Setting a specific, achievable goal can inadvertently cap your potential. Once hit, momentum can stall. A better approach is to set directional, almost unachievable goals that act as a persistent motivator, ensuring you're always pushing beyond perceived limits and never feel like you've arrived.

Canva CEO Melanie Perkins plans using "Column B" thinking: envision a perfect, magical future state without constraints, then work backward to build a ladder of small, actionable steps to get there. This contrasts with "Column A" thinking, which starts with current resources and limits vision.

When FigJam felt soulless a month before launch, the team made a controversial decision to differentiate it by making it fun. This seemed frivolous but was strategically crucial for encouraging participation and creative expression in brainstorming sessions, especially during the remote-work era.

True agility isn't just about sprints; it's psychological. By breaking massive projects into minimal viable products (MVPs) or small features, the team creates a steady stream of "quick wins." This builds a sense of progress and happiness—a "dopamine type of reward"—that keeps the wheel of innovation turning and prevents teams from getting bogged down.

Canva's core mission is a "two-step plan": 1) build a valuable company and 2) do good. Crucially, this isn't a sequential plan for after an exit. They believe step one fuels step two (and vice versa), integrating purpose directly into the business model from day one.

Canva operationalizes big ideas using a "chaos to clarity" framework. An initial chaotic idea is progressively clarified through small, tangible steps—starting with writing it down and culminating in a vision deck. This process makes amorphous concepts real, shareable, and easier to build.

Facing a critical frontend rewrite that ballooned from 6 to 24 months, Canva couldn't ship new features. To maintain morale during this "dark tunnel," they gamified the process with a physical game board and rubber duckies representing components, making the grueling work bonding and even partly fun.

Shift your team's language from tracking output (e.g., 'deployed XYZ API') to tracking outcomes. Reframe milestones to focus on the business capability you have 'unlocked' for other teams. This small linguistic change reorients the team toward business impact and clarifies your contribution to metrics like NPS.

Pursuing huge, multi-year goals creates a constant anxiety of not doing "enough." To combat this, break the grand vision into smaller, concrete milestones (e.g., "what does a win look like in 12 months?"). This makes progress measurable and shifts the guiding question from the paralyzing "Am I doing enough?" to the strategic "Is my work aligned with the long-term goal?"