But it's also necessary if we're going to be on the hook for going somewhere, serving someone and creating better things for them. Simply saying we're going to be better doesn't mean much without drawing some lines in the sand. We need to define better in great detail. Better for whom? Is our product for middle aged women? Or, for middle aged Moms with a career who enjoy vintage clothing and Bogart movies? Better might mean to make people happy. But, how will we know when they're happy? What actions will they take? What, specifically, does happy look like? Better might mean having a successful career. But, what does success look like? How can we hope to get there without defining exactly where we're going?
Ambiguity and lack of clarity are not friends of leading change. They actually work against it...because they offer a way out. However, if we commit to a certain outcome, one with specific boundaries and measurable achievements, we free ourselves, both to succeed...and to fail. But when we fail, we’ll know specifically why we failed with clues telling us how we failed. Consequently, we’ll have a much better chance of correctly changing tactics or the course before proceeding any further. Often, quite often in fact, nebulous goals and lack of commitment are the foundations of failure, not because the supporting work isn’t good, but because we never understood what success looked like in the first place. So our goal is to replace blurry with focus, very sharp focus. Our goal is to be on the hook for a very specific outcome, which is scary because we'll know precisely when we fail. No way out.