Why it's easy to lie to ourselves about targets

And how to protect yourselves from them biting you in the end

I met my former VP Marketing over coffee earlier today.

She is moving on from the spot we both were.

That gave us the distance to look back honestly and assess our screw-ups when we tried to grow that company.

And surprise, we super quickly went to blaming product… (since I also represented sales, this was the only easy target available).

But once that bout was over, we actually realized something.

As you build these companies, and as you want to be ambitious, and as you are part of making sure everyone around you is ambitious… you very quickly and very often totally lie to yourself.

To a point where you don’t even know it's a lie anymore.

We quickly came up with a bunch of examples, but the basic structure works like this:

Boss gives a big target

You act like a big boss too, and find SOME way to hit this target on a spreadsheet

You act like a big boss to your team to make them believe we can hit that target

The team (all VPs or Directors) act like the same big boss… and the story continues

Then you execute.

You see it ain’t happening.

But hey, this tactic is like 40% of your growth plan this year, so let’s just give it a bit more time and money.

Still crickets.

Keep pushing, keep praying, and keep acting like a big boss.

And yes, we kind of already knew when we drew up that spreadsheet that we can’t get more out of Facebook (VP Marketing), or that this Outbound (CRO) thing will be tough or that we decided to “prioritize” way too many conflicting product items (Exec Team).

All of these lies will come and get ’ya. I promise. Been there and been caught.

So, actionable advice:

As RevOps, keep calling BS. It’s really important. All of us execs hate you in the moment, but we always thank you silently after the meeting.

As a GTM Exec, try calling a bit more BS on whatever your boss is selling you (the trick is to do it without getting fired eventually).

As a CEO, just because you sell it harder, doesn't make it any more likely to happen. (also been there and also been caught).