Hierarchies of Objectives

Proximate objectives not only cascade down hierarchies; they cascade in time.

In organizations of any size, high-level proximate objectives create goals or lower-level units, which, in turn, create their own proximate objectives, and so on, in a cascade of problem solving at finer and finer levels of detail.

Proximate objectives not only cascade down hierarchies; they cascade in time.  For instance, when Nestle purchased British chocolate company Rowntree, top management made a judgement that Nestle's transnational food-marketing skills would be able to take Rowntree's Britain-centered brands and move them into many other countries.  The first steps in that directions were very successful, and the combined management's then developed more subtle and nuanced objectives.

ACTION POINT: Anytime a company enters a new business or market, there is necessarily this cascade of adjusting and elaborating proximate objectives.