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We move now from idea and example to application in your company. But perhaps there is one last lingering doubt to be answered. In spite of our explanations and illustrations, some readers may still be wondering what all our ethereal talk about energy has to do with doubling the profits of your company. This raises a very fundamental question which is rarely ever asked: Where does profit come from? Let us dispense with metaphysics and talk practically. What exactly is the difference between a company that makes money and a company that loses money? What, for instance, was the difference between the Chrysler Corporation that lost $3.3 billion between 1978 and 1981 and the Chrysler Corporation that earned $3.3 billion between 1982 and 1984? Think about it. There is no single answer to these questions. There are many sources of profit, many factors that generate it, many differences between the profitable and unprofitable business. But all the answers follow a pattern and conform to the central process described in this book.
High Energy
High Values
Clear Objectives
Right Structure
Right Systems
Good Coordination
Good Communication
Higher Education
Better Skills Figure 5 depicts the process of energy conversion and illustrates how each of these factors acts to increase the generation, transmission and conversion of energy into results. Each factor acts as one of the three lenses to energize the corporation by improving the concentration and magnification of energy as it flows through the system. The end result of this process is higher productivity, higher revenues and higher profits. CHOOSING YOUR GOAL In the preceding chapters we have presented elaborate explanations and many examples of the process of corporate growth and how it can be consciously utilized by your company for rapid growth of revenues and profits. Explanations can be interesting, but they rarely inspire us to action. Examples can fill us with admiration for those that have accomplished great things, but they seldom prompt us to follow in the footsteps of those we admire. What then can inspire us to take the practical steps needed for high achievement? For that, we need an inspiring practical goal and a practical plan of action. Choose a goal for the growth in revenues and profits of your company over the next two years, or if you have already done so earlier, review that goal now. Choosing the right goal is of utmost importance. A practical goal is one which you can and will achieve. It must be sufficiently challenging to release your energies for action, and yet not so high as to seem unachievable. If you choose a goal which you fully know you can achieve, it does not inspire, it does not release and mobilize your energies for action. After some time, interest wanes. The goal and the effort are forgotten. If, on the other hand, in a moment of boldness or enthusiasm you fix a goal a little beyond your maximum capacities to achieve, after a while doubt and skepticism creep into the mind. In the light of common day, the goal looks impossible. It ceases to inspire and energize you to action. Or if you chose a goal which mentally you know is achievable, but which demands an effort you are unwilling to make to attain it, after a few halting efforts the goal will be forgotten and the effort abandoned. Therefore choosing wisely in the first place is of the greatest importance. The best way to choose a goal that will work for you is to review all the characteristics of your company and compare them with the characteristics of high performance companies which you have read about, heard about and know from first hand experience. Weigh the relative strengths and weaknesses of your company in comparison with these other companies. Consider how far your company has come and the capacities needed to accomplish what they have accomplished. Now think of a goal for your company which you can feel enthusiastic about. It should be a goal that your feel a physical urge to accomplish. That is the best goal for your company-not a dollar more or less. 
Figure 5. Corporate Energy conversion CALCULATING PROFIT AND REVENUE GOALS During the course of this book, we have suggested several exercises to help you objectively assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of the five components of your company and the company's ability to effectively generate, direct and convert energy into results. We have also identified a large number of strategies which your company, your division or your department can employ to convert the five components into engines of growth and to intensify and accelerate the process of converting energy into results. These exercises can assist you in formulating a goal that is at once challenging and realistic. If you have completed these exercises, pause at this time to review your responses to them and assess their cumulative significance. The following exercise asks you to review the original goals you set at the end of Chapter One and the subsequent plans you have developed in response to the questions we have raised in order to see whether your original goals still seem challenging and realistic. Since several of your action plans may contain duplication and since it may not be possible to carry out all the plans simultaneously, a provision is made to adjust your goals taking into account these factors. Use the Profit Plan form in appendix B to record your answers to the questions listed below:
