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I spent last few weeks doing something most people avoid until New Year’s Day: setting goals for 2026.

Not just our internal targets like sales goals, marketing objectives and a technology roadmap. But also sitting down with client leaders to align their business objectives with the technology investments we’ll help them make next year.

And here’s what I noticed: most of the construction firms we work with are about to make the same goal-setting mistakes I’ve made over the past 20 years. The kind of mistakes that seem harmless in December but destroy momentum by March. The worst part? It’s happening right now, in these final weeks before everyone checks out for the holidays. Which means bad goals get locked in, budgets get approved, and teams show up in January chasing targets that were doomed from the start.

So before you close your laptop for that New Year’s Eve party, let’s talk about the goals that kill momentum and how to set ones that actually drive performance instead.

The The Construction Firm That Set Themselves Up to Fail

Last January, I sat in a conference room with an Arizona GC who’d just finished presenting his 2024 goals to his leadership team.

Revenue target: 30% growth.
Project margin improvement: 5 points.
New client acquisition: 15 accounts.

On paper, it looked ambitious. Aggressive. The kind of goal that makes you feel like you’re “thinking big.” In reality? It was a disaster waiting to happen. When I asked how they’d hit those numbers, the owner said: “We’re going to work harder and be more efficient.”

Translation: we have no idea, but it sounds good. By April, they were already 20% behind. The team was demoralized. The owner was frustrated. And everyone had quietly given up on the goals because they’d never believed them in the first place.

Here’s what killed them: the goals looked impressive, but nobody had done the math.

They hadn’t worked backward from 30% growth to figure out:

• How many bids would that require?
• What’s our current win rate, and can we maintain it at higher volume?
• Do we have the estimating capacity for that many proposals?
• What’s our project backlog, and can our field teams actually execute?
• Do we need new hires, and when do they need to start?

The math didn’t work. But the goal looked good in a PowerPoint, so they ran with it.

And the team knew it was BS from day one.

Why This Time of Year Matters

Here’s the thing about goal-setting in construction: you can’t do it in January. January is when you’re already executing. Bids are due. Projects are kicking off. You’re slammed. The window to set goals properly is right now before everyone mentally checks out if they haven’t already.

This is when you have the breathing room to:

• Actually do the math
• Get leadership alignment
• Pressure-test your assumptions
• Make sure your team buys in

But most contractors skip this step.
They either throw together goals last minute (rushed and poorly thought out) or they punt to Q1 (when it’s too late to do it right). I know this because I’ve done both. And I’ve watched our construction clients do the same thing year after year. The ones who get it right? They’re using the end of the year strategically.

The Goals That Kill Momentum (And I’ve Set Them All)

Over 20 years of leading teams, running sales turnarounds and working with construction firms across Arizona, I’ve seen, and set, every flavor of bad goal.

1. The “Math Ain’t Mathing” Goals
   These are targets that sound impressive but fall apart the moment you work backward.
   Example: “We’re going to increase project margin by 3 points next year.”
   The question nobody asks: How? Through better estimating? Tighter project management? Reduced change order disputes? Equipment efficiency? Labor productivity?
   If you can’t connect the goal to specific actions, you don’t have a goal. You have a wish.
2. The “Looks Great in December, Falls Apart by March” Goals
   These are the ones where you convince yourself that next year will be different.
   Example: “We’re going to finally get our project data organized and implement that new software we bought two years ago.”
   Reality check: You’ve been saying this for three years. What’s different now? Do you have dedicated implementation time blocked? Who’s the project lead? What’s the rollout timeline?
   If the answer is “we’ll figure it out,” you won’t.
3. The “Nobody Actually Believes This” Goals
   These are targets set so high that your team hears them and immediately thinks: “That’s never going to happen.”
   And once your team stops believing? They stop changing their behavior. Which means you’ve already lost.
4. The “Complacency Builder” Goals
   The flip side: goals set so low that you create a culture of mediocrity.
   Example: “Let’s aim for 5% growth” when you grew 8% last year without really trying.
   Your team knows this is sandbagging. And sandbagging becomes the culture.
5. The “No Goals at All” Goals Approach
   This one’s more common than you’d think, especially in construction.
   “We’re just going to work hard and see what happens.”
   Translation: We have no management tool to focus effort, change behavior, or create accountability.

What I’ve Learned About Goals - The Hard Way

I’ve been on both sides of bad goals, as the leader setting them and as the team member expected to hit them.

As a leader, I’ve set goals that made my team quietly lose respect for me because they could see I hadn’t done the math. Goals that were more about making me feel ambitious than actually managing performance.

As a team member, I’ve been given targets that I knew were impossible from day one. And here’s what happens: you stop trying. Not consciously, but you stop changing your behavior because you know the goal is fiction.

The worst part? Bad goals make good people look bad. I’ve seen talented PMs appear to underperform because the project margin targets were based on fantasy numbers. I’ve seen great estimators look ineffective because the bid volume goals didn’t account for actual capacity.

And I’ve seen the opposite: mediocre performers look like stars because the goals were set so low they couldn’t miss. The impact is massive. And it’s almost always underestimated.

