The Shock & Surprise Of Business Objectives!

Over the past couple of weeks I talked about "Business Objectives" at the series of Science Of Metrics seminars in the USA (see my previous blog post). In my session I mentioned that Peter Drucker had claimed around 90% of people do not know the current objectives for their business. Well, from my experience of asking 200+ people - the answer is actually more like 99.9%!! Can you believe it? Virtually no one in ITSM knows the goals for their business in 2014! I'm not talking about the overall vision or mission for the business (say, "To be the first choice for customers when they are looking for ......") - but the specific objectives the executive team have set for the current fiscal period. Usually it's stuff like "Grow revenues by xx%", or "Return to profitability ...", or "Launch this new product range ....", or "Enter this new market ....", or "Open xxx new stores ...". These are all goals which are precise and measurable. They involve supporting projects and results which might be challenging, yes. But they need to be vividly clear and easy to understand. Everyone in the organization, not just in IT Service Management, should know what the business is striving for this year. Not just the overall purpose of why we exist and the approach we take, but the specific outcomes we need to achieve this year if we're going to be successful I was stunned that no one - yes, no one! - was able to quickly answer my simple question "Give me an example of one of your organization's current business objectives." If you cannot answer this question, then how do you know that what you're doing every day is adding any value?

Like this article? Like

View Comments (1)

Comments

And another 200 people at the Pink Conference in Chile last week - no one knew the 2014 objectives of their business!

David Ratcliffe, President | June 25, 2014 at 5:19pm

Post a comment