Lowering Your Goal Won't Fix Your Business

Lowering the goal makes the number green. It does nothing for the business behind it.

I see owners make this move all the time, and almost nobody says it out loud.

What happened when a practice lowered its goal

Last week I was on a coaching call with a dental practice. We were walking through their scorecard, the short list of weekly numbers that tells them whether the business is on track.

New patients had been coming in under target. So they fixed it. They told me, "We decided to decrease our number of new patients from 12 to 7."

On paper, problem solved. Seven is a number they can hit. The row turns green and the Monday meeting feels better.

Here is what I told them. "Lowering the goal solves the problem on the scorecard, but it doesn't solve having more patients come in the office."

And this practice has a bigger plan. The owner wants to bring on an associate dentist. That hire only works if more patients walk in the door. "If your big goal is to get an associate, you need more new patients."

Seven would have looked fine on the scorecard for months. Meanwhile the hire they are planning for would have quietly stopped making sense.

Why lowering your goals feels like the fix

A goal you keep missing is uncomfortable. Every week it sits there in red, and every week somebody has to explain it.

Lowering it stops the explaining. That is the whole appeal.

A scorecard has one job. It tells you the truth early enough to do something about it. Once you edit the goal to match the result, it stops telling you anything. You turned a warning light into a decoration.

Every business has a version of this. The discovery call target that got trimmed after a slow month. The response time number nobody tracks anymore because it kept slipping. Same move, same cost.

What to do when you keep missing a business goal

Ask why the number dropped before you touch the target.

Pull up your scorecard this week and find any goal you have lowered in the last six months. Next to each one, write two things. Why the number fell, and what bigger goal it feeds.

If you can't answer the first one, that is your work for the week.

If the second one is a hire, a raise for yourself, or time off, put the original number back. The red is useful. It is the only thing on the page telling you the plan is in trouble.

There are good reasons to change a goal. You set it with bad information, or the business changed direction on purpose. Write that reason next to the new number. If you can't say it in one sentence, you are lowering it to feel better.

Building the scorecard and the weekly rhythm around it, so somebody besides you is watching the numbers, is a big part of what I do with owners in The Handoff.

Find the goal you lowered and put it back.

Quick answers

Should I lower my business goals if I keep missing them?

Only if the original goal was built on bad information or your plan changed on purpose. If you are lowering it so the week looks better, find out why the number dropped first.

What is a business scorecard?

A scorecard is a short list of weekly numbers that tells you whether your business is on track. Its job is to show you problems early, while you can still fix them.

What should I do when a key number keeps dropping?

Ask why it dropped before you change the target. Then check what bigger goal it feeds, like a hire or time off, and decide what has to change to get the number back up.

Sara Ritchie is a fractional COO who has worked in operations since 2007 and has coached more than 100 dental practices. She teaches women business owners to use Claude inside their real businesses through From Curious to Confident and works one on one with owners in The Handoff. More about Sara.