High on Goals, Easy on the Vision

Rule # 6 from "The Entrepreneur"

February 7, 2005

Asking a basketball player to shoot the ball without any ring in sight would sound foolish to him.  Just as ridiculous would be to ask a bowler to go for a strike in the absence of any pins to aim at.  The same thing should be true in business - you must find it absurd to engage in it without understanding what you expect to accomplish and get in return.

In short, every business must have a goal, or set of goals.  And this is what self-made millionaire William Heinecke wrote in his book, The Entrepreneur, which discusses Heinecke's "21 Golden Rules for the Global Business Manager."  Rule # 6 in "The Entrepreneur" states: "Set goals, but go easy on the vision thing."

The 'set goals' portion of this rule is quite self-explanatory.  It is Heinecke's warning to 'go easy on the vision thing' that seems to run counter to what many great men followed in order to pull off their feats. Weren't Steve Jobs and Bill Gates great visionaries of technology themselves?

Well, they probably were, but Heinecke was pretty sure that when Bill started Microsoft, all he wanted to do was to write good software that many people will buy.  No flowchart yet about becoming the wealthiest man on earth, that is.

Heinecke believes that putting much emphasis on creating visions can stand in the way of things that need to be done first.  He said, "Sometimes you can't visualize how big a wall you are building.  If I had visualized the wall that is our group today, I wouldn't have known where to begin.  I don't think too far ahead. I feel sometimes that if you think too far ahead, then you get caught up in the planning rather than the doing."

Nonetheless, Heinecke says that thinking 'big' is alright, but you need to start small.  If your idea works, then it would be very easy to expand and grow. It is critical to learn the nuts and bolts of the business first before going big-time.  They didn't build all their eight hotels at the same time.  They built them one at a time, but only after they've successfully run 30 bungalows efficiently and profitably.

Having goals, on the other hand, is very crucial to running a business.  Without goals, you wouldn't know where and how to steer your ship, much less measure your progress.  According to Heinecke, goals drive you forward when you are in danger of resting on your laurels and help to focus the mind when times are tough.

Heinecke's strategy in setting up a business is to first make the business profitable at its entry level, before worrying about how big it should eventually be.  It is easier to expand a small profitable business than to make a colossal but money-losing company profitable. Companies, according to Heinecke, must be built solidly from the ground up. 

The first goal of every new entrepreneur is to make its venture survive, which means that it should become stable and profitable as soon as possible.  Once the venture's survival is assured, the entrepreneur can start thinking about new targets.  This is the reason why Heinecke's group built their hundred of restaurants one by one, moving only to the next after the previous one became profitable.   

Lastly, Heinecke said that you must know the big goals in your life.  Just like putting big rocks, pebbles, and sand in one container, you can't fit the big rocks inside if you put the sand and pebbles in first.  The same is true in life, according to Heinecke.  You must put your 'big rocks' in your life first, or you won't be able to fit them in at all. 

One thing I learned working for a multinational company is how to make a smart goal.  "Smart" is actually a mnemonic for remembering that a goal must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.  Being time-bound means having a deadline to beat.  A goal that lacks any one of these characteristics is not a smart goal, so were we trained.

Heinecke didn't mention anything about smart goals in his book.  'Have your goals and get them done" is basically what he is saying, and most of the goals he keeps on mentioning are to survive, be profitable and to expand at the right time. Of course,  using the smart goal "formula" above to state these goals will make them easier to achieve, so I guess Heinecke wouldn't mind us doing so.

Pondering more deeply, however, our definition of a 'smart' goal lacks an important ingredient that Heinecke has always emphasized - that of being the correct goal in the grand scheme of things.  We can have crisply written smart goals, but none of these may be right for the business we're in, or the life we want to live. Which brings us to what Heinecke has been espousing all along.  That as entrepreneurs, we simply need to know our 'big rocks' and get them done. 

See also:   Find a Vacuum and Fill It;   Do Your Homework;   Have Fun In Your Work;   

Work Hard, Play Hard;   Use Other People's Brains;   Trust Your Intuition;   

Reach for the Sky;   Learn To Sell 

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