After discussing Focus a couple of weeks ago, we at Silverchip have talked a lot about our plans for the next phase of the business. When Jamie joined the business, we set a number of targets for the first 18 Months.
What we realised in the past few months is that we stopped setting targets and it’s something that I believe to be a failure for one simple reason.
“We had no measure of success!”
Sure, the number of projects being acquired was increasing and our staff levels were following suit. But how could we measure success: 2 staff? 200 staff? It’s all relative to what we wanted to achieve and that was what’s missing.
Previously, every week we would sit down and look at how we were performing in terms of the targets we set and at one point we even had a large thermometer on a white board that we would fill closer to 100% over time and then surpass it and write new targets. It worked great, it felt rewarding to increase on the board and felt bad when it decreased and more importantly it was an easy, visual representation of how we were doing.
There was no hiding it, if we were doing well it was clear and in the same way if we’d done something wrong, it was obvious for us both to see and we could fix it.
You wont hit all your targets. The targets me and Jamie set at the start of Silverchip were tough and many people would have looked at them and said there was no way we could do that. However, I’m happy to say we went well beyond the targets we set. Now that doesn’t mean the targets we set were too easy, because at the time of setting them they were not, we just grew faster that anyone could have planned.
That’s a key point, no-one knows what the future holds and no-one knows how things are going to play out (If you know someone that does, please let me know). So, many of the targets you set you will surpass and some you may not achieve in the time frame because of some unexpected event.
I suppose the key thing to this is to push yourself with your targets, don’t set a target that you will beat easily but be realistic and that’s key.
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” – I received a leaving card from some colleagues with this quote on the front. Still sticks in my head as a good quote when talking targets.
Now targets wont work for everyone, people work in different ways and it’s up to you as a business owner, developer or whatever you are to discover your own way of measuring success, but for us this works well and it can be translated into everything we do. I’ve now set up a page (ToDo List) where I have set targets for the next year. These targets are based on personal life as well as work related items and I will be updating the status often.
