#24 – Avoiding a Destination you Weren’t Intending
When working with clients on setting goals and accomplishing them by chunking them down to manageable 90-day increments, I use stories and metaphors to make the point.
I often ask teams: “what portion of a plane trip is the plane “off track?” Guesses from leaders range in the 10% – 50% range with a few people occasionally guessing higher. The truth is it’s the majority of your plane trip, like 95% or more. How can that be?
The plane is constantly making small course corrections to weather, pressure, and all the changes it needs to account for in order to get you safely from one destination to another. If you’re traveling from Minnesota to Los Angeles, it’s better to adjust constantly and land in LA than to have to make a sharp turn when you realize you’re headed for Seattle.
In the same way, when we plan to accomplish great things in the future, it’s better to consistently make small adjustments and corrections weekly than to wait and try to make a large correction later. As leaders, we need to be humble enough to admit when we’re “off track,” to ask for help, and to adjust as often as necessary – which may end up being quite often, just like the plane.
Better that than to end up in a destination we weren’t intending.
