I have not yet given this presentation. However, it is now completely structured – waiting for its premiere. I already look forward to it. To be sure, until such a time comes, it will still undergo significant modification. This is the normal course of evens for presentations that do not come out of the magic box.
Success – Goals – Strategy
In this presentation, I will try to sum up my experience and relate the current state of my personal mental concept. I do not know if what I say is correct. On the contrary: I am sure that both my mental concept and I myself will continue to change all the time.
Some of my theses raise my own eyebrows. I gladly open them for doubts. And I will be happy if you help me change and/or contradict my evaluations. Consequently, I look forward to the discussion at the end of my presentation. If, however, you have an urgent thing to ask in the middle of my oratory, do not hesitate to ask! Make sure to write down what you thought, so your ideas will not be lost to us.
Entrepreneurs and managers are supposed to develop a “good strategy” and apply it operationally “to the best of their ability”. The basic requirements for a “good strategy” are “good goals”. Success is if you “fulfil your goals”. So what you do is: you come up with criteria for success, deduce goals from them and then apply them.
So here is what you will find in the handbook for entrepreneurs:
You define the “correct” criteria for success. From those, you deduce an “ambitious goal”. In order to reach your “ambitious goals”, you need an “optimum” strategy. The ”optimum” strategy will be applied “professionally” and thus you get a “successful” enterprise”.
But can anybody deliver all of it? Personally, I think it utopian. An enterprise is like a biological system. It starts, develops and can also die. It is not like a determined machine, transforming input into higher-value output and thus generating profit. The very definition of success criteria for such an enterprise is difficult. An enterprise is a socio-economical system with its own values and a differentiated culture.
Are we even capable of defining “rational”, “authentic” or “good” success criteria for such an eco-social system? What are the potential success criteria for an enterprise? Can you create an enterprise synthetically?
Whenever I ask experienced and very “successful” entrepreneurs about their personal success criteria, they always give many and very wise answers. If, however, I ask the same people the same question one year later, the answers are different. Some of the answers complement the old answers quite well, but there are also some quite new ones. While some important old ones are missing.
I am sure you can try to describe the success criteria for an enterprise. But you will find it hard to find and formulate them all. And as soon as you have finished, you often find they have changed already.
Success criteria, in particular, follow a complex pattern. My mental concept of them is a complex painting, but certainly not a reduced, simplified manual of instructions. Among medium-sized enterprises, we often find quite beautiful paintings, whereas, unfortunately, the stock-exchange oriented enterprises often have the hideous graffiti of the “shareholder value” superimposed.
It often happens that you mutually agree to precious ideas about the culture and values of your enterprise. You are enthusiastic. As soon as, however, you start writing them down, the magic of a strong entrepreneurial vision gets lost.
The reason is not that you get disillusioned. The reason is that values and culture, along with real life, are easier to be felt than described in the form of a process description. Especially if reality is just something as lofty as a future goal.
If you think like this, you will soon arrive at a very simple goal:
We want to preserve our culture and our values and develop them so that they fit with our way and our environment.
In this way, the material goal of surviving or of a reasonable growth will become a self-evident “operative” demand. But it is no longer the “strategic” goal of the enterprise. Instead, it is “only” an absolutely necessary ancillary condition.
Yet the entrepreneurial “Super-Ego” expects quite substantial goals. In order to get people to reach those goals (and control them), you have to develop and put to practice actual goals together with your employees.
On a seminar for personnel management, I learned that goals should be SMART:
- S for specific.
There must be a specified goal. - M for manageable.
There must be a realistic chance that the goal is manageable. - A for attractive.
The person given the task (?) should find the goal interesting and desirable. - R for realistic.
The goal must be objectively and subjectively possible to achieve. - T for timed. There must be a specific date for the delivery.
That made sense to me, so I immediately became a fanatic of smart goals.
As time went by, I realized that smart goals are rubbish!
And consequently, I will demand from now on that a good goal must be WHOLESOME!
- W for worthy.
Goals must be oriented towards a worthy cause. Stakeholder value and self-elevation are not good enough. - H for honourable.
No matter what you do, your general attitude when deciding about your goals should be an honourable one. - O for open-minded.
Your goals should always leave room for creative ideas. - L for lasting.
If a goal is not based on a lasting and long-standing value, you should reconsider. - E for emotional, entrepreneurial.
Goals must move more than just the ratio of a person. It is important that they can be transported through emotions. The goal must also move something profound: a project, a special development or a relevant change - S for sustainable, sexy.
