2 Tips for Making Your Goals Attainable

 

 

 

 

 

Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review.

To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

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When you fail to meet your goals, you might blame yourself, thinking that you lack talent or willpower.

In fact, innate ability has little to do with whether reach your goals. Instead of faulting yourself, try these two ways to make your goals more achievable:

1. Be very specific. Targets like “get a better job” or “eat healthier” are too vague. Hazy goals can leave you discouraged or bored. Spell out exactly what you want so you don’t settle for less.

2.Be optimistic and realistic, at the same time. Think about what you want and what stands in your way. Go back and forth between the two to get clarity on the action you must take and gain the momentum to do it.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from “Get Your Goals Back on Track” by Heidi Grant Halvorson.

To read the full post and join the discussion, please click here.

The McKinsey Quarterly: Most popular articles (First Quarter, 2011)

In case you missed them, these articles have been most popular with the McKinsey Quarterly‘s readers in the first quarter of this year.

1. STRATEGY

Have you tested your strategy lately?

Ten timeless tests can help you kick the tires on your strategy, and kick up the level of strategic dialogue throughout your company.

Click here.

2. STRATEGY

Seven steps to better brainstorming

Most attempts at brainstorming are doomed. To generate better ideas—and boost the odds that your organization will act on them—start by asking better questions.

Click here.

3. ORGANIZATION

Recovering from information overload

Always-on, multitasking work environments are killing productivity, dampening creativity, and making us unhappy.

Click here.

[To access the remaining seven, please click here.]

4. GOVERNANCE

Three steps to building a better top team

When a top team fails to function, it can paralyze a whole company. Here’s what CEOs need to watch out for.

5. BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY

The rise of the networked enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its payday

McKinsey’s new survey research finds that companies using the Web intensively gain greater market share and higher margins.

6. MARKETING

The power of storytelling: What nonprofits can teach the private sector about social media

Learn how to harness the power of social media in this case study excerpted from The Dragonfly Effect, by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith. Then hear more from the authors in a conversation with McKinsey’s Dan Singer.

7. STRATEGY

Dan Ariely on irrationality in the workplace

In this interactive video, the behavioral economist explains why executives need to recognize—and embrace—the irrational forces that affect themselves and their employees.

8. OPERATIONS

Building the supply chain of the future

Getting there means ditching today’s monolithic model in favor of splintered supply chains that dismantle complexity, and using manufacturing networks to hedge uncertainty.

9. CORPORATE FINANCE

How CFOs can keep strategic decisions on track

The finance chief is often well placed to guard against common decision-making biases.

10. ECONOMIC STUDIES

What might happen in China this year?

Despite inflation, bankruptcies, and other problems, industrial enterprises should remain highly profitable.

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To register to gain access to free resources at the McKinssey Quarterly website, please click here.

Starbucks’ quest for healthy growth: An interview with Howard Schultz

Howard Schultz

Here is another outstanding interview conducted by Allen Webb  in the McKinsey Conversations with Global Leaders series. To watch the conversation in a video interactive and/or download a PDF of the transcript, please click here.

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The company once grew fast. Now CEO Howard Schultz wants it to grow with discipline—in emerging and developed markets alike.

Source: Strategy Practice

When Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks as CEO in early 2008, after a hiatus of nearly eight years, he quickly concluded that growth had become a “carcinogen” and that the company needed a transformation in its culture and operating approach. As he was leading that change process, Schultz also chronicled it in his new book, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul. In this edited conversation with McKinsey’s Allen Webb, Schultz answers some of the questions raised in his book, describes the insidious impact of breakneck growth on Starbucks, and explains how he hopes to keep the company on a healthier growth trajectory. Emerging markets have a significant role to play in powering future growth. So does Starbucks’ transition into what Schultz hopes will be the first company to excel as both a retailer and a purveyor—in supermarkets and other mass-market channels—of consumer packaged goods.

Included with this edited summary of Schultz’s comments are video excerpts from the actual interview. The CEO describes his plans for the company to grow with discipline—in emerging and developed markets alike.

In your book, you say that growth became a carcinogen at Starbucks. What do you mean by that?

Let me try and put growth in the context of the last 15 or 20 years of Starbucks’ life, and then I’ll try and specifically answer the question. You have to understand that in 1987, Starbucks had 11 stores and 100 employees, and we had this dream to create a national brand around coffee and a unique experience in our stores that, hopefully, we would be able to extend from the West Coast to around the country.

And from that point on, the dream started becoming a reality, and it almost had a life of its own. What we were building seemed to work wherever we opened stores. We had a little bit of luck and business acumen and perhaps just the fortuitous opportunity that comes along with perfect timing. For 15-plus years or so, almost everything we did worked as we built this very unique brand around coffee and a values-based organization.

When you look at growth as a strategy, it becomes somewhat seductive, addictive. But growth should not be—and is not—a strategy; it’s a tactic. The primary lesson I’ve learned over the years is that growth and success can cover up a lot of mistakes. We’re going to make more mistakes. But we’ve learned a great lesson. And as we return the company to growth, it’ll be disciplined, profitable growth for the right reasons—a different kind of growth.

So turning the clock back to 2008, what were some of the things you were seeing that felt carcinogenic?

When we reviewed some of the underperforming stores, I was horrified to learn that the stores that we ultimately had to close had been open less than 18 months. When you look at that—the money invested and the money that we had to write off—those decisions were made with a lack of discipline. Also, I think there were times, during that period when we were chasing growth, when we were making decisions that were kind of complicit with the stock price. That’s a very, very dangerous road to go down.