How to Actually Set Goals That Work For Construction Firms

Here’s what I’ve learned works, both internally at Computer Dimensions and with the construction clients we partner with:

1. Make Them Realistic (And Do the Actual Math) Your team has to buy in. If everyone’s quietly thinking “that’s never going to happen,” they won’t change their behavior to achieve it. The test: Can you work the numbers backward and show this is achievable?
   • Revenue Goals
     • What’s our current project backlog?
     • How many bids do we need to submit?
     • What’s our realistic win rate?
     • Do we have estimating capacity for that volume?
     • Can our field teams execute that workload?
     • Do we need new hires, and when?
   • Efficiency Goals:
     • What’s our current baseline?
     • What specific process changes will drive improvement?
     • Who owns implementation?
     • What’s the realistic timeline?
   • Technology Goals:
     • What systems need to be implemented?
     • Who’s the internal champion?
     • What’s the training timeline?
     • How will we measure adoption?
     • What’s the realistic ROI timeline?

2. Establish a Culture of Hitting Goals
   I don’t believe in “shoot for the moon, miss, land in the stars” advice. That means you’re constantly missing targets. How does that feel? That’s not the culture I want. Instead, start small and build up. I’d rather set goals that seem almost too easy at first, establish the habit of winning, and then ratchet them up.
   
   

   Why this works: Once your team has the identity of “we don’t miss goals,” they’ll fight like hell to maintain it. For example: Don’t start with “We’re going to implement Procore across all projects by Q1.” That’s too big and likely to fail. Start with: “We’re going to pilot Procore on one project, get it working properly, and hit 90% team adoption.” Hit that. Celebrate it. Then expand to three projects. Then company-wide.

   You’re building the winning habit while actually achieving the bigger objective.

3. Talk About Them Constantly

   Goals that live in a December planning meeting and die by February aren’t real goals.

   • Integration Checklist:
     • Are they in your weekly meetings?
     • Do your one-on-ones reference progress?
     • Is there a visible scoreboard?
     • Is the data public to the team?
     • Are you celebrating wins?
     • Are you dissecting misses?

   If you’re not constantly talking about progress, you’re only doing half the leadership job. One half is setting the goal. The other half is installing it into how your team operates daily.

4. Tie Them Together Across the Organization
   This is where construction firms often fail. I’ve walked into companies where:
   • Estimating sets goals independently of project management
   • Project management sets goals independently of field operations
   • Everyone’s working toward different numbers

   That’s insane. You’re all part of the same system working toward one output.

   Here’s an example of alignment: If your revenue goal is $50M, and your average project size is $2M, you need 25 projects. If your win rate is 25%, you need 100 qualified bids. If each bid takes 40 hours of estimating time, that’s 4,000 hours of estimating capacity needed. Do you have it? If not, do you need another estimator? Better software? To adjust the revenue goal? This is the conversation you should be having this week. Not in first quarter when the budget’s locked and you’re already behind.

5. Don’t Change Them (Unless You Want to Kill Credibility)
   This one’s critical: If you want your goals to have integrity, set them in pen, not pencil. If your team knows you’ll just change the target when things get tough, they’ll never take it seriously.

   So what do you do if you’re behind? Don’t reset the big number. Instead, shift focus to smaller, bite-sized wins. “Forget the annual target for now. What can we achieve in the next 30 days?” Hit that. Then dial it up slightly. Then again. You’re not abandoning the goal, you’re building the winning habit back up, injecting energy, and helping people feel momentum again. Once you’re stacking wins, you can reassess whether the bigger number is still reachable.

The Technology Connection

Here’s where this intersects with what we do at Computer Dimensions:

Every technology goal I see construction firms set fails for the same reason their business goals fail: no buy-in because the math doesn’t work.

Bad technology goal: “We’re going to implement cloud-based project management across all projects in Q1.”

Questions nobody asks:

• Which projects pilot first?
• Who’s the internal champion?
• What’s the training timeline?
• How do we measure adoption?
• What happens to our current processes during transition?
• Do we have the bandwidth to do this during our busy season?

Result: Six months later, you’ve paid for software nobody’s using.

Better technology goal: “We’re going to pilot [specific software] on [specific project] in January, achieve 90% team adoption by March, measure impact on [specific metric], and then decide on company-wide rollout.” That’s achievable. Measurable. Your team can believe it.

This is the conversation we’re having with construction clients right now: Not “what technology should you buy in 2026?” but “what business goals are you trying to achieve, and what technology investments support those specific outcomes?” When you start with the business goal and work backward to the technology, you get buy-in. You get adoption. You get ROI.

When you start with “let’s buy this cool new thing,” you get shelf-ware.

Goals done right can build teams that don’t need micromanaging. They focus effort, change behavior, and create accountability, all without you being in every room. Goals done wrong destroy morale, waste time, and make great people look bad. The difference? Being honest about the math. Building winning habits. Treating your goals like the management tool they actually are. And doing this work now, in these next two weeks instead of punting to mid-January when it’s too late. The contractors crushing it in 2026 won’t be the ones with the most ambitious goals. They’ll be the ones whose teams actually believe the goals are achievable and change their behavior accordingly.

 

Computer Dimensions has been serving Arizona’s construction and AEC industry for over 20 years. We help builders implement technology that actually works for how construction teams operate, from knowledge management systems to field-ready mobile solutions. If you’re thinking about how technology can help you capture expertise and bridge generational gaps, let’s talk.

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