After working over 30 years in organization development consulting, Richard Lewine created a company called Quantum Voyage, https://www.goaltrak.com/, to help businesses and organizations reach their goals. Since many of you are in the process of setting your goals for 2010, I caught up with Rich to get his insights. Here’s what he had to say:
What is GoalTrak™ and why do you offer it?
GoalTrak is a family of applications, and GoalTrakEV is our flagship offering, an enterprise-wide, SaaS strategic goals and performance management system. It is the quintessential tool to keep everyone on track toward the achievement of organizational goals.
The integrated performance appraisal module is driven by the goals in the system. It automatically updates as each user updates their actual performance 
against commitments. The organization’s Mission, Vision and Strategy reside in the system so that everyone knows where the organization is going.
We also have GoalTrakCV. This is our Web-based, coaching/mentoring version, designed for those who are coaching others toward the achievement of their personal and professional goals.
Each user’s goals are private and can only be viewed by the user and his or her mentor. And GoalTrakPV is the original GoalTrak application. It comes on CD or can be downloaded from the web and resides on the user’s PC for their private use.
Why is it important for business owners to set goals, especially in today’s economic turmoil?
Without a system of goals, our only motivation is survival. When a system of organizational goals exists, each person understands their part in moving forward. Individual contributors can set their goals in alignment with top-level goals.
Communicating the company direction to employees involves them in the process of running the business. In our experience, the more information employees have about how their efforts help the organization, the more committed they become.
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who want to reach specific, business goals?
Create a vision that is a clear picture of where you want to be at some point in the future. Share this vision with everyone in the organization. Then, ask them how to get here! You will get some incredibly helpful responses. Listen to them and involve your people in the decision-making process.
What has been your biggest success for the business and why?
Having one of our early adopters tell us that after 18 months, his company had a 47% ROI in hard dollars of investment in GoalTrakEV. He says that, “you couldn’t pry this away from me with a team of elephants!”
As a business owner, what was a challenge you faced, and how did you overcome it?
Our major challenge was figuring out how to migrate our highly successful manual systems to the computer and then to the Web. We enlisted the help of clients and colleagues in the design of GoalTrak so that the users got the most satisfying experience and the organization got the most useful information.
Thanks for your insights Rich… so for those of you thinking about what you want to do with your business in 2010, create a vision of what you want to accomplish, figure out what you need to do to get there, ask for help, and take action!
As Rich says, “Without a system of goals, our only motivation is survival.”
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