One thing you did, soon after returning, was to stop reporting same-store sales.

Correct.

Why did you do that, and how did it work out?

Well, there’s a fine line between trying to manage the company in the most appropriate fiduciary way—and at the same time providing analysts with 100 percent transparency, which they deserve. And I say “fine line” because you don’t want to start making decisions that are based on a P/E or stock price. However, when a P/E gets to a certain point and a stock price gets to a certain point, you begin to believe that the organization, the enterprise, is worth that. And then you get to a point where you’re managing to either uphold it or to increase it.

An albatross around the neck of most retailers and restaurant companies is this metric that Wall Street created many, many years ago: the calculation of the growth of stores open for more than one year. Taking one unit and seeing whether or not that unit is growing, year over year, is a solid case study of whether a company is healthy, but not the only one. In any event, Wall Street became enamored with this number. And as a result of that, most retailers and restaurants report comp-store sales on a monthly basis. What that does is produce tremendous fluctuation in stock prices on a monthly basis, because God forbid you get a down month.

I thought, when I came back, that we had become linked internally to the comp-store sales number, and we started making decisions that were driving incremental revenue and perhaps were not consistent with the equity of the brand. I wanted to remove that albatross from the necks of the operators.

So I announced, one day when I came back, that we were going to stop reporting monthly comps. And you would’ve thought the world came to an end. It didn’t come to an end. Now, at the time, since we were not performing, I was accused of not being transparent and trying to hide things. But what I was trying to do was make sure that our people were managing the business for the most appropriate constituent, which is the customer.

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To watch the conversation in a video interactive and/or download a PDF of the transcript, please click here.

Howard Schultz

Born July 19, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York
Married, with 2 children
Graduated with a BA in communications in 1975 from Northern Michigan University
Starbucks (1982–85, 1987–present)
Chairman, CEO, and president (2008–present)
Chairman (2000–08)
Chairman and CEO (1987–2000)
President (1987–94)
Director of retail operations and marketing (1982–85)
Il Giornale Coffee (1986–87)
Founder, chairman, CEO, and president

Allen Webb is a member of McKinsey Publishing and is based in McKinsey’s Seattle office.

What are your strengths?

Quite by accident, I stumbled upon a website at which anyone can take a brief test (at no cost) that provides what seems to be useful information.

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“This FREE quick survey will explain:

• How you are perceived and valued in the workplace.

• The effect your style has on your ability to be successful.

• How your style influences your employability AND promotability.

• Your ‘best matches’ in terms of work environments, job opportunities, and management styles.”

“Then, learn how the ISAT and many other valuable tools and resources included
in career coach and nationally syndicated advice columnist, J.T. O’Donnell’s
new book, CAREEREALISM, can help you find greater career satisfaction.”

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Obviously, whether or not you decide to purchase anything is for you to determine.

I probably won’t.

Please click here to check it out.

Forced “Fun” at Work: Researchers Uncover a Dark Side

Here is an article written by Jessica Stillman for BNET (March e31, 2011), The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

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We’ve all been there — your inbox chimes, you open a chipper email from your manager announcing some “fun” activity to boost morale, and your heart sinks as you start wondering if you can develop the flu by then. Whether it’s a company picnic, a team-building retreat or a training full of silly activities, officially sponsored “fun” at work strikes a lot of people as somehow deeply miserable.

Why is this? Scientists recently revealed some preliminary clues as to what exactly is wrong with mandatory fun at work. British researchers Peter Fleming and Andrew Sturdy investigated an unnamed Australian call center which promotes itself as a fun workplace where youthful agents can be themselves, make friends and not worry about their tattoos.

The scientists wrote up their findings in Human Relations.

Amongst all the office flirtations and bring-your-surfboard-to-work days, nearly half the 33 employees who spoke at length to the two researchers felt there was a darker side to the mandatory good times and reported that the need to maintain a constantly cheerful facade added to the burden of an already difficult job. The British Psychological Society Occupational Digest blog summarizes the way the company’s tight control over their employees went hand-in-hand with its “fun” atmosphere:

As the authors put it, “employees enjoyed liberties mostly around the work task…rather than so much in the task itself”. Indeed, one HR manager made the telling admission that “we need to make up for the kind of work that is done here”.

By this account, the company does alright, having their monotonous, wearing work completed, and escaping any real backlash by buying the employees off with a facsimile of social life. The young employees do less well. As we see, some are disillusioned that the promises don’t line up with reality. Others may be drawn into dependency, as they’ve been encouraged to draw their social world from the same well as their pay-check. Work equals friends, romance, even identity; for the company, it’s ultimately ‘just business’. And overall, the individuality culture discourages ways of thinking that cultivate solidarity across the workforce.

In short, all those beers after work are just a mask behind which the company hides deeper and more worrying management mistakes. Of course, not all fun at work is about whitewashing unpleasant practices. Zappos, for example, has won praise for its fun-filled office culture and there doesn’t appear to be any dark secrets lurking behind the happy exterior. But this study will be food for thought for all of us who have groaned upon hearing of the latest “fun” initiative to roll down from head office.

What’s your opinion: is forced fun at the office more likely to be enjoyable or excruciating? And how often is it a red flag, alerting you to deeper, unaddressed problems that management is ignoring?

[Note: Please click here for an entirely different perspective on this controversial subject.]

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Jessica Stillman is an alumna of the BNET editorial intern program, which taught her everything she knows about blogging. She now lives in London where she works as a freelance writer with interests in green business and tech, management, and marketing.