Skip to content

What is your one thing?

Your job as CEO/founder is to make the organizational objectives and goals for your startup clear, concise, and measurable.  I am reminded by Jack Palance’s character as the wise and crusty old cowboy in the movie City Slickers telling Billy Crystal to figure out what his "one thing" is in his life.  Jack_palance
In business, you need to wrap all of the complexities around all of the specific strategies and tactics to something simple that everyone can understand and strive for.  I’ve worked for some companies that had so many initiatives and goals that it was hard to get a cohesive picture about what everyone is actually trying to do. Ask yourself the question what defines your companies success by the end of the year —
not strategies like launching a big product or a new marketing campaign.

In the end, they have a better grasp of what that "One Thing" is and define it (btw, our goal at WidgetBucks is to serve 2 Billion impressions by the end of 2008).  A lot of big companies develop a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) which acts as more like a two-part goal and vision statement.  I like to think of this in smaller time intervals for startups.  I tend to want this to be a year-end goal that encompasses either a market share, revenue, or EBITDA goal.  Its a goal that everyone can get behind that isn’t a slam dunk (but isn’t impossible).  Then, reinforce it all of the time from email communications, stickers on your companies monitors — everywhere. 

So, what is your one thing?

Share:

Scroll To Top