Friday, August 21, 2009

The Written Goal

I do business with a great number of people, from "Whose turn is it to buy ice-cream?" all the way to classroom training sessions and major upgrades to applications.

I was taught to write down my goal, and then write steps (Objectives) to meet that goal.

Think of what this could mean to your enterprise.

A written goal – one sentence on a sheet of paper, pinned on a wall, or better yet, behind and above your head, visible to all your visitors.

Robert Townsend said it best in "Up The Organization" in 1970. "I used to keep a sign on my desk where I couldn't miss it … Is what I'm doing … getting us closer to our objective?".

The written goal serves as an acceptance test (so that BOTH sides would know when we were finished and payment was due). To be sure, the Acceptance test is fleshed out with detail all the way down to the Assert statement of the smallest function, but if the goal of the project is "Sitting with Robert J. Deluce this time next week, in a nice suit, shirt, tie, listening to him challenge me to DO SOMETHING", the shirt and tie are just essential details.

The acceptance test is simple, and measurable.

OK. It's 10 a.m. Friday, August 28, 2009. Am I now, or have I recently sat with Robert Deluce?

Chances are strong that if I wrote that down on a sheet of paper, stuck it atop my monitor, and reviewed each evening how far I was towards my goal, I'd be reporting back next week on my project's success.

And if the project goal was not reached, I'd have some space on the paper to write down why it didn't succeed.

How do You feel about taking a written shopping-list to the supermarket?

I thought so!

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