- 1). Assess past performance. Study the company's performance in key areas like product quality, customer satisfaction, profits and employee retention. Measure the performance of your product by evaluating profit, sales and market share data. Conduct surveys and study trends in complaint rates to measure customer satisfaction. Encourage employee feedback.
- 2). Use performance data. Study the data and decide the issues on which you're going to focus. Analyze the factors that may be responsible for any problem areas that have been identified. If your employee attrition rate is an issue, for instance, probe for factors that may be contributing to the problem including insufficient remuneration, work pressure or work atmosphere. Once you have identified the areas in need of improvement, choose about six to eight that are likely to have the greatest impact on your vision for the company.
- 3). Generate goal statements. Write down statements that specify what you aim to achieve. State these goals in specific terms and establish a timetable for their completion. Make sure these statements do not enter the realm of operational planning. For example, you can say "Over the next two years, we will reduce employee turnover by at least 10 percent." but you need not specify the incentives that will be provided to help achieve this result. Set goals like "We will decrease customer complaints by 50 percent over the next six months," or " We will raise existing customer sales by 5 percent over the next year." If you are running a courier service, for instance, focus on the percentage of fuel costs you plan to reduce in the coming year as a means of increasing profits.
Source...