As we reset the calendars for a new year, businesses are preparing for what's ahead. It's the time of year for setting business goals that reflect the progress and shortcomings of previous quarters. With that in mind, here are four awesome tools for goal mapping a new quarter or year.
What is Goal Mapping?
It's exciting to begin the work of striving for new heights in a new quarter. That said, we all know that big changes don't happen overnight. Progress is a slow-turning machine. It's made up of countless hours of planning, testing, and tweaking — none of which is possible without strategic planning and setting business goals that reflect the values of the individual or institution.
"Goal mapping" when it comes to your business is the process of defining where the organization is, where you'd like it to be, and a few specific strategies and metrics to both progress in that direction and gauge your success at key intervals. Put more succinctly, this is the process of taking a high-level view of your business and then literally "mapping goals" onto a timeline based on that.
External Goal Mapping
Goal mapping is one of the first steps our studio takes with new clients and business partners. When we sign on to a project, we aim to grasp the vision and thought process behind a new product, brand, or service. Effective business strategies are born from mutual understanding around business strategy, needs, and goals. That's why collaboratively mapping goals with prospective clients is a best practice for agencies, studios, and digital creators.
Internal Goal Mapping
Looking at internal growth goals, you may have the opportunity for a more in-depth process. Leadership should consider leveraging the larger workforce or breaking out into teams to goal map different areas of operation. Here are a few resources that can be extremely helpful in strategic planning and goal mapping.
4 Strategic Planning Tools for Mapping Goals
Slack
Having a team that works remotely can present challenges in implementing wide-reaching strategy shifts. It's why we pay for our favorite remote tools to stay connected. One of these is Slack. This speedy communication tool acts as a groundfloor for communnication and thusly for implementing widespread changes in the goal mapping process. Slack keeps teammates apprised of shifts as ideas begin to percolate. The ability to segment conversations into different channels allows teams to maintain organization when it comes to ideas and thought threads.
Basecamp
Wise business leaders aim to actively champion the free flow of ideas and information throughout the goal mapping process. Basecamp is a "big picture" platform that — in addition to being a task management powerhouse — provides tools that help teams narrow down and solidify business strategies and plans. When Slack brainstorming graduates into a concrete plan, those plans end up on Basecamp.
The platform makes consolidation of documents, timelines, and more official internal communications a streamlined process. Read our in-depth review of Basecamp here. So when it comes time to sit down, map goals, and strategize a path forward, every relevant set of eyes has access to the necessary information in a navigable format.
FigJam
FigJam is one of the most robust ideating tools for design. It functions as a digital whiteboard, allowing teams to post sticky notes, flow graphs, and to visually react to comments with hearts. There is even a voting feature with a short timer that is extremely useful for quickly gauging all relevant voices within a goal mapping session.
Coworking Spaces
For a business to forge ahead united on a new path (or even on the same path with more ambitious goals), sometimes there's no way around getting everybody in the same room. However, this can present an obstacle for remote and/or async teams.
Periodic in-person meetups make coalescing around systems of action much, much more effective. If you're team is geographically scattered, these meetups may be necessarily infrequent, but planning an in-person goal mapping session (or booking your team an AirBnB for a few days of strategic planning and reflection) could be a great investment in the long run.
Need Help Setting Business Goals that Stick?
Chek Creative is a digital product studio that specializes in building websites, apps, and platforms for big thinkers. If you have a digital production need, let's sit down, collaborate on goal mapping, and set a timeline to bring your vision to life. Send us an email to schedule a free consultation. We look forward to speaking with you.
