I’m a big proponent of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal in Sustainability – I’ve always held Interface’s Mission Zero (disclosure: a Terra Infirma client) as the epitome of ambition. There’s no way Interface would have delivered the sustainability achievements they have if they hadn’t set that vision of success. But it takes real guts to go for broke like that – what if you fall short?

A idea that came up at last week’s Corporate Sustainability Mastermind Group was ‘a threshold of realism’. In other words, if you set a zero waste target and you get to 99.9%, have you failed? Only a pedant would say ‘No.’, a reasonable person would say ‘Wow! That’s amazing!”

The real reason to set an 0%/100% target is not to meet it exactly (you’ve got the laws of physics against you if nothing else), but to inspire the organisation to think big and deliver the scale of change which will get you into that ball park. So have the guts to set ambitious goals, strive to meet them, but don’t beat yourself up if you fall fractionally short.