New Year, new goals for growth: Fast 50 Diary firms break out to-do lists for building sales, cutting costs

Biz Journal Fast 50 Diary, by Chris Newmarker, January 2010

Whether it's getting on the treadmill more or quitting smoking, everyone has their own New Year's resolutions.

Business owners do, too. At the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal's Fast 50 Diary companies, executives have a wide variety of management goals for the year.

The CEO of a digital and interactive firm wants to make sure his company doesn't treat goals the way many people handle promises not to eat cheesecake anymore.

At Bloomington-based Sierra Bravo Corp. Luke Bucklin is resolving that goals won't be ignored this year.

Bucklin, Sierra Bravo's president and CEO, said it's been easy for him and his workers to commit themselves to strategies, but as the year moves along and they get buried in finishing projects for clients, they lose track of those goals.

"We tend to have great ideas, and we get excited by them. And then we get busy on our day-to-day business and don't execute on them as much as we should." Bucklin said.

This year, Bucklin wants to set up a more formal system of accountability as the firm, which teams with marketing and advertising firms, seeks new markets. Ideas include teaming with business process consulting firms and video game developers.

Bucklin wants to make sure particular questions are answered through the year, including: Who's going to be accountable for making it happen? What does success look like? And how are we going to measure whether it was successful or not?

He doesn't want to "throw the idea out there and depend on people's passion to get it done."

"it's about adding some discipline to that passion."

(Note: this is an except of the article)

 

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