The importance of a great big objective

The importance of a great big objective
Productivity is an often used word in every facet of life. I think it is a very simple concept: maintaining output while decreasing input. You can, of course, increase output and decrease input. In “criollo” language, it means doing more with less, getting more done with the same or less.
I believe that one of the keys to productivity is having one great objective. I love Bill Zollars, a well known American executive, words when he said: “In the absence of a simple big objective to act as a unifying force, no leader or manager can hope to make a company productive”.
Companies all over the world are fanatics of having a vision or a mission and you will go inside those companies and you will see the vision or mission hanging in walls all over the place. These great statements are also included in the cover of the company’s annual report and in some cases, in the individual business cards of the employees and executives.
Let’s take a look at Enron’s statement: Enron intends to conduct itself in accord with four capital Values: Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence
Unfortunately, those grandiose mission and vision statements, like many other empty promises many companies make, have a rich history of not being worth the paper they are printed on.
The real work involved in building a productive company doesn’t take place in the ivory towers where executives sit but on the shop floor, on the factory line, on the retail sales floor or when a salesperson is making a sale.
A good example of a big idea comes from Lantech, a company based in Kentucky who originated the stretch wrapping technology and it is the world leader in that industry.
Well, when they lost their patent protection in a civil suit that went all the way up to the Supreme Court, everything changed for that company. They had to admit to themselves that they were arrogant and they simply were riding the positive wave of having a product that nobody else had. Their quality and customer service was lousy, their factory was inefficient but since they had a unique product, orders kept coming in. In fact, there was such demand that they kept doing things the same old way. Then, they lost the patent and everything changed, they had to face reality.
The company understood that unless they could reduce inventories improve the quality of their products, be more customer service oriented and become a more productive company; they were going to be out of business in a very short time.
Well, the rest is history. During the next ten years, they tripled their sales without increasing their sales staff, cut down the time it took to build a single machine from five weeks to one day and increased productivity; hear this, one per cent a month for this period.

How could they have done this?
Because of a single big objective: Become the efficient and productive manufacturing plant in the world and do things better than they had ever been done.
When I worked with Xerox Learning System, our parent company Xerox had such advanced technology that we practically had no competition. Everyone in Xerox made a lot of money and everyone was very happy. We all thought it would be like that forever.
Then, just like it happened to Lantech, our patents expired and the whole world was free to manufacture machines with our technology. The Japanese had a field day and our world market share came down from 77% to 12%.
We almost go out of business.
Luckily, our Chairman of the Board understood this problem and he also focused on one big objective: Become the document company. The most efficient, productive, document handling company in the world and to do so, we had to change our marketing, our manufacturing operations and we had to train our salespeople to second to none.
We got the market share to 23% and Xerox survived. Even though through the years it has had its ups and downs, it is still a profitable productive company. It certainly hasn’t gone out of business.
Even personally, you all must have one big objective in your lives and you must concentrate all your energies on that big objective.
My big objective a few years ago was to write a book and make it a best seller. All my efforts were focused on that big objective and even though it took a few years and three books, my book finally became a worldwide bestseller with over 2 million copies sold.
Just today the news came out of a Uruguayan film maker that had one big objective. To do a movie. He came out with one titled “Un Ataque al Panico” which translates to a Panic Attack or something like that. It cost him $300.00 to film. Well, Hollywood somehow found him or he found Hollywood and he has just signed a 30 million contract to do a Hollywood movie based on his $300.00 video.
In my conferences and speeches, I always say that everyone is just one idea away from a million dollars.