Be Realistic, Expect the Impossible

BE REALISTIC, EXPECT THE IMPOSSIBLE

When you come up with a new idea or a bold new venture, many people may say to you “be realistic” “think practically” “how will it be done”.

All good questions. However as a leader it is important to realise that all great achievements are built on the premise of being illogical, irrational and expecting the impossible.

Only when the leader sets an impossible goal, does everything move to make it happen.

Kennedy declaring we will put a man on the moon when it seemed impossible to do so and no clear path existed on how to do it
Elon Musk proclaiming that he will find a way to make Tesla perform the same as diesel and petrol vehicles with none of the carbon emissions
Eliud Kipchoge saying he will run a marathon in under two hours
Dashrath Manjhi saying he will break the mountain with his own hands to make a road
Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings betting that you can turn a profitable business from video streaming and spend billions on original content creating Net Flix
Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap stating that he will move heavy artillery weapons up the steep slopes of mountains by hand and then defeating the French at Dien Bien Phu

In every path of life, progress depends on the irrational and impossible goal set first.

The vision of the leader propels the organisation to move forward.

Hence what is realistic is that unless you have an impossible dream to chase, you will not make great progress.

What’s realistic is to know that people respond to the expectations from them. If you ask for X people aim for X and work to X. If you ask for 100X they change their mindset and think of new and radical was to achieve 100X.

The COVID pandemic will end only when someone takes the impossible goal of making a workable vaccine in months. 100s of teams around the world are doing that as we speak.

So when someone presents an impossible idea, don’t dismiss it because it is not practical.

Accept it because it is the only practical way to make it possible.

Be Realistic. Expect the Impossible from your teams. They will deliver.

What do you expect ?