How do you set and track goals in a lean startup project?

Founders are often very talented and skilled individuals that have achieved success In their fields. However, often the business skills, needs and responsibilities of starting a business are not their intuitive skill set. Including the discipline of setting and achieving goals. It is critical that founders set themselves and their startups up for success by working with those who can guide them in effective leaderships and business skills, including the accountability to set and achieve goals. It takes a small family to start and grow a startup. Knowing where to seek guidance and help is a crucial skill required of all successful founders.

The best way to complete a target is to set a realistic and achievable goal. As a founder you should have great clarity on what is your vision and how you are going to achieve it. This helps you to create teams with complimentary skills, align them and most importantly communicate about how you are planning to achieve the goal.

Always know your WHY! Knowing your why saves you so much time in the decision making process. It also keeps you going on the tough days. If you don’t know your “why” a or don’t have a good “why” - it will be hard to sustain your vision.

Once your vision is clear. Divide it into small achievable goals also known as milestones. These can be anything varying from users to revenue. The following are some examples: - Getting first 1000 users - Generating revenue of more than $10,000 - Hitting the 10% gross profit margin mark

All these goals can be tracked with the help of some KPIs that take certain metrics into account. Some of these KPIs are: - Retention percentage - Net Promoter Score - Churn Rate - Monthly Active Users - Referral Percentage - Month on Month Growth Rate - and more

Good KPI list - as you know the key is to identify the right KPIs that track key aspects of a business; growth, profitability, productivity etc - And to have specific action plans to improve each KPI

I disagree with regular adjustments. Constantly adjusting goals creates chaos. In my experience at Hypercontext, we discuss goals weekly, only considering adjusting after at least a month of digging deep to find a way to make it work. You can and should change goals quarterly though. But here's a tip: Engage your team in goal setting. Get their input, assumptions, and complains. Listen, challenge, and battle test your strategy ideas. You're not just setting targets, you're building a roadmap to success. The more brains the better -- don't strategize in isolation and "reveal" your brilliance. Finally, perseverance is key. Stretch goals? Your job is to find a way to hit them. Save pivots for quarterly strategy sessions. Stability matters.

Lean start-up is more about fail fast and learn fast rather than creating a perfect solution at the get go. So as a founder, it is important to know about what improvements are needed and where you should implement them. At the end of every iteration cycle founder should focus on identifying the gaps and errors in the product based on the user feedback and should provide updates accordingly.

All of these topics are spot on. Yes, the easiest way to accomplish a project is to break it down into small units to manage and track! Keep Learning and Growing!!!!??????????????

One of the cheapest and easiest ways our organisation uses is to make lists and markup of progress and communication on a chart paper stuck on a glass wall! Everyone sees the goals and everything falls in line! What's more? It's colorful fun too!