ENVISIONING THE FUTURE Once you have established clear goals, the next step is to develop a detailed strategic plan for achieving them. Our aim is to accelerate the natural, unconscious process by which companies growth by consciously initiating actions that will accelerate that process. That requires imagination, forethought and careful planning. Many companies prepare strategic plans to develop new opportunities in the marketplace, financial plans for investment of capital, production or sales plans. But that type of planning is inadequate for this purpose. Plans which focus only on one or two of the five components often fail, because the other components are not developed enough to support the growth. When Trimedyne's sales exploded in 1987, its production capacity was inadequate to meet the demand, it was severely under-staffed and under-managed, and it lacked the organizational structure and systems necessary to handle the expansion. That is why AMRE plans far ahead for its human resources and systems requirements as well as its sales strategy and financial needs. A very powerful method to clarify your understanding of the steps needed in order to achieve your goals is to envision what the company will look like when these goals have been achieved. Federal Express conducts exercises like this in order to help it anticipate its future needs and develop sound plans for meeting them. Recently the company undertook an exercise called Butterfly 2000 to help it envision what the company will be like when it achieves its corporate goal of increasing the number of packages it handles every day from the current 1 million to six million. Through this exercise management identified the resources it will require in each of the five components and the strategies it will employ to develop them. Smith explains the concept: "Planning for the future is very difficult when an organization is this complex and this capital intensive, and the size and scope is really very large. What I have done periodically is to create a snap shot vision of some point in the future, a vision of the future. The important point is that we thought about what the company was going to look like at some point in the future and then we worked backward to the present. We did not extrapolate forward from the present to the future." This exercise enabled Federal Express to project how many parcels or tons of freight they will be transporting, how many people, planes and trucks they will need to carry that freight, how many hubs and sorting facilities will be required and where they should be located, what type of service facilities will be needed to handle all those planes and trucks, etc. But the exercise goes beyond this. It also enabled them to identify the type of organization the company will need in order to manage this size business, how many phone calls it will have to handle every day, how many invoices, how much information, what type of systems it will need in order to handle these large volumes efficiently, how many seasoned managers, pilots, engineers, drivers, couriers, and customer service agents it will need for its worldwide operations, how it will attract them, and how it will train them in the Federal Express way of doing business. Jim Barksdale talked about planning at Federal Express: "We do a lot of planning in this company. We have to plan. That keeps us from making enormously expensive mistakes. It also enables us not to get overwhelmed by the stress of growth, because we know what is coming." THINK DOUBLE Imagine your company/your division/your department twice as large and twice as profitable as it is today. Or if the goals you have chosen will more than double revenues and profits, think of how the company will be when it achieves these goals. Ask yourself, what does doubling really mean? What does it involve? How will things be different than they are now? Think about the impact of doubling on each of the five components of the business. There are several different ways or levels at which it can be done? First start by visualizing the physical results of such an expansion. How many customers will you have when you achieve the goals? How many products or services will the company be producing and delivering? How large a facility will be required? How many stores, offices, plants? What new or additional equipment will be required? How much additional investment will be needed in plant and machinery, in raw materials and finished inventory? How many people will be necessary to produce and market these products and services? Now take a second look from a slightly different angle. What is the knowledge and skill necessary to accomplish your goal? Will it require greater sales and marketing expertise? Will it require greater design capabilities or production know-how? Will your employees need better technical, organizational or operational skills? Do your managers have all the skills they will need to make decisions, solve problems, plan and direct new activities, motivate and communicate with their employees and customers? Third, try to imagine how all these people will function together within the organization? Who will train the new people and upgrade the skills of existing employees? What new departments will have to be added? What new positions will be needed at the level of operators, supervisors and managers in sales, marketing, finance, production, administration, etc.? Do you have the systems needed to handle the larger volume and complexity of work-systems for recruitment, training, production, quality control, customer service, financial control, reporting, decision-making, etc.? How will the company ensure good communication and proper coordination of activities as the organization expands? Fourth, look at the ideas which direct the activities of the company. Does the company have a clear mission statement to guide its future growth? What type of company does it want to become? What are its values? Does it have clear quantitative goals or objectives? What type of plan is needed to build up each of the five components in order to achieve those goals? Fifth, look at the force that will be needed to accomplish the goal you have set. Who will provide the energy for all this work of planning, directing, and monitoring progress? Of building up each of the five components to the required level? Of attracting new customers, creating new products, raising capital, building up the organization and developing the people? How much energy and effort will it require? Where will it come from? Finally, look into yourself. What skills and capacities will you need in order to accomplish the goals? How much personal effort and dedication will it require? How do you feel about pursuing the goals you have set and the plans you have drawn up? Are you inspired, enthused, excited and overflowing with energy? Pause here and reaffirm your decision and commitment to the goals. The surest sign of your future success is if you can feel at this point a calm, happy solid aspiration to take up the challenge and grow yourself and your company as far and as high as possible. Take the time to develop a vision of your company in the future at the six levels described above. Set down your vision on paper in as much detail as possible. Discuss it with your associates. Work out the alternatives in your mind, until your vision becomes so real that it seems like you can almost see into the future. FROM PLAN TO IMPLEMENTATION Once you have established the goals for your company / division / department and developed a clear vision of what it should become, follow these steps to translate your vision into reality:
