After summer break the calendars are filled to the brim with appointments for conferences regarding the planning for the coming year, most of all turnover and profit planning. Same procedure as every year. And every year there are the same specifications, it has to be more than last year or the present year, of course at lower costs.

Allow me to make a suggestion that consultants normally should not express: For 2008, try not to put the ‘more’ into the center, but the commitment to become ‘better’. Better still. Yes, indeed, you are reading this correctly and maybe you are even a bit upset right now that I dare to challenge you to become better, even though you serve as a model for your competition, because you already are better.

To become better is a never ending process and strictly speaking the only thing exciting for everyone employed in the business world. Where does this challenge begin? It begins with oneself. A company as a whole can only improve to the degree that every employee, and I emphasize ‘every’ employee, takes a step in the direction of ‘becoming better’. We have to be better when it comes to economizing our time. Let us end these time-consuming and inflated marathon sessions. Let us end self-righteous monologues and the production of needless paperwork. We do not have to force ourselves to do more. We do not need to do more in order to have an abundant amount of time at our disposal which we could then devote to our customers. We need more time for our customers and they need to feel that we are there for them. This is how we create predominance over our competition, which does not want to admit to it. More time creates better products. More time for staff and colleagues creates a better working environment. Yes, the more time we invest in this way, the more valuable planning standards for turnover and profits are.

Helmut Maucher, the Grand Seigneur of Nestle AG, writes in his management brevier: “The sales department is not the whole company, but the whole company should be a sales department.”

He, who keeps an eye on the customer and plans how to treat this customer, does not need to worry about turnover and profit figures. To go after the customer seems to be what is most important in view of the coming year, so that in the end, the numbers add up, because what is important are the numbers at the end and not the numbers that were planned in the beginning.