A lot of times we see businesses and organizations set goals and objectives for themselves and they will be needlessly modest.
Something along the lines of, “our ambition for this year is to improve revenue by 5%.”
Which on the surface sounds pretty good.
But one of the things about setting these kinds of modest ambitions is that in too many cases, they are set this way under the misguided belief that “we will under promise and over deliver.” Or some other nonsense.
This whole underpromise concept is just too much for me to handle.
Is it that you don’t have the confidence in yourself to say what you can do?
If you can double revenue or profits, say it. Don’t be afraid.
If you think 25% is reasonable, say that. Be confident in your ability.
But this plays out all over the place in businesses and what it leads to is stagnation or low growth because if you say you are cool with 3% or 5% or whatever, you push yourself right there. You don’t push yourself past it.
But the thing is, if you have some radical new efficiency or you figure out how to save money, time, or waste and that increases your efficiency, why wouldn’t you deliver on that?
You likely would.
But sometimes when good enough is good enough, we end up settling and that is just stupid.