Over the last year, as I’ve walked through the process of improving culture and building teamwork, setting clear expectations and holding my colleagues accountable for results have risen to the top of the list of areas where I need to improve and as critical to the success of our mission. My colleague, LoLita Toney, our director of development, had also repeatedly asked for an updated strategic plan to guide our work (we’d achieved the milestones set forth in our previous plan).
This brought to mind a concept that my friend Anthony Barber, a PepsiCo and former Procter & Gamble exec, had introduced me to several years back – OGSM’s. Objectives, Goals Strategies and Measures, developed in Japan and brought to America in the 1950’s, was popularized as an organizational tool by P&G and would address each of the needs that my team and I had. The objectives, goals and strategies set out clear expectations and the measures provide a standard means of accountability. Additionally, because the company OGSM’s cascade down through the departments, tying company strategies and measures to departmental objectives and goals, it creates a strategic plan for the organization as well.
I’d attempted to use OGSM’s previously in other leadership assignments. While I’d found them to be good in theory, I also found them to be too dense (or detailed) to be practical. These OGSM’s required a lot of thinking, writing and revising. Just drafting the OGSM’s required commitment. They also require, buy-in, participation, communication, discipline and focus for them to be effective.
But that’s the point isn’t it? If I want results then discipline, focus and thoughtfulness shouldn’t be too much to ask.
To get started, I gathered several articles on OGSM’s to refresh myself on how they worked. Then I shoved my management team into a conference room for a few hours to take a stab at it. Intended as an exercise to demonstrate the mutual dependence that we have in doing our work and achieving results, for the first hour or so, the sailing was smooth. Interest was sincere and participation was full; and within that time we had a rough draft of
company OGSM’s.
As we ended hour two, we started to explore departmental OGSM’s. Eyes glazed over, folks were wiggling in their chairs and optimism was scarce that OGSM’s were applicable or a beneficial tool. Nevertheless, after a short break, I insisted that we continue. So after the breather and with a renewed sense of determination, I’m sure, just to get the meeting over with, the team pushed through to rough departmental OGSM’s.
For me, and for them, what we’d drafted only raised more questions. I needed to learn more about how to apply this model to our work. So the next step was for my director of marketing, Dionne Lucas, and I to head to Chicago to meet with a guru. My friend Reggie Moore is the SVP of sales and marketing for Land O’ Frost consumer products and uses this process routinely in his business.
Dionne and I spent a day in Reggie’s basement talking marketing strategy and OGSM’s. (Reggie and Dionne did most of the talking. I was focused on the snacks that Reggie’s wife, Miriam, provided.) As I listened, I came to appreciate how, if I was going to use this tool, I was going to have to invest the time and fully buy-in to the model
myself.
So, when back in Nashville, I took time over the next few weeks to compile and revise the drafts that the team put together at the retreat a few weeks earlier. This took more time and concentrated thought than ever imagined that it would. I came to understand that the Goals and Measures MUST be quantifiable. Not only does that help with accountability, but it also enables the necessary “cascading” of the company OGSM’s to the departmental ones. I also came to appreciate that all of the company strategies should become departmental strategies and, conversely, there should be no departmental objective that is not identical to a corporate strategy.
These are really the basics of OGSM’s, but until you focus on it you don’t realize how important it is to follow those rules closely. This is also what contributes to clarity of expectations and enables accountability. It is also what makes the OGSM’s a proxy for a strategic plan. In addition, this model will enable me to communicate with my board of directors and all company employees what we are focused on and enable periodic regular updates on how we are tracking.
2019 will be the year that we put this all to the test. I am betting that OGSM’s will be the tool that keeps us focused and guides our talented and dedicated entrepreneurial team towards NMAAM’s grand opening – just a year from now!