"A leader must manage not only results but expectations." -- Giuliani
My department at work has a file room that contains about two dozen cabinets stuffed with 20 years of memos and financial workpapers. As a small group of us planned for 2008, we wondered about becoming a more paperless office.
We considered setting a 2008 goal of "1 less file cabinet by year-end." The natural initial reaction was "well, we'd like to go down a lot more than that if possible!" That was certainly true, and in an era of "big, hairy audacious goals" such targets are often inflated -- and just as often missed. This is because, for one thing, twelve months seems like a long time -- until one actually starts living it, the phone starts ringing, unexpected projects materialize, and we find ourselves on December 15 staring at an unfulfilled dream on a piece of paper. Secondly, planning can go overboard with faith in pathless destinations. Starting with a "small" goal got us to asking how we might go about reducing that number. Before long, we actually did raise the goal -- to 4 cabinets -- after just a half hour of creative thinking. Who knows how much further we'll actually go?
It's easy to feel underachieving when aiming toward "reality" rather than a higher plane. But fortunately that pales in comparison to the satisfaction of meeting those goals, and the inspiration that comes from the potential to exceed those goals.
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