Mike’s Company

“Once I had established the framework for empowerment,” says Mike, “I formed a group of my top managers to focus on our goals. I knew that I had the right people, I just needed to be specific with them about the goals that the company should accomplish and how we could make that happen.

“We call this group the Goal Management Team, or GMT. We call it this because the primary responsibility of this group is to ensure that we achieve our goals. Members of the GMT include:

- The head of the organization (in my company that’s me, but it could be a department head in a larger organization).

- Those individuals who directly report to the head person.

“The key managers are not there to bring the head person up-to-date or to get his or her advice or approval. These are team meetings that are held to define the company’s plans and goals, and to measure performance versus plan on a regular basis.

“This team of key managers deals only with the “Vital Few,” the most important things that affect their goals. This group does not get involved in what we term the “Trivial Many,” the little day-to-day things that often divert top management attention.

“The GMT is not a management-by-consensus decision-making body, nor is it a democratic body, like a Board of Directors, where the members vote on motions. Control in the GMT rests with the person accountable for their specific area of responsibility. The person responsible for the results defines the actions to be taken to achieve the goals. The other members of the GMT may provide counsel and advice, but it is the responsible person who makes the decisions about their area of responsibility.”

A True Story

In 1707, the British Fleet was engaged in battle with the French in the Mediterranean Sea. Returning home from a successful skirmish, Admiral Sir Clowdisley Showvell ran into thick fog near the coast of England. Unfortunately, this was anything but a simple inconvenience.

Sir Clowdisley and his contemporaries in the early 1700’s were at a distinct disadvantage when it came to navigating the open seas—they never really knew where they were. They had, of course, no GPS or radios, and the navigation aids of the day were inadequate for determining position accurately. Although they were able to be reasonably accurate in determining their latitude (their north-south position), they had enormous difficulty in estimating their longitude (their east-west position).

In fact, it would be many decades until this problem was solved. In the meantime, Sir Clowdisley, like his fellow sailors, did his best to estimate his location, but it was not uncommon at that time to be many miles off course. This was a big deal if you were only a short distance away from a wave-battered and rocky coast. So it was for Sir Clowdisley.

Knowing that the situation was dicey, Sir Clowdisley summoned all his navigators to provide their opinions. The consensus was that they were safely west of the Brittany peninsula, off the west coast of France.

At the same time, one of the sailors on the crew approached Sir Clowdisley to admit that he had been estimating the fleet’s location on his own during the passage and that he believed that the fleet was in grave danger. The sailor’s admission was a brave act in itself, since the Royal Navy forbade an inferior from engaging in navigation exercises—that was the domain of the navigators and officers. Sir Clowdisley immediately had him hanged for mutiny.

Soon after, the fleet struck the Scilly Islands off the southwest tip of England. Approximately 2,000 men were lost.