Up Your Business!: 7 Steps to Fix, Build, or Stretch Your Organization, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded

Chapter 4. It’s All Right to Aim High if You Have Plenty of Ammo

Most managers set goals for themselves that are outrageously safe and keep themselves within limits that are embarrassingly small. If you build the foundation in your business as set out in Chapters 1 through 3 you have created the necessary platform and earned the right to shoot for big, bold goals. In fact, if you set a goal and can clearly see every step necessary to achieve it and have no doubt that you will, your goal is too small. Goals aren’t supposed to be no-brainers or slam dunks. You shouldn’t be able to sleepwalk there. You must believe in your heart you can reach it but it should cause you to scratch your head a bit, consult with others, think outside the box, and even become a bit uncomfortable. Within the context of that tension and uncertainty you’ll come up with breakthrough ideas you’d never have dreamt of if you were plodding along with steady-as-she-goes, incremental thinking. Michelangelo was right when he said, “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it but that it’s too low and we hit it.”

Up Your Business! Bullet

If you can reach your goals with a business-as-usual approach, your goals are too small. Effective goals force change, risk, and out-of-the-box thinking.

The “Bunt”: The DNA of Leadership Wimps

There is scarcely a bigger betrayal of a leadership position than to have built a strong foundation of the right people in the right places doing the right ...