Picture two division heads presenting their 2027 plans to the same leadership team on the same grey Monday. Neither exists, though you have probably sat through both.
Anna goes first. Her slide promises to accelerate the digital customer experience, build a culture of ownership, explore AI across the value chain and become the partner of choice. It is a handsome slide. The CEO nods, the CFO nods, someone says “great energy”, and nobody asks a question, because there is nothing on the slide to hold on to. Four minutes later the meeting has moved on.
Pieter goes second. His slide says that by 31 March, Ines at the Venlo depot will answer late-delivery complaints within four hours, down from two days. One extra hire. If repeat calls haven’t fallen by then, he stops.
The room goes for him. The CFO wants to know what the hire costs. Someone from sales calls four hours a fantasy. Someone else says Venlo is the wrong depot to start with. Why four hours? Why March? Who is Ines, and does she know? Forty minutes later Pieter sits down with a page of objections and a slightly damp shirt.
Everyone leaves convinced that Anna had the stronger plan, because nobody could find anything wrong with it. That was exactly what was wrong with it. Nothing on her slide can turn out to be false, so nothing on it can teach anyone anything. In March, Anna will report that she is “on track”, a phrase with an unbeaten record, and next autumn the same slide will come back with a new year in the corner. Pieter might only get to eight hours, and he will know exactly which step ate the other four.
“Explore AI” names no customer, no budget and nobody who will be embarrassed if it fails. “A culture of ownership” has the added comfort of sounding like somebody else’s job. As I read it, that is the attraction. Each phrase feels like a decision and spares you from making one.
The obvious fix is to add numbers, and here the story gets a twist. The management professor Richard Rumelt once described a CEO whose plan was called “20/20”: revenue up 20 percent a year, margins of 20 percent or more. Two numbers. Rumelt asked what had to happen to get there. The CEO talked about football and the will to win, then pulled a highlighted Jack Welch quote out of his briefcase, as if Welch had signed off on the margins.
The CEO’s numbers sat on the result, where they cost nothing to write down. Pieter’s sit on the work, with a name, a place, an hour count, a date and a point at which he gives up. Those are the numbers that can embarrass you, which is why anyone listens to them.
Edwin Locke and Gary Latham spent decades studying goals and summed up the do-your-best kind in one dry line: “when people are asked to do their best, they do not do so.” A culture of ownership is a do-your-best goal in a nicer font.
Pieter may be wrong about all of it. Four hours may be a fantasy after all, and Ines may hate him by February. But in March, everyone at the Venlo depot will know whether a complaint sent at breakfast gets an answer before lunch. Anna’s slide will still be handsome.
Sources: Richard Rumelt, “The perils of bad strategy”, McKinsey Quarterly, 2011; Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, “Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation”, American Psychologist, 2002.