Business coach Martijn van Zwieten explains how to set a long-term goal for your studio that will define the boundaries for every decision you make

Last week, we established what a studio is, and how understanding its core components can help you find your studio's purpose. This week, we're going to start on the FIRM framework proper, starting with the first pillar, which concerns your studio's future. Because the next most important question after "why do we exist?" is "where are we going?"

Deciding as a team where you want the studio to go in the future is one of the most important acts of alignment in any studio. Whatever long-term goal you define will set the boundaries for every other decision you make from that point on. We'll look at this first, before discussing how to use that long-term goal to set better yearly goals.

A helpful tool for thinking about your studio's future comes from Jim Collins – the same Jim Collins we borrowed the Hedgehog Concept from last week. In his 1994 book Built to Last, Collins coined the term Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG (pronounced "Bee-HAG") for short. Through his research, Collins found that this singular, clear, and ambitious goal for a company's future is one of the things that separates sustainably successful companies from those that flounder.

A well-defined long-term goal like the BHAG complements and supports your studio purpose, and fulfils a similar role: it helps you make better decisions, attract the right people, and be more intentional about what you do and how you do it.

Source link