Without them you can’t align any of your growth activities to a direction or purpose. It’ll leave you playing guessing games and rolling the dice with the future of your company more often than you’ll feel comfortable doing. 

Ask a 15 year old what they’ll be doing in 20 years time and most of them will give you a look as if to say “How on Earth do you expect me to know that…?” 

Of those who do answer, it’s extremely unlikely they’ll be doing whatever they said they’ll be doing in 20 years time. 

But that’s perfectly normal for a 15 year old, we don’t expect them to have answers to questions like this. 

I bring it up because you may remember what it felt like to be asked that question, and you may remember the feeling of being utterly stumped and unable to answer. 

That’s what it’s like to run a business without a proper strategy, without growth goals and objectives and without having a clearly defined vision. 

Think about this… How many people do you know that studied and trained for a career, only to end up working in a completely different field? 

Looking into this, there are a raft of articles online that show roughly 30% to 50% of graduates work in a field that relates to their degree after leaving university. 

I’m willing to bet that if we asked some of those graduates whether they’d rethink their life decisions, most of them would say yes because they’re now more aware of what they want and how they should have gone about getting it. 

It’s the same in business. You can avoid the stopping and the starting, the pivoting, the rebranding, the constant re-doing and fire fighting, the stress and the chaos – but you have to be strategic. 

To be strategic you need to know: 

• How much growth is enough and how big do you want to get 
• What’s your dream role and how can you business support it
• How to evolve and avoid being taken out by competitors 
• What new capabilities your team needs and in what order 
• Whether your growth expectations are realistic and fair
• What new projects need to be planned and completed
• What metrics and KPIs to track to show evidence of progress 

All these things help you to maintain a clear vision of what lies ahead and to remain confident and steadfast during the inevitable tough times ahead. This is the purpose of strategy, growth goals and objectives.

Interested in feeling a little more confident about growth? Get in touch to find out more about our growth framework and how it can help your business to be more successful.