The new year offers an opportunity for people to start over. While the actual cosmological pinpointing of New Year's Day is arbitrary, it serves as a moment when people can cleanse themselves of the previous year and commit to new goals.

The same is true when it comes to the professional world. Business owners should take this last week of 2011 to review the year that was and develop resolutions for 2012. But before you hastily commence to allotting sales goals and profit schedules, take some time to think about the idea of setting goals.

While the new year is the time for making personal resolutions, business owners should be establishing objectives for themselves year-round. Executives rely on meeting their projections to inform and learn from their growth strategies.

"For a C-suite dude, so much hinges on making goals: bonuses, job evaluations, consideration for promotions, peer respect and more," writes Geoff Vincent for the BizCompare blog. "Looked at another way, not making goals is the kiss of death and the higher up you are the more accentuated are the consequences (good or bad). So if something isn't going to help me make my goals, what are the odds that I'm going to champion it?"

Small business owners should weigh the individual goals of different departments (marketing, sales, human resources, IT, finance, etc.) against the goals of the company. Ask yourself: Which of the departmental objectives most closely match those of the company as a whole?

Of course, making goals as an individual business owner can have downsides. Especially at the end of the year, when sales are peaking and year-end pressures mounting, business owners can become distracted by narrow concerns that cloud their judgment. Said another way, goals set at the end of December or beginning of January may not reflect corporate strategy seven months hence. Accordingly, business resolutions should focus on broad, consistent concerns, as opposed to highly specific, niche demands.

"It's not my conviction that every C-suite person is so narrow and consumed by their goals that they are without the ability to recognize and act on a sensible opportunity," Vincent adds. "What I am saying is that goals are first and foremost and will rarely be sacrificed at the altar of a cool idea."