THE THREE CONCLUSIONS We ended the first chapter by presenting three fundamental conclusions about rapid growth. Our first conclusion stated that rapid, sustained and profitable growth is possible for any company that really wants it and is willing to make the effort. Through the explanations and examples in this book, we have shown why and how we believe this statement to be true. We have particularly emphasized the central importance of the human aspiration in the process of corporate growth. To achieve the maximum possible in the life of your company and in your own life, you must feel something like Trimedyne's Howard Cooper. "I am impatient for success," he says. "It is my burning expectation to get there, my aspiration...It is a very strong dream I have. I have to tell you that I dream this stuff." Our second conclusion states that rapid growth in revenues and profits is the result of a process, a process that can be learned. Many entrepreneurs may be born with innate talents for enterprise, but the knowledge and skills needed to grow and keep growing a company can be acquired by anyone. We have attempted to describe this process as clearly and fully as possible in a book intended for the general business reader and for companies ranging in size from $100,000 dollars to $100 billion. This process is not a theory or construction. It is a description of the dynamics we have observed in hundreds of companies of all sizes and in a wide variety of businesses. The process is naturally occurring in every company all the time. Our aim is to make that natural process more conscious and, therefore, more precise, swift, powerful and effective. We have cited many examples to show that a conscious utilization of the process can dramatically accelerate the pace of growth and multiply its results. Our third conclusion states that the process of growth is fundamentally the same for the individual, the company, and the nation. In fact the three are inextricably intertwined, i.e. personal growth, corporate growth and national growth go together. At many points in the book, we have attempted to show the direct and intimate relationship between the growth of individuals within a company and the growth of the company itself. The parallel goes even deeper, because personal growth of any type within or outside the company involves the same process of releasing, directing and harnessing energy to achieve results. DOUBLE AMERICA We have said very little about the relationship between the growth of companies and the growth of the nation as a whole, but here too the connection is direct and very close. Nations grow through the growth of individuals and organizations. All the achievements of the U.S. economy thus far are the cumulative result of countless individual and corporate contributions. Yet at the same time, these individual and corporate achievements are made possible by the general atmosphere and supporting commercial climate in the country as a whole. Today the American national climate permits companies to grow and to double. It does not actively support them. Companies that choose as their goals to double or triple revenues and profits are pioneers and trend-setters serving the nation as a whole. Their example can be a source of inspiration for thousands of other companies to follow, the way today's great corporations have inspired countless others to emulate them. But imagine what could be achieved, if the nation as a whole adopted the objective of doubling as its inspiring goal and offered social recognition and support to any and every company that consents to serve that goal by doubling their own business. Suppose that instead of looking with indifference or concern on the growth of other companies, we viewed their success as our own achievement at the national level. We could create a national environment that actively fosters the unlimited growth of its members and its own endless expansion. Today our country is preoccupied by national economic problems-the trade deficit, the national debt, inflation and unemployment. But if the productivity and profitability of American industry doubled, all those problems would disappear. If a company like Chrysler Corporation could covert horrendous losses into tremendous profits and eradicate its enormous pile of debts seven years before they were due for repayment, why cannot our country do it too? The scale is different, but the the process is exactly the same. The process is the one described in this book. At the national level it requires the releasing of some of the enormous, pent-up, latent potentials of this young and vibrant nation and a restoration of the balance between the essential components of national development. This is a country that ABOUNDS in energy and resourcefulness. We have seen what this nation could accomplish when faced with the challenge of saving freedom and democracy in the last world war. If even a portion of these capacities were released and channeled for national prosperity, this country could feed and cloth all its members and have enough left over to feed and cloth the entire rest of the world. To double revenues and profits is a fitting short term goal for a company. To double the prosperity of our nation, to double America, is a fitting collective goal for a people with the energy and potential we possess. SUMMARY
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