Set your sights
The first thing Holveck did after arriving at Endo was to form his leadership team from a combination of holdovers and new hires, then work with them to construct a timeline for the ensuing three years, five years and the period beyond.
Holveck wanted to quickly set definite goals and milestones for achievement, giving Endo’s employees not just a structure for the future but proof, over time, that the plan is working.
“It was important that we established what we wanted to see occur in those first three years, and do it in a way that was broad and clear enough that people could see change,” he says. “Over time, as we moved through those first sets of milestones at the end of ’08, the end of ’09 and now up to the end of 2010, people can refer back to what we said we were going to do. We reinforced those metrics, and over time, we sharpened the focus so that more specific metrics are more functionally broken down on an individual level.”
Holveck started out using revenue goals as broad-based metrics that gave everyone in the company a universal target.
“In the initial outlay of change, you want to say that in year one, we want to see X,” he says. “When I came in, sales for ’07 were a billion dollars, so I said the next year I wanted to get to $1.25 billion, then $1.5 billion. By the end of the third year, we wanted to be at $2 billion. So then it becomes a question of how we are going to get there. That is the question you hear from the employee base. The more questions people share, that is an indicator of how involved they are. They want to know what it means for them and for the overall company.
“By setting up a plan that is, in many cases, not overly descriptive but is still measurable, it forces people to step into these conversations with questions. From there, you’re educating people on both sides of the table.”
