The Journey

by Don Harkey

A company has a long time performance appraisal system that is considered to be a benchmark for the industry. The appraisal system allows the employee to chart their own course and puts gives the employee the responsibility to design their own development plan. Employees are then measured on the success against their own plan and given raises accordingly.

One employee in particular truly struggled with this approach. While it is certainly appealing to set your own expectations and spend company time on self-discovery, there was something about this system that went against the core of this employee. As the employee developed his own development plan, he became more and more frustrated until finally he sent a note to his HR director asking for help.

The HR director and the employee met and the HR director carefully laid out the benefits of the appraisal system. The HR director encouraged the employee to develop a 1-year, 10-year, and 30-year career plan. "Where is it you want to go? What do you want to accomplish with your career?", asked the HR director.

A light went on inside the head of the employee. The clouds lifted and suddenly he understood why he had been struggling. "I have just 2 questions for you. Here is the first one. What if I don't meet my career objective?"

The HR director apparently took pity on the question and offered encouragement. "Oh, come now. That is the beauty of this system. If you lay out a clear path for yourself and work hard, you are almost assured of reaching your objective. You are a smart guy! You'll get there!".

"Well, thank you", replied the employee, "but I have one more question and this one is harder to answer."

"Go ahead. That's why I'm here.", answered the HR director confidently.

"What is I do meet my career objective?", asked the employee softly.

The HR director paused for a moment. "Then you have reached your objective. You have succeeded. I'm not sure what you mean."

"My point is this", replied the employee. "If I set an objective for myself and I never reach it, I will be disappointed that I have essentially failed in my career. If I set an objective for myself and I reach it, I will wonder if I should have aimed higher and will wonder what to do next. Neither alternative is very attractive."

The HR director was silent, so the employee continued. "This is what truly bothered me because this philosophy indicates that I will not have a rewarding career regardless of what I do. I knew this couldn't be true because I have already derived enjoyment from my work. It wasn't until we started talking that I realized the inherent flaw in the performance appraisal process. It focuses on results when life is really about the journey."

The HR director was stunned. After a few seconds of silence, the HR director spoke for 30 minutes admitting that her career objective had been met and that she had made so many sacrifices along the way to meet the objective and now found herself in a job she didn't particularly enjoy working within a system that her education told her should be great, but simply wasn't. She wasn't happy.

My point here is simple. Setting goals and objectives is not a bad practice, but the real joys in life happen on the road. It's not about getting the promotion, it's about making decisions, working toward a common vision, and using your strengths to succeed and to fail brilliantly. The true measure of the output of our lives is in the ways we utilize all of the moments we are given. This is true at work as well as at home or at play.

Day of Caring 2009

by Don Harkey

Last week, employees from ESC, 3M, Missouri State, and Galt Consulting came together to work on a 2009 United Way Day of Caring project at Messiah Lutheran Church. The project involved the construction of several elements of a new playground that will be used by the church, the neighborhood, and most importantly by the new preschool/daycare ministry starting at Messiah called the Messiah Lighthouse Child and Family Development Center. For more information on this innovative program, visit www.lighthousecfdc.org.

The team worked hard building 2 playhouses, a swing set and a bridge as well as assembling furniture for the classrooms. The rain during the week presented some challenges in the form of mud and a large lake in the middle of the playground (the water drainage for the site hadn't been completed yet). The team worked through the challenges and built with great speed. We even managed to have some fun along the way!

I want to give a special thanks to Papa Murphy's, Quizno's (on Independence), and Amigo's (on Campbell) for donating food for the volunteers. I also want to thank all of the volunteers, many of whom were not paid for the day, for their time and efforts on this project!

Key Ingredient to Business Success

by Don Harkey

I had lunch with the owner of a business brokerage firm yesterday. For those of you who don't know, a business broker helps people buy and sell businesses. This puts them in a unique front-row position to watch businesses undergo leadership change. Good brokers spend a lot of time analyzing the business they are helping to sell, so they have a lot of information on the current state of the business as well as information on the old and new leadership.

