Consider Rob, a first-generation business owner who has developed a $20M annual revenue business over the past 10 years. However, business has stagnated and he cannot seem to gain additional momentum even though he is working more hours than ever. Rob knew he needed to do something different, but is not sure what to do next. Let’s pick up this story as Rob reflects on what has happened.
I knew that I needed to do something different, but was not sure what. I have not had much time to read lately but I decided I needed to do something. I picked up a couple of well-known business books on how to be more effective in growing your business. One of the suggestions was to start working to clear goals and put plans together to achieve these goals.
That did make some sense, so about a year ago I decided to put together a list of goals that needed to be achieved. I talked to some of my leadership team to get their input, then I put together a list of ten goals I felt were meaningful and would have a positive impact on my business. I picked goals that covered a variety of areas of the business in order to get a good cross section, giving everyone an opportunity to participate.
I presented these to my leadership team and the reception was lukewarm at best. I asked them to get behind and work on achieving these goals. I attributed the lukewarm reception as resisting change and I just needed to show them how this would work. I worked out how to measure each of the ten goals and compiled the data and displayed it on a board I created. I scheduled every other week meetings to track progress to the goals.
The goals review meetings were led by me and status and progress to each goal was reviewed. What I found was that in some areas we were exceeding the goals, other areas we were just achieving the goal, and then there were goals that we were not even close. The frustration I had is that I was not sure I could point to actions we took that drove results. People in the meeting were pretty unengaged and clearly did not see a value to what we were doing. They did not feel any ownership and were there only because I told them these meetings were mandatory.
Six months into this experiment, I was convinced it was a failure. We were no better off than before and, in fact, had added additional meetings and data tracking with no benefit to show for it. My leadership team was less engaged and I had taken on more nonvalue added work that added to an already overwhelming schedule. I was spending less time with my family and was discouraged and frustrated. I felt a hopelessness and feeling of not knowing what to do next. Was this the way it would be or was there another way?
Read “What is the solution” to find the answer…
