It happens to all of us: we love setting goals, but sometimes goals do not love us back. Setting goals is a good starting point for transforming your life or business and sets the agenda for self-accomplishment, but how do we formulate goals when thinking about fleet management?
Well, ‘begun is half done’, as somebody once said. So, while we’d like to offer you some really good suggestions on how to set your goals, the main thing is actually to act on them and get going. But for now, let’s at least list them down!
1. Set priorities: even if we would like to achieve all of our goals as quickly as possible, it is wiser to list them in order of priority to help us concentrate more fully on the most important ones, followed by the others. In some cases, goals can be interdependent so that if you work on something in order to solve a specific problem, you might find that you will automatically solve another. For example, if you want to monitor the driver behaviour of your team in order to teach your drivers to be safer on the road, it will lead to increased fuel savings, less wear and tear and less emissions.
2. Break your goals down: big steps are not to be taken in one go; big goals are not reached instantly. If you have a big goal, you can split it into smaller goals or actions that need to be taken. Get started with a realistic plan and list the measures you need to take in order to comply with your goals.
As an example: if your final goal is saving fuel in your fleet, as you may already be aware, there are a lot of measures you can look into which all contribute to the final goal. Not taking action at all because you are overwhelmed by the objective is not good, so give it a try now!
If you want to increase your fuel savings, you can look into these “baby steps”:
- Checking your fuel policy or even… getting started with a fuel policy if you do not already have one
- Review all the fuel cards your team has; remind everyone that there should be no swapping and no personal use
- Check if your vehicles are all working fine—there could be a problem if they consume too much fuel
- Start looking into telematics
- Start checking the driving style of your team
- Prevent fuel theft…
3. Keep going and celebrate: working on our goals is not always easy, and we can lose motivation from time to time or discover some of our goals are unrealistic. Take time to pause from your goals and step back in order to see them through different eyes—rest, review goals and adjust them if necessary. If you reach a goal, enjoy the moment; thank everyone that has been working with you and celebrate it.
We have prepared a calendar for you to start 2017 with inspiration, as it has a goal-setting section. You can use it as a fleet agenda or planner and can download it here.
Hope you will reach all your fleet goals in 2017!
Want to learn more? Check out our blog post about how things are shaping up in 2017 for the Light Commercial Vehicle Market or How to kick-start the new year with the best fleet management resources of 2017.
