
Managing When You Don’t
Know Where You’re Going
If you don’t know where you’re going, any map will do.
1
This conventional wisdom sounds right to many managers. It
highlights the safety of having a clear objective for your man-
agement actions. It implies that all management actions are
likely to be confused and inefficient if you don’t have a clear
objective. If you don’t have a good fix on your destination—be
it a product or service, a strategic or competitive outcome, or
anything else—you may as well not start the journey.
For a lot of your work, though, this so-called wisdom is
wrong. Why? For one thing, you can’t always know your desti-
nation in advance. ...