Great Leaders have the ability to align all of the positive energy within their company and point it towards a common goal. The best way to do this is to use long term goals to create a plan which clearly sets out measurements and targets which everyone can understand and identify with. 

NASA once struggled with twelve mission statements ranging from education, research and sharing knowledge, to exploration, etc. President Kennedy condensed them all down into one mission statement which energized the organization when he said, “Place a man on the Moon by the end of the decade and bring him safely home.” Everyone in NASA understood this simple, but incredibly difficult, objective and each member of the team personally owned it and could identify with it. So much so, they could directly link what they did to the organization’s primary mission. 

There are always a vast number of great ideas in any company. The challenge is to filter them down to two or three ideas that can ignite and inspire the team. So, having a clear mission or objective helps identify the “Critical Few” actions that successful leaders must focus on to avoid poor execution of too many initiatives. Great leaders know that individuals or teams can only successfully execute two or three initiatives at one time. 

Once the long term goals have been established they must be broken down into phases (usually individual years) in order to help create “bite sized chunks” that can be easily communicated so that the team can clearly understand what they need to do. These phases are further subdivided into short term goals. For instance, the company I run established a three year goal which does not change every year but stays fixed for the three years. We then broke that down into one year goals which are then subdivided into a set of three month actions which then become our “Critical Few”. This focus on the “Critical Few” helps the entire team focus on what’s important and better understand how their role impacts the goal.

The Three Year Plan, the One Year Objectives and the Quarterly Tactical Plan are always communicated at the beginning of training and communications sessions as a reminder and to reinforce everyone’s role and impact, not only on the goal, but also on their team and the results we work so hard to achieve.

Within the broadcast industry there are many initiatives focused on IP, Cloud, Virtualization, 4K and more. It’s clear that all of these different initiatives won’t mature at the same time so it’s critical to all of the players in the industry to identify the “Critical Few” that will have the biggest impact on their customers and therefore their businesses.

At BroadStream our Development Team is focused on the “Critical Few” product developments that will have the biggest impact on our customers moving forward over the next few years. Our flagship solution, OASYS Integrated Playout will continue to evolve for our customers so their investment in our software will carry them safely and securely through the on-going evolution within our industry for many years to come.

So, stay tuned, as the next few months and years will demonstrate our commitment to the “continuous improvement” of our solutions, support and services based on the “Critical Few” that matter to our loyal customers.