Define Goals and Forecast Strategically

By Reed Nunnally, President, Derby Dental Laboratory, Louisville, KY; 85 employees

We’re intentional in our growth and clearly define where we want to be. For example, our current goal is to nearly double our revenue over the next 10 years, from $11 million to $20 million; however, we want to do this without adding more than six employees (we only have six more open parking spaces and don’t want to move from our current facility) so we’re focusing on automation to increase capacity. We’re setting short-term goals along the way to ensure we’re staying on target: what do we need to achieve in the next week, the next quarter, the next year in order to reach that goal?

I’ve learned that part of defining growth goals is forecasting appropriately; for example, when I first took over the lab about 10 years ago, we were growing by two to three million dollars a year, spurred largely by the profitability...