The Possibility of Anything vs Everything

Dear lovely people,

Would you rather say anything or everything is possible? I believe that nothing is impossible, unless you think it is. In Iyanla Vanzant’s ‘acts of faith’, I read that “The road of life is strewn with the bodies of promising people. People who show promise, yet lack the confidence to act. People who make promises they are unable to keep. People who promise to do tomorrow what they could do today. Promising young stars, athletes, entrepreneurs who wait for promises to come true. Promise without a goal and a plan is like a barren cow. You know what she could do if she could do it, but she can't. Turn your promise into a plan. Make no promise for tomorrow if you are able to keep it today. And if someone calls you promising, know that you are not doing enough today.”

When I walked into the Project Management world, I quickly learned and mastered the famous concept of Management by Objectives that was on the drive at the time (MBO). It was so classy to talk about MBO and let me tell you that even if that concept is being relegated today, you can trust that a lot of it holds true as far as your quest for success is concerned.

Firstly, let me restate that MBO is about setting yourself objectives and then breaking these down into more specific goals or key results. As far as your quest for success is concerned, MBO is a systematic and organized approach that allows you to focus on achievable goals and to attain the best possible results from available resources. The principle behind MBO is to make sure that primordially you and then your closest allies have a crystal clear understanding of your aims, or objectives, as well as awareness of their own roles and responsibilities in achieving those aims. The complete MBO system is to get especially you and your closest allies acting to implement and achieve their plans, which automatically achieve yours.

Now, this is where many people miss it; the one thing an MBO system should provide is focus. This in a nutshell means that you should have your objectives precise and keep their number small. Most people disobey this rule, try to focus on everything, and end up with no focus at all and consequently they end up with the kind of dissatisfaction they get out of life when things don’t work out the way the simply wished. There is no way you can program a computer to bake bread and end up with yoghurt.

For MBO to be effective as a strategy in your quest for success, you and all those directly involved in making your dream come true MUST understand the specific objectives of their role and how those objectives fit in with your overall goal and the one person to enforce this understanding is no other person but you. Your main job should be based on a task to be performed in order to attain your goal in life... you must be directed and controlled by the objectives of performance rather than by external stimuli.

Roger Clemens says “I think anything is possible if you have the mindset and the will and desire to do it and put the time in.” and Howard Schultz adds that “When you're surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.