Matt Haddad’s company is disruptive.
It’s part of his business plan at Medversant Technologies LLC, a provider of IT solutions to health care companies.
“We are disrupting processes in order to make an industry more efficient,” says Haddad, founder president and CEO of Medversant, which generated $5 million in 2009 revenue and is projecting $20 million in revenue this year. “In order to do that, you need to motivate people to think out of the box, to face tremendous resistance to what we’re trying to accomplish within the client’s own organizational structure.”
To make that happen, Haddad and his leadership team need to set ambitious goals on both an individual and company level, communicate those goals and hold employees and managers accountable for reaching those goals.
“I challenge as well as apply a lot of patience and repetition in terms of the message, so that I understand that my management team really understands where we’re trying to go,” Haddad says.
Smart Business spoke with Haddad about how you can create an aggressively goal-focused organization.
Start with clear communication. The main thing is to really communicate your objectives very clearly to your team. Make sure everyone understands whatever that goal may be, because they have to understand where you’re trying to go. Then, if it is an ambitious goal, as they usually are with small companies trying to grow large, you need to create challenging expectations for each of the management team members. Don’t let them stay in a comfort zone. Create ambitious goals, but then have patience when those goals may not be met. Keep assisting and helping so that the company can get there and each company can achieve their personal goals.
Know your employees’ potential. You can’t err too far on the unreachable. I don’t think it’s possible. Most people don’t really know how much they can truly achieve because they’ve never been tested. When I’ve set aggressive goals for people, I’ve been surprised in a positive way much more often than I’ve been surprised in a negative way. My philosophy is that you hire good people and then you test them, give them goals that they never thought they could achieve. Generally, they’ll surprise you in a positive way.
A big mistake is to set goals that are too easy to achieve, especially in a growing business.
