Between the goal of a business and the task someone carries out this week there are ten items, and they come in one order. When one is missing, or clashes with the item next to it, the work stalls, even when everyone is working hard.

Ten items, one order

The ladder is a sequence that gives order and seniority. At the top sits the goal, the big, long-range direction of the business. Below it come purpose, policy, plan, program, project and order. Then three more: the ideal scene, which is what things look like once the purpose is achieved; the statistic, the number that measures the distance from it; and the valuable final product, which is whatever comes out at the end in a form that can be traded.

The source insists on both the count and the order. Ten items, and in no other order.

This ladder is what connects a sentence like I want the business to grow to an action somebody takes on Monday morning. Skip the steps in the middle and the goal hangs on the wall for a full year. Then you decide you aren't disciplined enough. According to the booklet, your discipline is fine. You are missing links.

The value of the list shows when you fill it in. Suppose a garage owner goes through the ten items for one area only, vehicle reception. He finds that four of them are completely empty: plan, program, project and order. He had jumped straight from the goal to tasks.

The gap doesn't always sit in the same place. Suppose a freelance consultant fills in the same list and finds that her bottom is strong. She has a statistic and a clear product. What's missing is the middle, a plan that connects them to the goal.

Every item has to agree with its neighbor

Here the ladder stops being a list and becomes a tool. According to the source, you run it down from the top and up from the bottom until all ten items fully agree with one another. No single item matters more than the rest. The requirement is mutual agreement.

And what happens when one item is out of line? The source answers bluntly: the project will stall, “if it does not fail outright”.

Suppose a business whose goal is personal, high-end service, while its pricing policy is to be the cheapest in the market. Two adjacent items pull in opposite directions. Every plan built on top of them collapses, and nobody understands why.

Or a salon whose goal is long-term regular clients, while every weekly target is about new ones. The team works hard in a direction that contradicts the goal.

That is why the booklet says most operational problems in a small business turn out to be two items on the ladder that don't agree with each other.

The ladder works on any subject

One example in the source sounds odd. The ladder can be run on golf balls, and also on a destructive subject like cockroaches. It sounds like a joke, and there is a serious point behind it: the ladder describes how an intention becomes reality in any field, which makes it more than a business technique.

So it works on the whole business, on one area inside it, or on one single project.

Suppose an owner runs it on one narrow subject, collecting payment, and settles within two weeks a problem that had dragged for two years. Or a studio owner who runs it on herself instead of on the business: a personal goal, a purpose, and everything that follows from them. The structure is exactly the same.

Why you fix upward

One relationship in the ladder is worth knowing now: purpose is senior to policy, and policy sits immediately below it. That explains something every owner has met.

When someone in the business sets rules that contradict the direction, it's easy to see a rebel. According to the source, someone who sets random or contrary policy has simply stepped off the group's purpose. Their purpose differs from it, by a little or by a lot.

Suppose an employee gives discounts against the price list. The owner assumes a discipline problem. In conversation it turns out the employee believed the purpose was never to lose a customer, and a different policy followed from that purpose.

Or a therapist who shortens treatments to shorten the waiting list. She serves a real purpose, just not the one the business defined.

So the conclusion runs against instinct. Before you tighten enforcement, check whether the purpose was ever understood. A rule broken again and again usually means nobody passed the purpose above it on to the people.

What the booklet has on this

In the booklet From Goal to Target, this chapter closes with two exercises, build it and analyse. The chapters after it go through the items one by one: the difference between goal, purpose and ideal scene, policy, plan, the six kinds of target, and a plan for the coming week.

When something in your business won't move, check which item on the ladder is missing, and which item is pulling against its neighbor.