Why decision-makers hesitate › Goals, plans, wishes
Goals, plans, wishes: where decision-makers want to go
The ‘towards’ is the part of a decision people like to talk about. Even so, it is often understood loosely: goal, plan and wish are three different things. Keep them apart and you listen more closely – and get better decisions.
The terms
Three words that are often confused
Goal
The point you want to reach
A goal is a place someone wants to arrive at. Goals change, are reached and are replaced by new ones. Anyone who says they have no goals has usually just not said them out loud – or nobody has asked.
Plan
The route there
A plan points attention and action at the goal. A good plan contains three things: the goal itself, a date and the steps that lead there. If one of them is missing, it is an intention, not a plan.
Wish
What should change
A wish expresses that someone is not satisfied with how things are today. It is often more personal than the goal, and it is voiced less often. That is exactly why it pays to know it.
At board level
What becomes of goals, plans and wishes in committees
In a bank, goals become strategy papers, plans become budgets and milestones. Both appear in proposals and minutes. The wishes appear nowhere. And yet they are often the real driving force: the wish to hand over an institution fit for the future, to not be driven by the supervisor for once, or to show a predecessor that there is another way.
If you respond only to the goal, you deliver a solution that is factually right. If you also know the wish, you deliver one that gets accepted.
From practice
Why the ‘towards’ carries things at the start and later falls silent
A bank was to set up a new sales channel. At the start, everything was ‘towards’: the technical framework was worked out, the target customers were described, a financial projection showed the commercial success. Everything was signed off and the project began.
What happened next is described on the second page of this model, worries, fears and distress. For this page, the beginning is what counts: a project approved only on the strength of its goal has no answer when the first worries arrive. The goal was clear. What had not been settled was this: how do we tell along the way that we are on the right track, before the first results are in?
Questions
Questions that make the ‘towards’ audible
- What do you want to achieve, and by when? The question about goal and timing.
- Which steps are already fixed, and which are still open? The question about the plan.
- What should be different afterwards compared with today, for you personally? The question about the wish. It is the one asked least often.
- How would you notice along the way that it is working? The question that makes the goal testable before it is reached.
For yourself
An exercise before your next conversation
How can you understand other people’s goals, plans and wishes if you don’t know your own? Take half an hour and write down:
- your five most important goals, plans and wishes for the next twelve months,
- your five most important ones for the next three to five years,
- and next to them: which of these have you ever said out loud?
The last column is the most revealing. Nobody can support what is never said.
Read on
The other direction
In the model:
Where does your institution really want to go?
In a first conversation we establish whether goal, plan and wish fit together in your project, or where they diverge. Thirty minutes, free of charge, with no obligation.
The ZPW-SAN model goes back to the author’s own book draft (2018/19). The example from practice has been anonymised. Image credit: AI-generated motif, edited. AI-assisted tools were used in creating this page; professional review and responsibility lie with the author. More under AI in client mandates.