Business Goals As The 'A' Note
We Live in Only One Point in Time - Now
David Beckham is one of the greatest football (soccer) player ever. As he said is the interviews, when he was a kid he was ready to play from dawn till dusk – until it got too dark to see the ball. Then he went home, and since he was not allowed to do football inside, he kicked his sister’s teddy bears.
When David joined Manchester United, he spent hours polishing his renowned free kicks. He hung old car tires in the corners of the goal and used them as targets.
And then he deservedly became rich and famous.
Beckham’s story can serve as a good example of strategy. He had the goal, he worked hard as hell and moved towards it without deviating from the course. And, finally, he succeed.
But I disagree with this view of his biography.
A strategy and a goal
When I ask attendees at my lectures what strategy is, they invariably say that it is a 'way to reach the goals.'
From this point of view, every company must have a goal, a BHAG, a kind of dream. And a strategy is a plan, a map, a method to make the dream come true.
By thinking like this, we subconsciously divide the company's life into two phases – 'today' and 'tomorrow.' Today we are working hard and implementing the plans. Success will come later.
And I find this approach quite dangerous.
We adore success stories in life in business. A complete unknown ordinary person follows their dream, founds a startup, create a new product or even revolutionize an industry. And, at the long last, this person is famous, wealthy, and, presumably, happy.
For a business entity ‘happiness’ means high profits, rising market capitalization, and enthusiastic reviews in the press.
If beings from another universe learned the life on Earth, they would highly likely believed that a human’s life is a straight line, and they move along it towards their goals.
But that’s not true.
We live in only one point in time – now. The past is already in our memory. The future exists only in our imagination. What we call 'tomorrow' now will become 'today' in 24 hours.
There is no line. There is only a point.
And just as it is essential for a person to be happy here and now, and not somewhere beyond the time horizon, a company also must be 'happy' every day.
A company consists of people – shareholders, employees, board members. They must feel their work is meaningful today, not only because it leads the business to the North Star.
A business must make profits to finance its development. Workers would like to believe their labor bears fruit here and now.
But traditional goal setting creates a conflict. An employee hears: 'Move toward the long-term goals, develop the company, but be efficient every single minute.’
A company's mission statement asserts that the business strives to make the world a better place to live, but its business goals are measured in dollars of earnings.
The vision talks about building up something big and meaningful, but the employee's incentives are framed against their short-term outcomes.
A goal is to live
If I am asked about a life goal, I always answer that, from my point of view, the main objective of every human being is to live. And any business, I am convinced, has the same objective.
I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that David Beckham was happy throughout his whole career, and not only when he stopped paying too much attention to how much money he has in his bank account.
A strategic goal works like a tuning fork, a musical key that allows every 'musician' in the corporate 'orchestra' to be tuned to the melody. We can't do without it.
But a strategy isn't the answer to the question 'What should we do to become successful someday in the future?' Since we live only today, now, it is the answer to the question 'What should we do differently now so that we could create more value for all the stakeholders both today and tomorrow?’
Unlike many people, I don't think that a strategic goal works as a North Star, or BHAG, or dream.
When an orchestra begins to play, the conductor asks the leading violinist to play the 'A' note. It helps all the other musicians to be tuned. This is, I believe, the purpose of any strategic goal.
This article is an excerpt from my upcoming book on strategic thinking. Subscribe to my free newsletter (if you haven’t done it yet) and you’ll get a copy of the book for free. Share this article if you like it.