The Team as a Mini Business Unit

A company can be seen as group of mini-business units or departments, linked together by customer-supplier relationships. When each mini-business unit is focused on providing the other business unit with high quality, on time and cost-effective products, internal customers will be satisfied, which will ultimately lead to external customers being satisfied.

The diagram below, shows the company as a group of mini-business units, linked together by customer/supplier relationships:

Goals and Goal Alignment

The most important part of implementing your company strategy (vision, mission, values and objectives) is to set goals. Goals should be formulated and agreed upon at all levels and aligned top-down and bottom-up. The diagram below shows the downward and upward cascading process:

To get buy in and co-operation across the company, it is essential that the goal setting process is done in a participative fashion. At each level of goal setting, key stakeholders should be identified and invited to participate in the goal setting process.

Strategic planning includes a process of setting goals for the organisation as a whole, which can be long term (3-5 year) goals but could also include short term goals.

Operational planning goal setting is breaking down these strategic goals into shorter term action orientated goals to be achieved in this operational cycle (1 year at most).

Click here to view a video that explains strategic planning how to cascading goals.

Cascading goals down into business and support unit goals, means the organizational level goals (the first Tier) is translated into business unit or support unit goals (the second Tier) and then later to team and individual goals (the third Tier). Cascading translates high-level strategy into lower-level objectives, measures, and operational details. Cascading is the key to organization alignment around strategy. Team and individual goals link day-to-day work with department goals and corporate vision. Cascading is the key to organization alignment around strategy. Performance measures are developed for all objectives at all organization levels. As the goals are cascaded down through the organization, objectives become more operational and tactical, as do the performance measures. Accountability follows the objectives and measures, as ownership is defined at each level. An emphasis on results and the strategies needed to produce results is communicated throughout the organisation.