I’ve personally witnessed the value of taking time out to really consider the future, of brainstorming, and of having a healthy and broad conversation with your organization’s best interests at heart. Goals can be important.
The opposite is also true. Progressive businesses are taking the view that thorough planning is ill-suited for our super fast digital age. By the time you set a goal and begin working towards it, the target has already moved.
The truth is, that’s always been the case. Think about it. How often do your goals become obsolete due to an unforeseen force? Goals are inflexible, stubborn, and rarely fully met. At their worst, they create a good deal of guilt and leave you spinning your wheels when you should be driving on a different road altogether.
Preparing the meal for the following day is tonight’s work.
Your strategic plan should have one goal: to become flexible and fluent in improvisation.
It’s very easy to have direction without goals. The conversation should not exist in the isolated confines of a strategy session. The conversation should be always happening. When we’re working to clarify & refine our organizational intentions, we react to the direction of the present, rather than a tomorrow that’s yet to exist. Part of today’s work is to prepare for tomorrow.
I think goals are good when you need to apply yourself over a long period of time–writing a book, for example, or training for a marathon. In these cases it’s not enough to just have a general direction–to write or run more–you must have specific tasks to accomplish that move you toward an end.
An inspiring goal motivates and gives purpose to the mundane, uninspiring tasks that make up the day to day effort of moving toward the goal.