It's Not Luck - Eliyahu M. Goldratt [105]
“If that’s the case,” I tease him, “then I have a very good strategy for you. Open a bank. Late at night.”
When they finish laughing, I continue. “Choosing a goal is not so simple. We can’t talk about a goal in isolation. We have to work within some frame of limitations. It’s futile to define a goal without defining the boundaries within which we can attempt to reach it.”
“A goal does not justify the means,” Brandon agrees. “So what you’re saying is that together with defining a goal, we also have to determine the necessary conditions that we are not allowed to violate. You are going to suggest such necessary conditions now?”
“Why don’t you try?”
“Not tonight. There are too many of them.”
“Brandon, do you remember our first conversation, almost nine months ago? The conversation that we had in the plane, flying to London?”
“You mean when you said you didn’t have any clue how to increase sales?”
“Yes, you remember,” I smile. “Do you also remember the cloud we wrote? The one that highlighted the perceived conflict between protecting the interests of shareholders and protecting the interests of employees?”
“How could he forget?” Jim says. “That cloud opened the world of the Thinking Processes for us. Carry on.”
Jim is quite impatient tonight. I wonder why? I continue, “The goal of ‘Making money now as well as in the future,’ is how we protect the interests of the shareholders. What about the employees? We agreed that it’s essential to protect their interests as well.”
“I see.” Brandon starts to cooperate. “That’s where you take one of your necessary conditions. What are you suggesting?”
“Something like, ‘Provide a secure and satisfying environment for employees now as well as in the future.’ Make sense?”
“Quite demanding,” Granby speaks up. “I don’t think that we have been too successful at that. But if you can do it, it certainly helps.”
He doesn’t get it, I think to myself, but what’s the point of insulting him. It’s not a matter of “it certainly helps.” If you violate a necessary condition you can’t reach your goal. That is the meaning of the words “necessary condition.”
We at UniCo violated this necessary condition. We laid off thousands of dedicated employees, we didn’t even think that it was our job to make sure that we provided a satisfying environment for our people. No wonder we didn’t succeed in making money. How could we, with a demoralized workforce?
Aloud, I say, “There is another one. Remember what we deduced when we analyzed the current competitive market? We agreed that the market punishes companies that don’t satisfy the market perception of value.”
“You can fool a few customers for a long time,” Brandon rehashes the old cliche. “You can mislead many customers for a short time. But you cannot mislead many, for long.”
Cliche or not, it fits.
“Which means,” I say, “that we have another necessary condition, ‘Provide satisfaction to the market now as well as in the future.’ That’s it. We don’t need any more necessary conditions.”
“What do you mean, we don’t need any more?” Jim doesn’t agree. “You mean that there are no other necessary conditions besides the two you mentioned? What about obeying the rules of society? Your own example, about opening a bank ‘late at night’?”
“That’s already covered, ‘Provide satisfaction to the market now as well as in the future.’ Think about it Jim. All the moral code is covered by the two necessary conditions.”
His expression shows that he doesn’t agree yet. No wonder, for a long time we thought that business and social values were almost contradictory. They were. Not anymore.
To help him quickly digest it, I say, “Let me review what we have agreed on. We agreed that we should, ‘Make money now as well as in the future,’ ‘Provide a secure and satisfying environment for employees now as well as in the future,’ and ‘Provide satisfaction to the market now as well as in the future.’ The first one represents the traditional view of people who own companies. The second is the traditional