Sustainability as a value is (and, as I think, always has been) to be demanded. - O for opportune.
Goals that present themselves rationally and reasonably are mostly offering a good opportunity. - M for meaningful. Your employees will thank you for setting the goals of a project in a meaningful way. #
- E for elemental.
Goals should be based on what is natural and elemental, rather than artificial.
Here is an alternative list of how to spell what goals should be:
HEALTHFUL
- H for honourable.
- E for emotional, entrepreneurial, elemental.
- A for artless, authentic.
- L for lasting.
- T for tangible, traceable.
- H for humane.
- F for free from unnecessary restrictions.
- U for unstudied.
- L for long-standing.
So a goal must be sincere, emotional, realistic and sexy, entrepreneurial, sustainable, artless and elemental – and, last not least, – it must be opportune! For me, it is not a problem that the “smart goals” are concerned with the personnel, whereas the “healthful” goals are based on entrepreneurial concepts. After all, both are closely linked, especially when we are talking service-oriented enterprises.
Today, I have reached the state where I like VARIABLE
- V for variable and versatile;
it can never do any harm to be variable and easy-going! - A for acceptable;
We all want to be acceptable in the eyes of everyone. - R for realistic, rational, reasonable;
Where would the world be if we were not all realistic, rational and reasonable? - I for intelligent;
Nothing good without intelligence. - A for attractive;
It’s fun to be attractive. - B for believable;
If nobody is prepared to believe you, your chances of success are low. - L for love;
Of course, we all want to be loved; - E for easy and eternal;
Don’t we all want to live forever and yet be easy-going?
Yes – realistic – and love – I hope you saw my cynicism.
In the same way, you could continue by, for instance, playfully adding goals like FLEXIBLE, STRONG or RANDOMLY.
Why don’t you try it yourself? But these are all just intellectual games.
For me, the most important factor is that good goals must not be inimical. The term “inimical” was only added to my mental concept about half a year ago. At the time, I attended a philosophical colloquium held by my friend Klaus-Jürgen Grün. It was about animosity. Since, however, I am basically a mathematician, my first question was: what is the opposite of animosity? The immediate answer by Klaus was:
The opposite of animosity is philanthropy.
Well, I protested mildly. There is something wrong here. If such were the case, the correct term would have to be “animosity towards humans” – at least that is what I thought. But that was not good enough for me. Shouldn’t we understand by now that we also have to be non-inimical towards the world outside the human sphere?
I believe an enterprise is a success if it is an eco-social system with a strong culture and with minimum animosity. These are the criteria by which the matrix of success should be judged. And we should only allow non-inimical goals.
First and foremost, we as entrepreneurs, managers or even politicians stop dreaming that we always know what is right and the truth. Our truths, too, are nothing other than the currently favoured “certainties”!
We should be aware of all our success criteria, our goals and our strategies being based on our intelligence and rationality. But it seems that we have a long way to go in that respect (at least that is what I hope).
Because when all is said and done, we are still animals. Until a short time ago, we were called the humanoids. The development of civilization techniques, such as language and writing, is something that happened a fairly short time ago. The same is true for our concept of thinking. Why don’t you take a closer look yourself? Or else: come and attend our presentation at the IF forum on July, 20th, 2011.
That means we are not those wise and omniscient, even God-like super-humans we would so much like to be. Or rather: we are not the super-humans they want to make us believe we are.
All that remains to us is that we take as much pains as we can, trying to act a little prudent and wise. After all, we managers and entrepreneurs are also just some kind of buffalo in the herd – which is not the only reason why we often behave “like in the wilderness”.
So the first thing we want to get is the wisdom of the “king of lions”. But let us under no circumstances put ourselves before our comrades. And we must never assume we could systematically and strategically form and design our future.
If, being entrepreneurs, managers or “disciplinary superiors” (what an atrocious word), we presume to lead people, then we should start as follows:
Put a question behind everything we considered the truth or “certainty”. If something sounds dogmatic, you have to doubt it from the beginning. Listen to people and take their ideas and problems seriously. Learn a little empathy. Promote civil courage and constructive disobedience, instead of punishing it. Try to create room for things to flourish.
And above all:
We should not consider ourselves so important!
It is quite possible that this will be the basic concept for my presentation on April, 11th, when we are talking humans & management.
RMD
(Translated by EG – big thanks to Evelyn!)
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