Company Goal Setting: Two Kinds of Future

Company goal setting is about planning for an organisation's future, but which future? As Peter Drucker pointed 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."

Drucker went on to state that there are two ways to look at the future:

The future that is already happening

The future you want to create

Company Goal Setting is the first in our series on Business Goal Setting : Using the "F-Plan". It discusses Drucker's "two ways to look at the future" and offers suggestions for making the most of both.

The F-plan series provides a structured process designed to help you improve your business planning and goal setting. Think about goal setting in terms of:

1. Future: Company Goal Setting: Two Kinds of Future.
2. Filter: Goal Setting in the Workplace: Filter to Make the Right Choices.
3. Frame: Frame Your Goal Setting Plans.
4. Focus: Goal Setting Strategies are Underpinned by Focus.
5. Fast: Goal Setting Exercise - Are You Fast Enough?
6. Faith: Goal Setting Facts Need Faith.

1. The future that is already happening

Strategy is about the future,and therefore business goal setting must be forward looking. As Peter Drucker points out,

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?

2. The future you want to create

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?

Perhaps you need to go with your imagination and your intuition, as well as any conventional business proposals. Market research may be useful in testing your ideas but in some respects it 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 company goal setting strategy.

Following our Happy Manager F-plan, to help get your goal setting into shape? Then your next step is to think about Goal Setting in the Workplace - filter to make the right choices.

Go to Site Map from Company Goal Setting

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