Recently I was reading the 2008 annual report of varian Inc which is one of the leading medical equipment manufacturer , in the opening statement of the report Varian Inc CEO mentioned that he put forward a challenge in front of his employees to save 100,000 lives every year , that is the number which can fill a football stadium.
This challenge aptly suites to Varian which has already developed many cutting edge instruments based on radiotherapy and other cancer related treatment technologies to save cancer patients , enhance the accuracy of the results and reduce the overall treatment time to almost half. One latest example is their rapidArc beam which targets tumor in a single continuous
rotation around the patient leading to the highest possible precision and control of the treatment ( Hence lesser chances of killing healthy tissues) . Whats motivating in this case is rather than putting forward a target of increasing bottom line , increased rate of product development, rapid go to market timing ( and what not) CEO hit on a point which can be related by almost every one in the company and also by supplier and customers of the company , a higher cause which is worth putting every bit of effort . Should it has been a normal sales and number oriented motivation , only top and middle management would have been running behind those numbers but now every one would be willing to contribute looking at the noble cause.
This should be a learning for many other in different industries as how to thing of a bigger picture and inspire people to do something which can give them extreme satisfaction and drive their enthusiasm to the peak point of making a difference. The beauty of such inspiration is that it has not ignored top and bottom lines in fact it has encompassed everything in much better way then any other vision could have been , meeting such challenges means producing most innovative products, driving highest quality level and near zero defects , taking direct feedback from customers and their customers and implementing them , carving a niche for yourself and when all of this is done numbers will follow.
Look back in the history of business whenever such a vision statement was created , it had become an instant success . I see Mr D B Ambani's objective of making a call cheaper than a postcard considering our rural population can afford only this much for communication created one of the largest telecom player of India, there are many more !!.. Tata family also put forward many such challenges to its employees like creating a world class Indian hotel when Indians were not allowed in british hotels, Developing leading science institute like IISc to groom young india !!
