‘We choose to go to the moon!’ announced John F. Kennedy on 12 September 1962. Shortly before, the Russians had launched the first man into space with Yuri Gagarin and Kennedy was feverishly looking for a way to overtake the Russians.
With the moon, he set a highly ambitious goal that nobody had any idea how it could be achieved. Yuri Gagarin had orbited the earth in a distance of 100 kilometres and 108 minutes. But flying to the moon meant spending a week in space and covering almost 800,000 kilometres.
Kennedy could have simply sent more people into space and left them there for longer. But the Americans would still only have come second - in the end, they would only have been there.
What does ‘winning’ mean in your company?
Is it enough to achieve the usual ‘ambitious’ few percentage points more turnover and earnings every year? Do you rely on well-known and popular approaches, methods and tools? Do you celebrate results at the end of the year, which in reality do not stand out much from those of your competitors, as ‘extraordinary successes’?
The more ambitious your goals are, the higher/better your results will be, even if you may not achieve them 100%.
Conversely, the lower your goals, the less likely it is that you will achieve exceptional results.
„If you want to get something you never had, you have to do things you never did.” (Thomas Jefferson)
Reflect on your company's vision and what business goals you want to achieve. Think big and break away from what seems possible and not possible in your industry. And use the OKR framework to put your biggest goals and the obstacles you need to overcome on the way there at the centre of your entrepreneurial activities.