Your FEC’s Guide to 2022 Goal Setting

Take a careful look at your data to determine the right goals to set for 2022.

These next few weeks will fly by but that doesn’t mean you can hit the brakes on planning for a strong 2022.

Use these tips and resources to help you measure your facility’s wins and losses, and get next year’s plan ready to roll out just as soon as the ball drops.

No. 1: Assemble a planning team.

Don’t feel like you have to conduct your year-end analysis and create goals and action plans alone. Many of the best leadership teams spend time bouncing ideas off each other, offering perspectives, and strategizing approaches to accomplish. Not only can department heads and other park leaders provide key insights from the trenches, uncover challenges and think creatively, but you know that (at the very least) you need their buy-in to carry out your organization’s goals with their teams. The more invested leaders — and individual team members for that matter — are in the process of setting department or organizational goals, the more willing and able they’ll be to work towards them. You’ll likely have goals for areas such as sales, marketing, guest experience, maintenance and safety, personnel management, and more, so be sure that you’re opening yourself up to hear from the people in the trenches so that your FEC business has the right focus in the right areas.

No. 2: Dig into your data and analytics.

Your facility management software should have the answers to many of the questions you have about your success. Use your CenterEdge reports and CenterEdge Business Intelligence Dashboard to review sales, attendance, membership, inventory, or product data from the year so that you’ll be able to create meaningful goals for the upcoming quarter and year. Some useful tools to help you in this process are:

• 6 Year-End Data Insights for Your FEC
• 4 Critical Reports for Your FEC
• 3 Tips for Meaningful FEC Goal Setting

As always, our CenterEdge team can help you understand useful reports and how to get or use your dashboard. Contact us at training@centeredgesoftware.com.

No. 3: Schedule your planning session.

Have you ever set a sales target that a team missed by a mile, only to learn that they didn’t feel like it was attainable from the beginning? Chances are, you missed a critical piece of the puzzle by not involving them early enough in the planning.

To set the stage the right way, consider scheduling (and communicating) a goal-setting meeting as soon as it makes sense. Offsite meetings are great formats for these because they allow for fewer distractions. Consider at least a half-day, if not one to two full days for this meeting. The time won’t go to waste. You’ll need flip chart paper and fresh markers, large sticky notes, notepads and pens, and any audio/visual materials, such as a projector.

Offering the team catered meals, snacks, cold drinks and lots of coffee will help you keep a tight handle on the time you’re together, while still affording you some breakaway time, such as morning or afternoon short breaks and lunch away from the table.

No. 4: Set expectations for the planning team.

When you schedule, ask managers to prepare:

• 1-2 department achievements from this year (and/or the last quarter, if you like managing quarter by quarter)
• 3 (or more) specific department goals they would like to set
• 3 challenges they believe the FEC is facing (with recommendations for solving them)

Share anything they need to be prepared to make the most of your time together. This can include year-over-year sales trend data, guest satisfaction trends, or a heads up for any other key issue or obstacle you believe the organization is facing. Be ready to share your overarching vision, values, and/or mission in order to set the year off right.

No. 5: Facilitate a productive meeting.

Get there early and set everything up to facilitate an inviting place for people to come together and be creative. Start with positivity, thanking them for their contributions and all that you’ve accomplished together over the past year. Share your FEC vision and mission again, along with your overarching theme or vision for the year — at a high level. This will help add some structure and start the meeting off right. You’re not giving the challenges, but rather “priming the pump.”

From there, elicit each leader’s contributions of successes, recommendations for goals and key initiatives, and talk through the challenges to come up with a strategy for overcoming them. Then, as a group, you’ll be able to agree on the top goals for the year (broken down by quarter and/or by month if desired). Be sure to take notes so that you can capture who’s responsible for what, and by when. Afterward, consider keeping them in a place where everyone can access them and report on progress. This is key to developing goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound).

No. 6: Put the plan into action.

It’s easy to let the momentum of an FEC planning session drift away if you don’t have clear next steps. Ensure that you agree on the most important tasks and that leaders feel confident that they will be able to complete the tasks necessary to achieve the goal. Consider asking a pointed question such as, “what do you see getting in the way of meeting the milestones of this goal?” so that you can understand potential obstacles. Candid conversation is critical during this process so leaders raise potential impediments to be discussed and prepared for. You don’t want to be eight weeks into the new year and learn that someone has made no progress because they didn’t know how to get started, for example. The more trust and teamwork you’ve fostered, the easier it will be to have this kind of honest conversation.

When you’re first starting out, it is often helpful to brainstorm the steps to the goal either chronologically, or by envisioning the desired outcome and working backward, says success guru, Jack Canfield. If you haven’t read Jack Canfield’s, “The Success Principles” — it’s one of the best books on setting and achieving goals available. What’s important is that everyone responsible for an initiative has the clarity and confidence to know what must happen next.

No. 7: Plan a kick-off meeting for staff.

Once you have your plan, you’ll need to communicate it to staff and get everyone excited about the new year and new goals. A kick-off meeting or party gives you a great opportunity to celebrate successes, recommunicate values, communicate new goals, and get your staff’s buy-in. Use this guide to help you plan for an exciting and effective kick-off.

• 7 Steps to a Stellar Season Kick-Off Meeting

No. 8: Measure and refine goals throughout the year.

Be sure that you have plans for how you will measure and report on success throughout the year. Plan for regular meetings, additional planning sessions, and where you will record success. Your goals will likely evolve as you move throughout the year, and you’ll want to keep everyone laser-focused on the actions that it will take to achieve the outcomes you desire. Good luck!

What challenges have you had to overcome when setting or achieving goals? Share them in the comments or on Twitter. Looking to grow your sales as one of your FEC goals? Read our blog: How to Overcome Sales Growth Obstacles in Your FEC.