standard. This translates into processes that need to be done on either a daily or a monthly basis by yourself and the staff working for you. In theory It’s easy to keep track of all the activities that each of you are undertaking, but in practice, our attention and focus can easily be distracted in the day-to-day activities, so what is there to do to keep focus on the higher objective and make sure we’re heading in the right direction?

1. Mission

The mission is that big achievement of the year. Break down your mission into monthly targets. This way you can focus on the details that go into achieving that small part of the mission rather than on the whole thing. Say you want to increase your revenue by 25% by the end of the year. That means that each month you need to be afloat of reaching 2% more than what you did last year.

2. Objectives

Your objectives are one step down from your mission. Think of these as individual goals meant to help you reach your overall mission. They should be specific enough to guide your decision making and planning. So if you need to increase monthly sales by x amount, then your objectives should be measurable so you can evaluate them accordingly. So you would need to find 3–4 more prospects, or make 10 times more calls, etc.

3. Strategy

This would be your action list in order to achieve your objectives. Be it running a campaign, send some emails, run ads on your social media. These will depend on what sort of business you’re in, but it’s basically all the necessary steps you need to go so that at the end of the month you can drag the line and see what worked and what didn’t, and what brought you closer to your targets.

4. Tactics

These guys are the activities that form your strategy. So if you’re doing an advertising campaign on social media, your tactics would translate into hiring an ad specialist, write the copy, create the landing page, look for imagery. Your tactics should dictate your daily activities in order to head successfully towards your overall mission.

There can’t be a mission without a tactic and vice versa so if you want your business to grow and function successfully, planning accordingly is what keeps a team accountable. But until then, keep up the good work.

Originally published at Ezy VA Blog — Day-to-day vs. Yearly Objectives.