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Business Goal Setting Using The 'F Plan'

A successful business goal setting strategy comes from looking to the future, but the future is notoriously difficult to predict. As Peter Drucker points out “we only know two things about the future:

It cannot be known

It will be different from what exists now and from what we expect."

The F plan is a six-step process for thinking about the future. Ideas and wisdom from two of Peter Drucker’s books, “On the Profession of Management” and “Managing for Results” have been incorporated into the steps. The F plan can be used as a business goal setting tool and also as a guide for the individual.

Business Goal Setting In May 1982, copies of The F-Plan Diet went on sale. It proved to be a best seller and even today it remains popular. Essentially, it promoted a high-fibre, low-fat, calorie-controlled eating plan. In fact, pretty much what nutrition experts still recommend today, for effective weight loss.

So here is the business equivalent: the F-plan for individuals and organisations, designed to provide a healthy approach to growth. The Happy Manager F-plan - to help get both businesses and individuals into shape!

1. Future

Strategy is about the future,and therefore business goal setting must be forward looking. As Peter Drucker points out, there are two ways to look at the future:

The future that is already happening

The future you want to create

To address the future that is already happening, you need to find and exploit the time delay between the appearance of a discontinuity between the economy and society, and its full impact.

Drucker calls this “the anticipation of a future that has already happened.” Changes in demographics are an example of a future that is already happening. We know there is a change in the birth rate long before infants grow up and impact on society as adults. Another example is the web of the 90’s, where many organisations got the time delay between investment and profit wrong, resulting in the dot.com crash. Consider your personal or business goals. Are there any areas where changes have already happened but the impact is yet to be felt?

The second aspect is to imagine the future you want to create. Can you develop an idea that might give direction and shape to the future? In other words, can you make the future happen? You need to go with your imagination, you intuition and your ideas. In this respect market research to test your ideas may not really tell you a lot. Henry Ford famously once said

"If I had asked customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse."

The late Anita Roddick graphically made the same point:

“running a company on market research is like driving while looking in the rear view mirror.”

Why? Because it's unlikely that people will realise they need or want a product or service, when it doesn't yet exist.

So, create the future! Think about what you'd really like to be doing. Or in the words of another challenging Peter Drucker quotes:

“What in our economy, our society, or our state of knowledge would give our business its greatest opportunity, if only we could make it happen?”

A very good question to ask as you develop your business goal setting strategy.

2. Filter

Having thought about the future you'll possibly have too many ideas. These ideas will no doubt compete for time, both with each other and with what you're currently doing. There's always more to be done, in or out of work, than time allows! Effective business goal setting must also include screening for best ideas and processes.

Ask yourself some questions:

What do you do well now, that can sow the seed for future succcess?

Which of your past business goals have you successfully met?

Do you have the capacity and capability to realise the future?

As important as deciding what you are going to do is deciding what you are going to stop doing. To give time to your "future" ideas, some things have got to stop! Ask a couple more questions:

What are you going to stop doing?
What no longer fits your needs, or those of your customers, or markets?

Drucker proposes three criteria for assessing new ideas. To screen your ideas apply the three filter tests:

Operational validity - Can you take action on this idea, or can you only talk about it? Can you really do something right away to bring about the kind of future you desire?
Economic validity - Will the idea produce economic result? What would be the early indicators that it was working?
Personal commitment - Do you really believe in the idea? Do you really want to be that kind of person, do that kind of work, and run that kind of business?

3. Frame

To frame is to make sense or a situation - either in personal terms or in relation to your organisation. Business goal setting must be placed in context. You frame something when you take the idea you have filtered and adapt it to your context. Have you got the people who can do this? Have you got the technology. What does the idea mean in your context, either your personal context or your organisation's?

When you have your ideas, why not apply the 5 tests of obviousness (described in detail in the article: What Great managers Know: It's Obvious!) They are an excellent way to clarify your ideas and perhaps give them a reality check.

The five tests of obviousness are:

The idea when formed will be simple

Does it check with human nature

Put it on paper

Does it explode in people's minds?

Is the time ripe?

Ask the above questions, and pass the five tests, and the viability of your business goal setting may become more obvious.

4. Focus

Focus requires you to apply your ideas to the specific situation. Experiment and test, put into practice, and then reflect on how effective the idea is. Having done this, and decided on the way forward, you must ensure both your attention and your resources are focused on the task.

How often have you found, both personally and in organisations, that good ideas have foundered because appropriate resources haven't been available? One of the main reasons for this is that resources aren't managed properly. Activities which should have been stopped or curtailed, releasing time and resource, haven’t been managed properly.

And possibly, the most important of these is people. Drucker argues that you need the courage to put your best people to work on making the future happen.

5. Fast

Fast is the mantra of the new business era, everything must be done quickly. How can we learn ways of delivering fast without being furious? To be genuinely fast, and thus responsive, requires preparation. It also requires timeliness and the ability to keep things simple. Complexity almost invariably means that trying to be fast can cause difficulties and even chaos.

Fast should not mean at all costs. It should be about ensuring that your new ideas, whether services or products, are brought to your customers when the opportunity is at its optimum. If the idea's time has not yet come, then you need to be patient. Remember the fifth test of obviousness: is the time ripe?

6. Faith

“To make the future demands courage. It demands work. But it also demands faith.”

This is not a blind faith - no idea is foolproof. However there must be commitment to the idea, and enthusiasm, or the necessary efforts will not be sustained. Believing in an idea does not mean you become a fanatic. Creating the future is risky but you should guard against ideas of the future which may become purely an investment in management ego. Business goal setting requires faith, but must be grounded in reality.

As Bob Sutton suggests:

“the best leaders have the courage to act on what they know right now, and the humility to change their actions when they encounter new evidence. They advocate an 'attitude of wisdom'. Arguing as if they are right, and listening as if they are wrong.”

“It is true that if we do not learn from history we may have to relive it, but if we do not change the future we may have to endure it – and that could be worse”
Alvin Toffler (Future shock)

Perhaps it's appropriate to end these thoughts on business goal setting with another Peter Drucker suggestion. He reflects on why the process of continually looking to the future is so important.

"Every product and every activity of business begins to obsolesce as soon as it is started. Every product, every operation, and every activity of a business should, therefore, be put on trial for its life every two or three years."

You can find more of Druckers thoughts on business goal setting in a excellent Harvard article, Peter Drucker on management courage.

We hope you've enjoyed our Happy Manager F-plan - to help get both businesses and individuals into shape! Six steps to business goal setting: anticipate the future that's already happened, make the future you'd like to create.