A Little Bit More On Goals

On my last blog I discussed helping your employees set goals. Easy. But what about your goals. If you, as a shop owner, manager, or designated leader don’t have your company’s goals set, it is hard to help your team set their goals.

Do you want to stay the same size as you are?  Do exactly what you have done and your relieved from reading this page.  But, it you want to grow your business, improve sales and profits, bring in family members who want high salaries or kick the **** out of a competitor,  please read on.

First company goal of every glass shop anywhere in the world:  Safety.

Second company goal of every glass shop anywhere in the world:  File enough paperwork and pay enough taxes, when due, to keep clear of governments.

Now, let’s get down to you.  Do you want short-term or long-term profits?  If you are planning to sell in the next couple of years, you want short-term.  If you are in a let’s-hold-what-we-have mode, then invest in the company and reap your rewards down the road.  But that’s just dollars.  Yes, they are the life blood of your company, but let’s really look at you.

If you want to work twelve hours a day, you may not need a strong foreman.  If you want to live a normal life, you need a good foreman, general manager or whomever to help you run the business.  And if you hire the right person and give the authority to run your business, you and the company will prosper. Are you type that wants to see every transaction and meet every vendor?  Your goal should be to drop this silliness and look at the big picture.  Your company will never grow beyond you if you don’t.

Set a goal of having a better educated group of employees.  You just can’t snap your fingers and this happens.  You can either hire new and possibly more learned people, or you can train the folks you have, improving their workflow, making them happier working for you because they have learned something and you become more profitable because less mistakes are being made.  Pay for ESL classes.  Pay 50% of college credits.  Have a big day for anyone who gets a GED degree.  Encourage education for your team.  You will be handsomely paid back.

Is your goal to open a second or third shop?  You’ll have to take the best person out of your current shop.  Do you have replacements trained?  Wait, you say you can’t give up this key person?  If you place a weaker person as the manager of your second shop, your current lead person will fell busted and go look for a job.  Your new shop will fail because you haven’t given it the best leader.  Set a goal to cross- train people so when an opportunity comes, you are ready to send someone to a new shop you suddenly buy.

Is your goal to actually take a ten-day cruise but you feel the business will get stolen out from you?  It usually takes at least two people to conduct fraud.  If you have a rock-solid bookkeeper and good glass manager, you are safe.  Go to Tahiti.  It is the bookkeeper that will keep things honest.

Do you see a trend here?  You can have all of your goals satisfied by having good people working with and for you.