This particular brokerage recognized their unique perspective and conducted a study of businesses they had sold going back 5 years. They were looking at the ones that were successful and the ones that had failed and tried to find the factors that lead to success. They expected to learn that cash flow or maybe location had a strong influence on the future success of a business. They simply failed to find any significant correlation.

Refusing to believe that business success was random, they decided to go through their list of companies and gather the general impressions of the brokers that worked with the new owners. This was a much less scientific approach, but the results were interesting. The general impression was that the successful business owners were more passionate about what they do.

Consider the implications of this... a business located in the right place with strong cash flow with an owner who is less than engaged is more likely to fail than a business in the wrong place with poor cash flow and an owner who is on fire about making the business succeed.

Passion truly is productive!!

Strategic Planning: It's the Journey

by Don Harkey

I have heard a lot about Strategic Planning lately. Organizations who have struggled in the recent economy are realizing that they could have been better prepared. Unfortunately, many companies who thought they had a plan, found out that the plan didn't apply to rapidly changing conditions. I recently reviewed a plan from a professional firm that had been filed away shortly after it was created. The owner of the plan simply said that the situation had changed from when they created the plan. When would this not be true? Does this mean strategic plans are worthless? No...

When you want to develop a strategic plan, the steps are pretty universal. You look where you are, where you want to be, and then decide how you will get there. If you stop here, this is where your plan will become out of date before it is even completed. The most important step of strategic planning is to develop an understanding of who you are.

Last week, I took a Guerrilla Marketing seminar from Brett Curry (Curry Marketing). Brett talked about marketing strategy and the first thing he said was to develop a marketing message. You need to know who you are before you can go forward.

Imagine that you are standing in the forest with a trail in front of you. You are trying to get back to your camp. You develop a plan to get there. As you go on your journey, you find that your original path is overgrown with thickets. Are you going to cut through the thickets, find another path, or go back to the beginning and start over. Your decision might be based on the distance to be traveled, how much food and water you have, the temperature outside, how much energy you have... You need to have a clear understanding of the situation in order to make a good decision. If it is getting close to dark and you don't have a flashlight, it might be a good idea to punch through the thickets and accept the scratches that come with it. If you have lots of time, you might backtrack a little and find a new path.

The point here is that strategic planning is not about planning the path from where you are to where you want to be. It is about establishing the knowledge you need to make decisions while on your journey. There is no way that you can know what the future will hold, but you certainly can gain some clarity into who you are and what your values hold so that you can make decisions based on your strengths and abilities rather than on the heat of the moment.

Good strategic planning should apply to any situation, because it is a statement of your values rather than a concrete plan. It takes the foreseeable future and tests your values against it. It honestly evaluates your position and gives you insight into what you need to do to prepare for an uncertain future. It gives you clarity!

Clarity over Dollars?

by Don Harkey

A business owner is given a choice: Do you want to save 10% of your costs per year or do you want clarity on your organization's purpose and direction?

Most owners would probably pick the cost savings.

However, my experience is that most owners are much more satisfied with having clarity. I have done projects where I have saved companies thousands of dollars per month (or more!) and the owners tend to be satisified, but not as much as you would think. The response tends to be, "that's all it took?". It's almost strange... many of them actually seem to feel uncomfortable.

When I work with a client in assessing their organization and they begin to understand the core purpose of what they are doing, they undergo a transformation. They become energized and excited. They "get it".

My clients prefer clarity over dollars! This seems crazy at first, but it only highlights the fact that we really aren't supposed to be in it for the money. Besides, it's not like we are abandoning the money. Clarity is profitable. Companies whose employees know the core purpose of the company are 29% more profitable than other companies according to one study. They start to make improvements without management (NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!). Owners feel like they are no longer alone in what they do. Plus they can apply their new found clarity to new problems.

What is clarity worth to you?