Choice of the Basic Goal
Choosing the basic goal is something completely different to choosing tasks and subordinate goals which depend upon it. If it is not (or no longer) clear and certain whether that which one is doing is the right thing, every team becomes stressed. This stress differentiates top teams and decision-making teams, who choose goals and define them for others, from teams who have their goals and tasks assigned. Of course, combinations of these are possible here. The inner demands on the people and the communicative stress in the group are considerable, if, so to speak, everything is up for debate: “Don’t we have to, or don’t we want to do something completely different?”. A possible change of business fields, of products, of business models etc, is usually coupled with survival questions for the organisation.
To master such reflections, an external perspective is almost always required (consultancy), because otherwise there is, as a rule rather than the exception, an unfavourable, fearful adherence to the old or a too rapid take-up of the new, which is driven by enthusiasm. In addition, an existing system always tends to focus upon that which one does and not that which one does not do! However, the latter is crucial for bringing goal alternatives, which have previously been discarded or have not yet been perceived, back into focus.