Goal beyond goal

One word I often recall from my university days is “displacement”. In Chinese it means “cuo wei”. In Management, it can refer to the circumstances under which people fight to grasp tightly what is before their eyes but forget why they are doing so. Namely, they are making the mistake of displacing the goal- the origin, the set-off point which cause them to do what they are doing now.

Displacement is a common mistake. I was not at all surprised to watch the “display group” take this mistake all along their report presentation. To explain, we were in a project team aimed to develop a new sales model to enhance efficiency of trade incentive resources. The “display group” was assigned to make more out of our display spending in store outlets.

“So, last but not least, the calculation above proves that we can increase our display coverage by XX% in the city of Beijing with spending increase XX%.” After half a hour’s presentation, the leader of the display group made the conclusion.

I was confused. All that they were planning to do is merely to increase display numbers and coverage. The more the better. However, weren’t we set off to increase incentive efficiency? The topic should be how to spend less to achieve the same, or how to spend more to achieve even more. The absolute number of display increase didn’t go with our goal.

The “Dispaly Group” would never have presented such calculation if they had been sticking to our goal of improving efficiency. In fact they need not any calculation at all. Increasing displays, whether measured in numbers or in area, will definitely hurt efficiency due to this paradox below:

1. Suppose currently there are 100 displays in 100 store all around Beijing setting the average ROI level, and now we put in one more display in another store. If this one new display drags the average ROI downwards, we shold not add this display because the result is against our goal of efficiency;

2. If this display enhances the average performance, then we should talk about providing execution training to Beijing salesforce instead of increase display investment- obviously the salesforce have no idea of business opportunities or investment evalution, and we should not give them more if they do not know how to make best out of their current.

3. If the newly added display does not make any change on ROI, well we may let it pass but it can be discussed after the project meeting, since it has nothing to do with improving efficiency.

The reasoning will be totally different if our goal is not for higher efficiency. When we are focusing on saving money (comparatively), however, we can well save hours of futile and useless calculation by simple reasoning. Now you see stick to your goal is important.

In a large project the original goal will be split into pieces to be conveniently assigned to different task groups. It is important to keep every member remember the original goal as a whole. When they are stick to their task target, the nearest and reachable goal in front of their very eyes, they may get lost in their own world and forget about the reason why they are there.

This is a unnoticeable example. The reasoning can not stop anything, anyway. It is OK. But if you are sitting in the chair of judge, judging people’s fancy ideas and dazzling numbers of how they are using your money, you’d better open your eyes wider and ignore their conclusion.

The goal beyond goal, the question behind all the answers, is your best ruler.

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