A program is built from targets, and targets come in six kinds. It's easy to write only one of them, the one about quantity, and that is the kind that does the most damage when it comes first.

What a target is, and why there's more than one kind

The difference between a plan and a program is simple. The plan is the idea. The program says what gets done, by whom, and when. It is built from targets: actions that have to be taken to reach a result you want.

A common mistake is to think a target is one thing. The source names six kinds, and every kind has its own job:

  • Major target: the broad aim of the whole move, worded at the top level.
  • Primary target: the groundwork. Someone is named responsible, the team is set, and a way of communicating is agreed.
  • Vital target: what has to happen before anyone can operate at all.
  • Conditional target: a check before you commit.
  • Operating target: the explicit directions and the timetable.
  • Production target: quantities against time.

Each answers a different question a move in business has to settle. Somebody has to be responsible, something has to exist before you can begin, and sometimes you need to check before you invest. Quantity is only one of those questions.

Suppose a gift shop decides to launch a corporate-orders arm within the quarter. That is the major target. Before committing, it asks twenty customers whether they would order, a conditional target. Naming someone to run the area is a primary target, and a packaging supplier who delivers fast is a vital target. A catalogue by the end of the month is an operating target, and a number of orders by the end of the quarter is a production target.

Against that, picture a garage owner who writes only the last kind, eight installations a week, and is surprised it doesn't happen. The other five kinds were never written.

The kind that must never come first

Here is the rule that runs hardest against instinct. According to the source, a pure production target doesn't exist. From the moment someone has to carry it out, organization is already in the picture: people, roles, someone to handle the work. So a production target has to come together with the organization that supports it, right after it.

In plain words, we'll sell twice as much is a target that can't stand alone. Somebody has to handle the orders, somebody has to pack, and somebody has to answer the customers. Writing the sales number without those links manufactures your own collapse.

Suppose a self-employed air-conditioning installer sets himself eight installations a week without hiring any help. Within two weeks he collapses. What works is the reverse order: an apprentice first, then output raised in stages.

Or an online jewelry shop that sets fifty sales a month without strengthening shipping. The orders swamp it, customers wait weeks, and the success itself hurts the shop's reputation.

The contrast is a bakery that raises production after taking on someone for the night shift, and not earlier. The production target is the same, the order reversed, and so is the result.

A production target written first turns success into a crisis, and fast.

The target that checks before you commit

Of the six, the one that saves a small business the most money is the conditional target. It is built as an either/or: you go, you look, and only what you find decides. It commits you to nothing, and it buys you information before you commit.

Suppose a clinic owner is considering evening hours. Before opening them she asks thirty existing patients. Twelve say yes, and only then do the hours open, full from the first week. Compare an owner who opens evening hours because it sounded sensible, and pays for three months of an employee sitting there alone.

The theater in Corfu, from the previous chapter, was missing exactly this. A check like that costs a few hours. The mistake it prevents costs months.

Telling the important from the trivial

The chapter also touches on a difficulty the source puts sharply: a person's worst difficulty is the inability to tell the important from the unimportant. When every target looks the same as every other, the work goes by whatever is easiest.

Most task lists in a small business throw everything into one run of lines, and then get worked through in order of what's easy.

Suppose a garage owner sorts the week's list. Two tasks turn out to be trivial and get deleted. One turns out to be something that must not be done at all, because it would have cancelled a commitment to a customer.

Or a studio owner who finds she spends four hours a week on things that are merely desirable, while what has to be done keeps getting pushed back.

What the booklet has on this

In the booklet From Goal to Target, the six kinds come with an example of each, along with the tool that sorts the important from the trivial. The chapter ends with two exercises, spot it and analyse, and the next one deals with what turns a sentence into a target.

The question of how much to sell comes last. Before it, you need to know who will hold what arrives.