ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701240045
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Goals
SOURCE: JOHN LEVIN
The New Year's resolution to give up chocolate has been postponed until Lent. A handful of other promises for personal improvement have gone by the board, too, and 1997 isn't even a month old.
Can someone who can't keep a promise to lose five pounds in four weeks be trusted to help his company achieve the best market results in its industry? Or to re-engineer its processes to face new competition in the 21st century?
There is a connection between our relatively simple New Year's resolves and those high-sounding goals that corporations and other organizations are setting as mission statements and strategic plans. And the common elements suggest why a good portion of both personal and corporate goals never get achieved.
"I set these goals of things I want to do, and sometimes I do them and sometimes I don't," said Bruce Wood, president of the Management Association of Western Virginia in Roanoke. "One resolution I kept is to exercise regularly, because there's something in it for me - to stay healthy and to extend my life."
It's the same with area companies he knows, Wood said. Executives realize that unless they get behind the goals rather than simply write them down, it is easy for their organizations to lose focus.
"Something comes up - a bad quarter or the need to eliminate training, for example - and the focus is deferred for people who are actually affecting the bottom line," he said.
The issue of staying focused explains why many area companies are looking for incentive programs that tie the performance of individual workers to their companies' overall goals, Wood said.
A primary difference between individual behavior and meeting corporate goals has to do with the type of commitment required for each, according to Steven Markham, a management professor in Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business.
For an individual to keep a resolution generally requires only a visual reminder, something to make the promise more than a wish.
For an organization, it requires a powerful contract among people who can implement a change - understanding that it affects the health of the group, that it comes with a clear mandate and that there's a public commitment of time and resources, Markham said.
"I've seen [mission statements] on the walls of a lot of companies in the valley that don't create the steps to get there," said Lou Perrott, a business psychologist and principal of Peak Performance Consultation in Roanoke.
"It's fashionable to create these cosmic statements," he said. "The mistake is that just writing them down and telling them to everyone means it's still just a wish.
"The difference is when the goal includes the end state and the steps it takes to get you there."
He's critical of the re-engineering that many American companies have espoused along with downsizing and retrenchment but without the top-level commitment to change.
"The rhetoric changes, but the process breaks down" when organizations commit too little of their resources, especially in terms of senior managers' attention.
"Done right, re-engineering guides company leaders to look beyond everyday firefighting, to the whole company's best long-range interests," Perrott said.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB