January 2019, Ms Angela Lovelll reached out for an interview about the Goal Tree. She’s a copywriter for the Canadian agricultural magazine Country Guide. During the first contact she explained me she got intrigued by the Goal Tree which is very different than what she had found and heard over and over again about setting SMART goals. (SMART = Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time bound).
Christian HOHMANN
We arranged a Skype interview, Angela in Canada, myself in Paris, France. The result of this interview was eventually published in the Country Guide March 12th, 2019 issue.
Angela Lovell is an award-winning freelance writer and editor based in rural Manitoba, Canada. Angela has more than twenty years of writing experience and specializes in the areas of agriculture, environment, business, and rural life. She writes for many local, regional, national and international print and online publications, and for private businesses and organizations. Learn more by visiting her blog: https://angelalovell.ca/about/
In the introduction of her article, Ms Lovell reminds that farming and (small) “agriculture prides itself on its family foundations, but sometimes, those family strengths are more like family complications when it comes to the big decisions”. Mainly because everyone might not share the same understanding about how much is at stake and because emotions are often involved. Hence the question: how do non-family businesses make their big decisions?
“So to learn more, we went to French business management consultant Christian Hohmann for his Goal Tree, which is winning converts in non-farm sectors as a logical, analytical structure to achieve a specific goal defined by a business, organisation or even an individual.”
When it comes to define their Goal, it turns out non-farm businesses have a similar problem to farmers: when you ask a number of people around a board table about the Goal, they will offer a bunch of different opinions, often biased by personal preferences.
The article then describes the Goal Tree, how to build it and how to use it to assess the current state of all the Necessary Conditions to achieve the Goal. Something I have already extensively published on this blog and shared on my Youtube channel.
I was surprised and delighted to have been spotted from as far as Manitoba, Canada and potentially help family farms with their decision making.
About the author, Chris HOHMANN
Chris HOHMANN 