At this moment, the year ahead is still somewhat of a blank canvas, with days, weeks, and months on the calendar starting to fill up. Even as the to-dos begin to fill your inbox, it’s important to be intentional and strategic about your goal setting as a leader.

In particular, one question I’ve been asked over the years is, “How do you make your goals stick, and keep them top of mind in your organization?” It’s a crucial question and will always be relevant, because it’s so easy for goals to get lost in the fray. Here are three principles that have helped me stay on track that can serve as guidelines for you and the leaders on your team. 

Narrow Your Focus

Focus is a key component of successful goal setting. If you cast your net too wide and try to accomplish too much, you’ll be hard-pressed to meet any of your goals and be left without any real results. As you set your goals, it’s far better to narrow your scope and laser focus on exactly what you want to accomplish.

As you narrow your focus, be sure to also establish a goal that has a target date and is measurable. Make sure your goal outlines that you want to “move X to Y by when.” For instance, say your business goal is to increase employee engagement this year. That can seem pretty subjective, but maybe you know you need to hit some aggressive top-line numbers by the middle of the year. So, your goal evolves then into boosting employee engagement by 20% by year-end by deploying quarterly HR surveys. Now, your goal is measurable and attached to a clear timeframe.

Create an Action Plan

As you know, a goal won’t go anywhere if you don’t have an action plan to get you there. Create your action plan and put it into a roadmap of days, weeks, and months for you to visibly see how you will accomplish your goal. Developing an action plan gets you into a rhythm of accountability so that you don’t veer far from where you want to be heading, even if several unforeseen daily challenges occur.

One way to make this process less overwhelming is a technique called habit stacking—you piggyback a new habit onto a habit that already exists. Going back to my example of employee engagement, your action plan might include, among other tactics:

• Add to the onboarding system you already have in place.
• Facilitate employee training as part of your already recurring weekly team meetings.
• Task managers with getting feedback from employees on whether they have the right tools as part of their existing one-on-ones.

Mapping out your tactical objectives, and then using habit stacking as a way to more easily implement tactics, can help you stay on track to meet your larger goal. 

Reflect, Revisit, and Revise

Once you’ve taken the time to create your action plan, deliberately set aside the time you need each week or month to benchmark your progress and re-align your efforts back toward your goal and action plan. The time you deliberately carve out can also be a time to reflect on whether your goal still makes sense or needs to be reprioritized based on new challenges. It’s reasonable to revisit your goals and shift them as you need so they move your business’s most important initiatives forward.

A new year, and the days, weeks, and months that fill it, are a fresh start. I’m excited to set new goals this year, as well as continue to tweak and shift goals from last year, with renewed energy. 

If you have additional advice on goal setting or know of a strategy that has been successful for you, drop it in the comments. As leaders, we can all benefit from learning how to successfully set and keep goals.