Cascading the message

Drive goals downward. Most ofthe time, the top managementmay have a certain goal, andat the CEO or CFO level, theywill understand. But beyondthat, nobody understands thegoals very clearly.

So you need to have thevision, values and goals, andput them in writing to theteam so that there is a clearunderstanding of which wayyou want the company to goand what they are trying toachieve.

It’s like a team. The wholeteam has to understand whatthe goals are. Whether it’s alower level or not, the personmay not understand the totality of the goal, but he is asimportant as the CEO or theCFO because the companyneeds that person to achievethe goals. It is very importantthat each person understandswhat the company goals areand what his role will be inachieving those goals.

It’s very difficult for department-level employees to getthe wide perspective. Butwhat I try to do is define thegoal as much as possible andthen break it down into narrower department-by-department roles.

The heads of those departments are then responsibleto get it down to each andevery person in that department to get them to understand what their role is goingto be. It’s very possible thatperson may not understandthe goal of the company, buthe will understand what thegoal of that particulardepartment is.

For example, we’re tryingto achieve a certain increasein our sales, and we figureout how much tonnage it willtake to achieve that goal,then we break down theresponsibility of the operation, what that is going to befrom the logistic side or theinspection side, then breakdown that within that department, what is it going to taketo carry out that task. We’llbreak it down into areas sothat each department understands their role and arefully aware of what we aretrying to achieve.

HOW TO REACH: SB International Inc., (214) 526-4423 or www.sbisteel.com