In his 2009 book "The Zombie Economy" (published by PA Consulting Group), Mark Thomas comments that "unless the entire business has been re-invented since September 2008, it will no longer be well positioned for the world of 2010-14". The challenge for practitioners of business performance management is to ensure that the things we're doing and measuring in our businesses are not zombie-like relics of a past that should be dead and buried, but sources of insight that will help the organization to prepare for the challenges of the future.

Over the last year we've been asking some of our clients about their top business objectives, their priorities for business transformation, and the outcomes that they're achieving. We used a framework of best practices related to Lean and continuous improvement as the basis for this conversation because at the heart of Lean is the principle of orienting the business from the perspective of customer value. As a working hypothesis for successful transformation -- genuinely putting the customer first -- this seemed a good starting point, and certainly an idea to which we would subscribe.

Here's what we found:

1. Cost reduction is still the Number One objective.

We started by asking clients about their current strategic objectives. Not surprisingly, cost reduction was at the top of their list of objectives, with 90 percent of respondents indicating its importance, and over two-thirds indicating that it was their top (or equal top) concern (see Exhibit 1). Improving customer satisfaction and improving quality were also important goals, but not because our respondents see growth as an objective yet; on the contrary, only 43 percent indicated that revenue growth was an objective, with only one small IT company indicating that it was their top objective.

Exhibit 1: What are companies' current strategic objectives?