The Hidden Costs of Missing Goals

When we begin to excuse or rationalize our less-than-successful efforts or our failures, we are on the unstable and dangerous path to making such shortcomings a habit. If we tell ourselves that it was okay to miss one goal, then what about the next? And then the one after that? Here are some notable misses and their consequences.

• According to the website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S. Congress sets the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) for automakers. (CAFE is the average fuel economy, expressed in miles per gallon, mpg, of a manufacturer’s fleet of passenger cars or light trucks.) Many years ago, the EPA set a goal of doubling the 1974 fuel economy average for passengers cars to 27.5 mpg by 1985. However, these standards were lowered between 1986 and 1989. Then the standard of 27.5 mpg was reset in 1990, where and it has remained unmet ever since. Imagine how much more competitive the American car industry would have been had the CAFÉ standard been met on time. Instead, Americans who wanted better gas mileage turned to autos made outside the country, and the American auto industry began an inexorable decline.

• In late 1998, Compaq Computer Corporation began a major initiative to sell their personal computers (PCs) directly to consumers, built to order. The company wanted to regain its place as the number one seller of PCs. Dell, an upstart at the time, had taken the top spot with a methodology that combined a sales force, orders over the phone, and Internet marketing. The process was faster because it eliminated the middle seller. Furthermore, once an order was placed, Dell was able to build a computer in six hours. Compaq could not do that, and the difference was Dell’s superb execution. Compaq simply could not perform as efficiently as Dell.
Eventually, Hewlett-Packard, another major PC-maker, acquired Compaq, so the company is no more.

• AT&T was once the world’s biggest company, the world’s biggest employer, and creator of the most advanced and reliable phone network, which was the envy of industrialized countries. The company also put a reliable telephone in virtually every home in the U.S. But AT&T suffered a tragic fall. After the telecommunications industry was deregulated in 1982, AT&T lost its reason to exist. Facing competition from smaller providers that were once part of AT&T —the so-called “Baby Bells” — the company made a series of missteps. AT&T invested hundreds of billions of US dollars into cable TV systems, cellular networks, local phone providers, long distance and global data networks — services in which the company was not competitive.
Management even split the company into four to provide services in cable TV, wireless phone, business services, and consumer services. But the end came in January 2005. AT&T and SBC Communications announced an agreement whereby SBC would acquire AT&T to create the industry's premier communications and networking company. The company that had stood alone in the telecommunications world had become just another player because it could not find its footing in an altered marketplace.

What is significantly absent in the examples above is leadership: Leadership in conveying a vision to make it meaningful to others, leadership in motivating teammates toward that vision, leadership that is confident enough to share information on the progress of the project and foster cooperation, rather than withholding it to maintain personal control.

How are your leadership skills? We all must be able to lead the people around us to the change that will help us and our organizations survive in an uncertain world. More important, we must all understand and accept our goals and targets so that we know exactly what defines "success" in each case.