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FROM THE FOUNDER
I n one of the businesses I am a partner in, we recently got into a discussion about the fact that the production people need to tell us what they are going to be able to produce each week before the new week starts. One of the top managers equated establishing this number for production to the goals that their sales people have. There is a big difference between a goal or target, and a commitment or mandate; make sure you don’t confuse the two. The difference in a goal vs. a commitment
Mark Zweig
While that may make sense to most people on the surface, I see a big distinction between production and sales. Sales has goals they HOPE they can meet. There may be factors out of their control. Someone else (the client or customer) has to decide to buy. Sales can have goals, but in reality they cannot make a promise. Production, on the other hand, has complete control over what they produce or don’t produce. There is very little that is not within their control. If they have all the people and resources, they should be able to commit. They don’t need a goal. They need a mandate.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think in most cases that management should impose the mandate. While I do think that the production people need to understand what kind of output from them is generally required, they need to be the ones to say what output they will have during the coming week or month. Obviously, if that number is too low, management will have to figure out why production doesn’t think they can do what they need to do, and clear that roadblock or those roadblocks out of the way for them. My point is there is a big difference between a goal or
See MARK ZWEIG, page 6
THE ZWEIG LETTER APRIL 21, 2025, ISSUE 1582
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