Do you set goals? Personal? Business? Of course, who doesn’t?
But think of the scope of the goals you set. Are they something easy to accomplish? Are they sort of middle of the road? Or are they so big, so audacious that you have no clue on how to get there?
I was listening to the season wrap-up for the Mission to Scale podcast produced by Spring Impact. I like a recap episode. It lets me get a feel for the conversation that took place early that I missed. Sometimes I am lazy that way.
The host Dan Berelowitz was speaking with Ann Mei Chang (the author of Lean Impact) about goal setting here is her advice:
“Set an ambitious goal. Not your mission. Quantifiable goals. If they are something you can imagine how you are going to get there, they are probably not ambitious enough. Look at the size of the need, set a goal, but you don’t know yet how you can possibly achieve. It should scare you a bit.”
That was something that spoke to me. She goes on to talk about how it opens you up to risk - a good thing. If you know how to get to where you want to go, you aren’t going to need to take risk to get there. Right?
You also need to set huge goals to make a real impact. That is the theme of Spring Impact: scalability.
I think that if you set a goal that is so far out there, when you don’t know how to do it, it opens you up to attempting things that you wouldn’t otherwise tackle. If you give yourself permission to set out on a journey without knowing the route, only the destination, all kinds of possibilities open up. On the other hand, if you limit yourself to only those things you know you can do right now, your adventure is going to be a lot less significant.
Listen to the episode. They explain it a lot better than I can. But it definitely made me start thinking.
What is the scope of your goals?
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
