Setting Unreasonable Goals

I was sitting in a client's strategy session and getting increasingly worried. We got together because the client knew their existing business strategy wasn't working. Their plans were falling down around them big time.

The current economy was to blame.

This company, by the way, was one of the Inc500 fastest growing private businesses in New England just a few years back. When the market was over 14,000. And people had money to spend.

And it's not that their offering is no longer valid. They're an out-source. Two years ago they saved money, now they cost money.

So they called everybody together to determine what to do. The first thing they did was decide if their existing goal of 200% growth should be thrown out.

Not re-evaluated, just thrown out. This wasn't a discussion about how to achieve 20% growth or even maintain the status quo. Nope, this was about "Do we throw it out or keep it?"

And the decision was to keep it.

So I raised my hand. "Umm...don't you think we should take stock of the current economic climate, look at different projections, do a little research to figure out if anybody else in your market is changing their strategy, talk to some of your clients to see if we can do some kind of partnering just to bring in some billable hours, you know, keep your staff at least treading water, things like that?"

No. That wasn't necessary. All they had to do was determine whether or not to keep that 200% growth goal. No strategies were changed. No plans were revitalized.

But everybody agreed that we needed to keep that 200%.

I knew right then it was going to be a long night.

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