Do You Have Stretch Goals for Your Leadership?

As we close out the year, it is time to plan for ’22 and our annual goals.?Will your planning include stretch goals?

Why do we need stretch goals?

We need stretch goals to challenge us and our teams to be our very best.?To push us beyond our comfort zone and the annual incrementality.?Improving 5% or 10% is good and in some instances, outstanding. To?improve by 100%+, requires something beyond “more of the same”.?You’ll need to make meaningful adjustments to realize that more significant goal.

Most organizations have annual goals. ?They are typically of the incremental nature—same players, same training, same goals for the leaders and their teams.?To significantly change the trajectory of your personal or business growth requires stretch goals that you commit to achieve.

In my career, I was a VP for a consumer goods company who had ~10 years of flat performance on volume, profit, share and share price.?We had an adequate product, a strong belief of the quality of our product (not supported by consumer data), competitive marketing spending, and an average leadership team that had been in place for years.??To significantly boost the business required new leadership.?Over two years, new and diverse leadership was added in critical roles:?SVP Operations, a VP of Marketing, Two VPs in Sales, Plant Manager (1 of 3), Controller and others in assorted leadership roles.

These new leaders attacked the same challenges/opportunities with fresh thinking:?

• Quality improved 90% on the same metrics.
• Found new and more cost-effective ways to produce and distribute our products.
• Challenged our partners to improve on several dimensions.
• Opted to decentralize some “go to market” approaches.

Within four years we more than doubled the ROIC (return on invested capital), tripled the stock price and were consistently growing share without the benefit and any major new products or acquisitions.

What might you change to significantly improve the leadership of your teams??How are you actively increasing diversity at the leadership level for ’22 and beyond?

?Dwain Celistan, Managing Partner, DHR International and Global Diversity Practice Leader.