Goals - is having them enough ?
Stephen Bailey
Entrepreneurial Executive Business Leader - excels when there is complexity, ambiguity & uncertainty. Occasional Non-Exec and nowadays would consider an easy, simple Interim Assignment or two too.
During September 2015, the United Nations published the details of the 17 Global Goals that world leaders have committed to in order to achieve three extraordinary things:
- End extreme poverty;
- Fight inequality & injustice and;
- Fix climate change
One of the launch elements was having professional footballers making themselves dizzy by running around a football with their head down, before then taking a penalty and trying to score a ..... (Dizzy) GOAL !!!
Given that these 17 Global Goals build upon the original 8 Millennium Development Goals - against which progress has been measured for 15 years now - and, given that by their nature, these goals have achievement horizons way off into the future, I wonder whether having them (and their underlying targets) is enough to effect change (sustainable development). Or, is there more to it than just setting the goals and targets?
For those than know me well in a professional context, the "what? by when?" frame of reference is a pretty standard starting point for anything I set out to do and the basis upon which I start off any client activity too. So, whilst I have not yet been retained by the world leaders to figure out how to implement this transformation / change programme, I thought it would be interesting to ask the international business community 3 questions:
- To what extent are these 17 Global Goals relevant to your business ? now? and into the future?
- What, if anything, is your business going to do to achieve them?
- By when do you expect to have achieved what you decided you wanted to achieve by having them within the future sight of your business?
I am genuinely interested to know to what extent these goals permeate the business community.
Just for clarity though, as the goals are already decided and the targets underlying them are already set, whilst you may want to start of by debating whether these are the right goals and targets or not, for the purposes of the exercise, let's just stick with "they are what they are" and therefore "our job is to figure out how to get them done and make it happen in time".
p.s. I chose to publish today, 17th October as I figured that is the optimum time to review progress each month from now on in relation to these 17 Global Goals.