Goals Are Not Summaries

Goals Are More Like a Logline Than a Summary

The biggest mistake I see when teams plan their work: to plan everything and decide on the goal afterwards.

That’s a crucial mistake that undermines everything that follows. The solution is deceivingly simple: begin with the goal.

• You can’t reverse-engineer the goal from the planned work

• You can figure out the work you must do from a clear goal

It’s also cool to rework the goal based on the work, but never start with the work and decide the goal afterwards. In Dutch we call that ‘Mustard after the meal’.

When writing a movie script, writers usually begin with a logline. It’s a single sentence that captures the essence of the movie. It also serves as an elevator pitch to executives. It captures the spirit of your movie, and is also frequently reworked and updated while writing the movie.

Here are some famous loglines:

• An eight-year-old troublemaker, mistakenly left home alone, must defend his home against a pair of burglars on Christmas Eve. - Home Alone

• After a simple jewelry heist goes terribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant. - Reservoir Dogs

• There are 3.7 trillion fish in the ocean. They’re looking for one. - Finding Nemo

• A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder. - Rear Window

• In 1970, a curmudgeonly history teacher at a New England boarding school remains on campus during Christmas break to supervise held over students, and ends up forming an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker. - The Holdovers

Just like with the logline, the goal is there to help with decisions about the work, not a decision to summarize all the decisions we’ve already made.

Because that would be completely besides the point.

The picture I’ve used for this article is one of my favorite movies of the past few years: The Holdovers. Highly recommended for a Christmas viewing!