Whatever your goal as an entrepreneur, taking action is the only way to make a change. Big results happen when you and your team are able to take effective, consistent action. Repeatedly. Over time.

Serious question: what is the top priority for your business this month?

How are you (and your team) confidently making business decisions and moving forward through the current quarter with that priority as your driving force?

Whatever your goal, success always comes back to this: Taking action is the only way to make a change.

This is true in business as in life. 

Unfortunately, I see too many businesses fall down on taking focused, consistent actions to achieve specific goals either because the goals are not clearly articulated OR because life and competing demands get in the way.

It’s not surprising when you consider the hurricane of tasks that fill the days of most business owners. 

So, how does consistent action fit into your business?

The easiest way to grow a resilient business is to focus on profit.

And to grow profitably, you need three things...

✔️ Meaningful numbers: Numbers that give you real information about how your company is doing, and an understanding of what the numbers mean.

✔️ Decision-making based on facts: Organizationally there must be a clear process for using numbers to make decisions quickly. 

✔️ Consistent action: A system to ensure that your team is focused on top priorities and effectively doing the work to move the company forward.

It sounds super easy, but we all know it usually is not. 

Today, I want to focus on this last piece of the puzzle — taking consistent action with your business decisions (that, of course, are informed by your meaningful numbers). 

I love to use quarterly objectives and key results framework to maintain focused attention on the most important and strategic tasks.

What a business without consistent action looks like.

Before I launch into my tips on this, I want to just pause for a minute and highlight what it looks like when you have a business where consistent, effective action is not a critical part of what's going on.

This is so important because I think a lot of entrepreneurs and business people are very creative and have lots of great ideas. 

And while we can come up with strategies for the idea, often our big ideas get lost in day-to-day execution. Because we're trying to do too many things at once!

This overwhelm and overload in your priorities can lead to a tunnel focus on client services or the next sale rather than on business decisions and actions that serve your big-picture vision.

What does this look like in your business? 

Well, your business can look and feel like a hurricane of activity, but with very little forward progress. Internally, it feels like you're functioning in a swamp. It's really slow. Things don't happen right away, and it can be super frustrating. 

How do you get to the other side of that and get out of the swamp?

The other side is where your team is focused and really well-coordinated instead of just everybody doing their own thing. 

People are taking consistent action in a coordinated direction around a shared set of priorities. 

And one of the BEST tips I have for how to get there is by using a quarterly planning structure that revolves around setting objectives and key results for each quarter based on your big-picture strategy and the immediate things that need to happen in that quarter. 

This is a pretty well-tested tool in corporate America, but not one that's translated very well into small businesses. But it's a highly effective, lightweight tool that I highly recommend for you and your business!

Establishing quarterly objectives to guide your business decisions and take consistent action.

Basically, all this requires is that every quarter you meet with your team, take a step back, and look at what happened in the last quarter.

Together, you should assess your progress and then set specific goals and objectives for the current quarter or the upcoming quarter.

The key to these objectives is that they have to have measurable results.

For instance, it’s not enough to say that you want to grow sales, but rather you should say that you want to have five new customers worth ten thousand dollars each for net revenue of 50K this year.

The measurable results you’re striving for should be achievable, but also a bit of a stretch. They should stretch people to do a little more than they would if they were just checking a box to complete a task.

There’s a bit of an art and science to finding this achievable, but stretching balance; however, you have to start somewhere!

The final step to consistent actions is to take your key objectives and results and make them visible. Check in on progress regularly; and post the results in a way your team will see them so you can maintain the focus, and build enthusiasm (and accountability).

Ideally, a team or leadership group would go through this process towards the start of each quarter; and use a similar process to look ahead to plan for a new year.

Here’s my most important tip:

If you don’t have clear short-term goals leading to your big audacious goal Do Not WAIT. Start to build this into your business today.

Now is a perfect opportunity to begin.

Ready for more?

If you’re itching for more support in taking effective, consistent action in your small business, you may be ready to join our CFO Advisor program.

CFO Advisor is a six-month program that will help you grow profitability and create that sweet spot of Meaningful Numbers, Clear Decisions, and Effective Action for your company.

The first step to finding out if it’s right for you?