One Size Fits All Goal Statement
When I was in school in Boston, sometime before the last ice age, there was an odd lots store called Building 19. Their TV ads consisted of two sock puppets, one who was trying to describe some of the deals available while the other kept interrupting saying, “just tell them Good Stuff Cheap.”
Several years later, after I had been in industry for a while, I concluded that “Good Stuff Cheap” was a useful generic business goal statement. All you had to do was define Good, Stuff and Cheap for your particular business. “Good” refers to the quality and reliability of your product or service, “Stuff” is your product, and “Cheap” refers to both the value the customer perceives and your costs.
But then I learned about the power of speed in terms of cycle time and time to market. I had to update the statement to “Good Stuff Cheap and Fast.”
Needless to say, as I learned more about business, and particularly about Voice of the Customer, another modification was needed. So, now my one size fits all goal statement is “The Right Good Stuff, Cheap and Fast.” “Right” indicates a product or service that serves a real customer need.
I’ve used this with a few organizations who did not have a goal statement, and it worked well; mainly because it made the conversation about what they were trying to do more focused and concrete as they changed the generic words into ones specific to their situation.
Many businesses have clear goals that come from their Mission and Vision. But if you are struggling to develop a Goal Statement, you may want to give “The Right Good Stuff, Cheap and Fast” a try.
Leader of people, programs, projects and change.
4 年Interesting! I like this, especially because it saves the (to my opinion often wasted) time to wordsmith a mission/vision statement - part of that time not even spent on the contents but in academic discussions about the meaning of the words mission and vision......
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4 年Thanks for your post! The initial statement "Good stuff cheap" always made me feel a little leary of purchasing from that business probably mostly because of the addition of cheap, which makes me think of less than quality merchandising. However your proposed additions of Right and Fast really add dimensions to the statement that draw customers in to seek out the possibilities of gaining some sort of advantage from purchasing from that business. Also Stuff could be interchangeable with services, depending upon the business focus. "The Right Value, Fast" might be a more encompassing statement that could fit all sizes and types of business. Glad to add to the discussion!