Bill Canady shows CEOs how to write one measurable goal in a strict format: improve plus measure plus number plus unit plus date, with a denominator so money alone won't solve it. The goal must be handwritten, spoken aloud, no conjunctions. Real adoption happens when people outside your chain cite it in their own decisions, not when it decorates walls.
Chapters
In one line, not a page, not a pyramid with three pillars on it. We've all made those, and yes, they're really cool. Penny. Not a page, not a pyramid with 3 pillars under it. We've all made those. They look like cool houses. One line written down in your own handwriting, then say it out loud. 2 constraints. First, no conjunctions to add a second goal. The moment you write while also, you now have 2 goals, and 2 goals is the beginning of 25. So second, Say it out loud before you accept it. If you stumble reading your own goal, so will everybody else, and they'll stop trying by the second week. Format it to start from improve, insert measure, by number, unit, by date, right? So I'm gonna improve my margin by the number of units I sell by this date. That's the shape. Fill it in with your business. Move 2, pressure test it against 3 questions. Take the line you just wrote and run it through these. 90 seconds. 1, can a person picked at random from your business recite it? Not this week. You haven't installed it yet, but could they once you've said it 15 times? If it takes 2 sentences to say, the answer's no. Length is the enemy here. The company can hold 1 sentence and cannot hold a paragraph. 2, does it have a denominator? Is it a ratio or a dollar figure tied to a ratio? If it's a pure numerator— revenue, units, headcounts, bookings— somebody can hit it by spending your money. And eventually somebody will. Lord knows I have lived this. I always come back to regret it. 3, does it name a date? An actual month? Not this year, not over the plan horizon. A date you can be behind. Does it actually Line up with where you're going. And here's an informal 4th one I'd apply before I sign my name to it. Does achieving this goal require you to say no to something? If the goal can be reached without stopping anything, without walking away from any revenue, without disappointing anyone, it's probably not a real goal. It's a forecast. You're trying to make too many people happy here. Goal is to win. Real goals cost something on the day you set them. Remember that. Move number 3, put the meeting on the calendar with a written agenda as ends and unnamed owners. Gotta have names against them. Can't tell you the amount of meetings I come out of and we have all this stuff and there's no date, no one that owns it. So you can imagine what gets done. Half a day, your direct reports, send the agenda in advance in writing so that nobody arrives planning to present. 4 blocks. Block 1, the situation in numbers only, 20 minutes delivered by the CFO. That's the guy that owns the numbers, right? We trust him. Where EBITDA is, where it has to be, and the gap in dollars. Block number 2, the goal proposed by you. You're the CEO. You're the one that's got to get it there and argue it for real. Let them fight it. A goal that survives an argument gets carried. A goal that Whereas receive gets forwarded. Boy, I tell you, this is super important. You have to put your number out there and not through force of personality, not through saying you're the CEO. Team's gotta own it. In order to do that, they gotta believe it. They gotta touch it, feel it, taste it, understand what it is, and know they have it. All right. Block 3, 2 or 3 moves that close the gap and you cap it at 3 before anyone speaks out loud at the top of the block. So the meeting is a selection process rather than an accumulation process, right? We are not expansive thinking here. We are coming together. And block 4 is the one that makes the other 3 matter. Named owners and dates, not functions, not committees. A human being's name against each move. Boy, this is important. And that human being is in the room, in the room when their name goes on it. We've assigned lots of people who were not there. Make sure they know what the heck's going on. You do not leave that room without block 4 finished. If you run out of time, you cut block 1. The situation can go in an email. Ownership cannot. What it looks like when it's working and when it's theater. Here's the adoption test, and it's the adoption test, and it's the only one I trust. You know a new standard is taken when people who don't report to you start citing it back to each other in rooms you're not in. To settle arguments you never heard about. When a plant manager tells a salesperson that order doesn't help the 300 basis points, and you weren't there and nobody told you it happened, and you found out about it 6 weeks later by accident. Now that's adoption. Things are happening. You got to be in that room. They understood. They got the message. Until then, it's just a thing the CEO says. Happens a lot, doesn't it? And it takes time. Realistically, 2 or 3 months of consistent enforcement, and that will be fast. Consistent is the operative word. It means you open every meeting with it. You ask about it when you're being briefed on something else, and you decline at least one attractive opportunity out loud on the record because it does not serve that goal. The last one is what converts it. People don't believe your priorities because you announce them. They believe them the first time you pay for one of them. That decision got to cost something. Fear looks like the opposite, and it's easy to recognize because it's more fun. The goal goes on the wall, goes on a mouse pad. There's a banner in the lobby and a hashtag on the internet site, #focus, and nobody ever uses it in an argument. Nobody has ever killed a project with it, and it's never cost anyone anything, which is how you know it's not real. The wall is not installation. The wall is decoration. Installation is when the goal starts making decisions that you didn't make. 3 things worth keeping from this one. One, get a goal. 25 initiatives is arithmetic— arithmetically, 25 initiatives is the same as none because your organization will sort the list for you and it will sort for comfort. One number and everything else is in the service of it. 2, A goal has to be a number, a unit, and a date, and it has to have a denominator, so it can't be bulk. It's critical. Improve EBITDA margin by 300 basis points in 12 months. If your goal doesn't have all 4 of those parts, what you have is a wish, and I've never seen a wish move an income statement. Number 3, you're not done when you say it. You're done when they say it to each other. That's the adoption test. It takes 2 or 3 months of constant reinforcement, and the thing that converts it is watching you turn something down attractive because it does not serve the goal. R, to do. It's on you though. And when you get to the end of your 100 days, and when the goal is set, the strategy is chosen, the structure is aligned, and the cadence has started— Oh, it's like music, isn't it? There's one line to close on. I use it every day. In the 100 meetings that I ever run, and I don't dress it up. Now, this is our plan. We're gonna execute with discipline. No one else will do it for us. No one's coming to save us. We have to do this. That last sentence is the one that matters. Nobody is coming. The sponsor isn't gonna operate the business. The board isn't going to fix your product line. The market's not gonna hand you 300 basis points as a favor. You got one goal and about 900 days left to hit it. On the next one, we're going to go through days 30 through 90, and we'll find out where your profit actually lives. Because I'll tell you right now, it isn't spread evenly, and your P&L is an average that's hiding 2 different, completely different businesses inside of one set of books. I'll give you the 4 quads, the single best question I know to ask a leadership team, and the answers I got when I asked it at a $310 million industrial business. The lowest answer in that room was 18%. The highest one, 41%. If you want the one-page worksheet for today in the goal format and the test, the meeting one agenda, you can find them in the 80/20 Institute, same place you'd go if you want to find others in your own business. So get out there and go find them. I'm Bill Canady. Now go do the work.
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