“We need to put a plan together,” Karlyn declared. “Let’s meet in the conference room and set some goals.”

“Sounds great,” I replied. “But what are you going to set the goals for? I need to know a few things before we get to setting goals.”

“Like what?” she pushed back.

“Karlyn, do you remember that multi-track project last summer. You had five teams working on simultaneous tasks for two months. In the end, you were missing two major pieces, but you had used up all your budget. Two of the teams went off on a tangent and created stuff that turned out to be useless.”

Karlyn went silent. “I was lucky I didn’t get fired over that one,” she finally admitted.

“What went wrong?” I asked.

“We never clearly understood the purpose of the project and spent a lot of time and money on things that didn’t matter.”

“And why didn’t you understand the purpose of the project?” I pushed.

“I guess we were moving so fast that we didn’t stop and ask. We knew it was a fast track project with tight deadlines, but we didn’t go slow enough to make sure everything we did was necessary.”

“And how do you know if something is necessary?”

“That’s why we have to define the purpose for the project. Before we can set goals, we have to make sure we understand the purpose.”