Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less (Third Edition) by Carpenter Sam

Author:Carpenter, Sam [Carpenter, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
Published: 2011-09-28T16:00:00+00:00

CREATING THE STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE

As I first saw the business from my new outside-and-slightly-elevated vantage point, I realized that Centratel had no objectives and no plan. How could we reach our goals if we didn’t have any?

When I bought the ailing Girl Friday Telephone Answering Service twenty-seven years ago, my goal had been to make the company the best in the industry. That mission quickly evaporated as my small staff and I coped with serial fire killing. For fifteen years we thrashed. But in year sixteen, as we began to plow through the systemization process and witnessed immediate increases in quality, our goal of being the best in the U.S. came out from its hiding place to take center stage. We would not just survive. Per verifiable statistics, we would become the best among the more than two thousand competitors in our industry. This was our first concrete goal.

I dug in and laid out our targets and strategy in a pragmatic one-page document I called our Strategic Objective. The Strategic Objective is the first and most important of the three documents. It gives direction and prevents flailing away. With the Strategic Objective at the forefront, no longer is time and energy squandered in charging down roads that don’t contribute to the overall objectives of the business.

The other two documents follow from it.

For Centratel, the ultimate purpose of the Strategic Objective is straightforward, as noted in the use of the present tense in the first line: “We are the highest-quality telephone answering service in the United States.” (See appendix A for the complete text of Centratel’s Strategic Objective.)

All large and small decisions follow from the Strategic Objective statement. Every ounce of energy is focused on the primary goal. The Strategic Objective is not a nebulous, feel-good mission statement based on self-aggrandized hope; it is not something designed to make the board of directors feel good about themselves or intended to impress stockholders and staff. Instead, it’s a concise blueprint in which we acknowledge day-to-day reality in a mechanized, non-wishful-thinking way. Without syrupy excess, it includes a brief narration of what the company does, where it’s headed, and how management and staff will get there.

Most business owners have a cursory idea of what success entails and an inkling of what they really have to do to succeed, but because they’re hamstrung with fire killing, they don’t take time to firmly establish those goals or to develop specific strategies. They don’t even take the very first mechanical steps necessary to sort things out. If you can garner the self-discipline to create your Strategic Objective, you will find new strength as you hold the single sheet of paper in your hand. You’ll instantly insert yourself into an elite category: literally, you’ll be the one in a hundred small-business owners who has a document that outlines company identity and intention. You’ll have direction! And once you have this concise, tangible representation of who you are, where you are going, and how you will get there, you will find it uncanny how the physical world will align itself with what you have written down.

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