Handing over, not dumping · From Zero to Goals, lesson 10 of 17
Handing over, not dumping
Turn an assignment into ownership, including the conversation with a sandbagged target.
Handing over, not dumping
A goal is most fragile at the moment it changes hands. Planning made it checkable; the handover decides whether it will be OWNED, and there is a world of difference between a target someone accepted and a target someone received.
Brightside’s board is set. Now the content-engine goal has to land with Leo, the writer, and Dana is about to do the thing almost every founder does.
Dana’s handover message
Dana, on the company chat, Monday 9:04:
“Hey Leo! You own the content engine goal now: 8 published pieces a month by June, it’s on the board, deadline’s set. You’ve got this 💪”
Leo replies “on it!” eleven minutes later. On paper, the goal now has an owner. Note the baseline Leo is starting from: zero pieces per month. Brightside has never published regularly in its life.
What is the biggest thing missing here?
The do-over, and the counter-offer
Dana redoes the handover properly: thirty minutes, the cascade on the screen, the baseline walked out loud (zero pieces, ever). Then she asks what Leo thinks the target should be.
Leo, carefully: “Honestly? With my client load… three a month is realistic. Let’s say three.”
The board says eight. The room is just the two of them. What Dana says in the next ten seconds decides how every target negotiation at Brightside will run from now on.
What does Dana say to “three”?
A handover has four checkpoints
And the sandbag rule, once more, because it is the one you will need this quarter: when the counter-offer is suspiciously safe, never haggle the number. Ask what makes the real number impossible. Then fix THAT, or accept the honest constraint you just learned about.
Script the bottleneck question
Pick one goal you need to hand over (or re-hand properly). Write the exact bottleneck question you will ask, and what you will do if the answer is a constraint you can remove.
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More on handing goals over
All optional, and none of it is needed for the certificate. Each opens in a new tab, so your place in the lesson is kept.
- Employee goal setting: how to set goals with your team ↗The handover conversation written out, with the sentences that make ownership stick.6 min read