The Goal

I read the book ‘The Goal’ by Eliyahu Goldratt last week. The protagonist Alex Rogo discovers the goal of his company is to make profits. How simple!

This is exactly what my Accounts professor, Peter Clarke at CIIM said “The goal of any business is to make profits. Everything else is secondary.” If you keep that in mind, everything else falls into place.

CSR, being green, has its place. But unless a company turns a profit consistently, it will not survive and nor will the interests of its shareholders, and other stakeholders.

Do you or any of the small business owners need to read a book to draw this conclusion? For instance, the guy who lives in the flat below is a tailor. Sometime back he had an assistant working for him. But now he runs his business all by himself. Why? I assume that’s because over the years with more clothes being available in the retail shops and shopping malls, having clothes custom-made has become ,well, old-fashioned and inconvenient. (The last time I had something custom-made was for my brother’s marriage.) And so an exercise in cost-cutting takes place. A layoff, eh?

Did he go to business school? No, it’s plain common sense. And that’s what The Goal is about! Business decisions explained as common sense. (Mind you, I’m not knocking your business degree or mine!)

Read it. I assure you you’ll enjoy it!

Have a great day!