MODERN LEADERSHIP
Pioneers Don’t Set
Goals: a guide to leading
through uncertainty
By Jason Fox
A
lmost every leadership,
strategy and motivation book
on the planet advocates the
importance of having a crystal
clear goal or vision for the future.
But, intuitively, you know this is
an incredibly flawed position to
take. Sure, this outlook may serve
in the short term. And of course
an enterprise needs goals. If you
want to galvanise a group of people
towards achieving a particular
30 ModernBusiness
April 2016
outcome, a clear goal or vision is
essential. People like goals—they
remove the angst of uncertainty,
and give us something to focus our
efforts towards. Clear goals can also
be reverse-engineered and broken
down to create a roadmap, with
clear milestones and executable
steps. Past experience can be
leveraged to improve performance,
and systems can be optimised to
improve efficiencies. Goals are easy
to implement and incentivise, and
a raft of precedents that prove their
efficacy. But what happens if you
don’t have perfect knowledge of
what the future has in store for your
enterprise?
What if you don’t have a clear
goal? What if you’ve only got a
vague hunch, or a fuzzy sense that
something needs to change? What
then? Do you simply wait for clarity?