Do you want to join a losing team?
Fri, June 4, 2010 at 11:55 
Only 6 days to go for the Football World Cup. Guess what every player aims for: being part of a winning team! Imagine your organisation as a football team: the winners are those who achieve their goals, generate more impact, and are more likely to survive any crisis.
Easier to say than to do. A survey1 with 23,000 managers and business professionals shows deflating results. Applied to a football team …
- … only 4 players out of 11 would know which goal was theirs,
- … only 2 out of 11 would care and know what they are supposed to do,
- … and 9 out of 11 would be competing against their own team.
These numbers are real – in business, nota bene. How much better is your company or business unit doing? On which level of knowledge and commitment are your managers and employees?
Next week, we’ll discuss ways to win the business championship.
1 Study by Harris International, quoted by Stephen Covy in his book “The 7 habits of highly effective people”
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Reader Comments (3)
Hello Volkmar,
I totally agree about the goal setting. I have an opinion here as the ultimate goal of the company need to be set by the Top Management and not by those below.
While its easier to understand the goal in football (from where the goal word is arrived at i guess) where the goal is to score the goal, in Business scenario, the head of company should be setting up the goal.
In most of the big companies who are doing well, the goal is set like "to be the best in the industry.. etc etc". The communications are clear as well, although there will be a lot of dilution along the way.
In smaller companies, although the goal is set similarly, due to priorities and changed customer expectation, they tend to make a U turn on the immediate achievements, which gives wrong message down the line regarding the goals. They need to remind in their communications how the short term changes affect their long term goals which remain unchanged.
Its quite a challenge!
Best Regards,
Velan
Velan,
Great comment. The ultimate strategic goal is the vision, and its correct formulation is already crucial to the success of any strategy.
I would just not fully agree that "most big companies are doing well". What I see in large enterprises is different. Sometimes(!) there is a concrete vision statement, yet it dissipates somewhere on its way to the staff.
My tip: Make the elevator test - asking random people in the company's elevator what their organisation's vision is. You'll get rarely more than one correct answer.
Volkmar
By the way: More of that stuff on our latest podcast. Click here.
The analogy is most inexact. In football or tennis (say) when one team or player wins, the other loses. There is only one Nadal today and there will be only one team winning in S. Africa. But if a firm (or just a single business man like me) sets out at the beginning of his career to make a living or found a company and thirty years later (or five) foinds that indeed they are living well and the company is prospering it does not necessarily matter that his school friend Jo has made seventeen million in that time. In fact Jo may be working seventeen hours a day, nursing an ulcer, have no time for a wife (if he can even find one) whereas our original business man has a happy family, goes no summer holiday, is captain of golf in his club., e tc, or prays, or collects paintings (hooray) or whatever.
Humanity has many goals, and most of them are legitimate. But a football team has single purpose – to win. This is why these sports appeal to simple souls but also supply recreation to people with other things on their mind too. But I reject the idea totally of equating a sporting tourney with life or even only business life.