Have you ever set a goal so big it almost felt like chasing the impossible? You aimed high, really high, pouring your time, your energy, and your heart into it. And then …when it all played out, the outcome didn’t quite match what you’d envisioned?
At first, it stung.
But as you looked around, you realized that even though you didn’t land exactly where you planned, you had discovered something even more powerful: new connections, unexpected opportunities, and ideas that would never have crossed your path if you hadn’t dared to aim so high from the very beginning.
You know, people think that if you’re not succeeding exactly the way you planned, you’ve failed.
Listen, that’s not how it works at all… Let’s take a look!
Most people spend their time trying to get everything exactly right, but when you’re aiming for something big, you have to be willing to let go of the outcome and focus on the journey.
Sometimes you’ll aim for the moon and you’ll find yourself landing somewhere completely different. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s often where the real magic happens.
What if the place you end up is better than the place you imagined? Think about it.
Picasso and Cubism. Pablo Picasso trained as a classical painter. But in challenging form, perspective, and tradition, he ended up co-creating Cubism, a movement that transformed modern art.
He didn’t start out to disrupt. Sometimes the breakthrough isn’t in perfecting the past, it’s in breaking away from it.
The Beatles and „Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Burned out by constant touring and fame, The Beatles stopped performing live. A risky move.
They decided to become someone else: a fictional band. Out of that experiment came Sgt. Pepper’s, one of the most influential albums of all time.
And you can find this pattern everywhere.
- Spotify: a clever response to a real problem, not a perfect forecast.
- Google Maps: never a master plan, but rather a side project given room to grow.
- Penicillin: certainly not an intentional discovery, but an accident turned into a revolution.
And so on… Sometimes where you land wasn’t on the map but it’s exactly where you were meant to go.
These stories show us that great things rarely come from rigid plans. They’re born in the cracks, when we’re willing to pivot, to see the possibility in failure, to adapt to the unexpected.
It’s not about avoiding mistakes; on the contrary, it’s about accepting them as steps to follow, considering them as opportunities, and having the courage to change direction.
In business and leadership, this is exactly what separates good leaders from great ones.
At some point, every leader faces a moment when the outcomes they’d hoped for, what they believed would secure success, don’t arrive.
It’s easy in those moments to think, „Why try any harder?”, „What’s the point?” When a plan doesn’t materialize exactly as imagined, that voice of doubt can grow loud, whispering that perhaps there’s no point in trying again, no point in aiming high, no point in risking disappointment.
But that’s only part of the story. Just because a particular outcome didn’t happen, doesn’t mean you failed.
It doesn’t mean there isn’t another landing place waiting, one you didn’t anticipate, but that might hold opportunity and even greatness.
This is the power of adaptive positioning. It’s about being grounded enough to lead with purpose, and flexible enough to thrive in a world where the only constant is change.
Success isn’t linear. It’s cyclical, iterative, and full of unexpected turns. Are you willing to embrace that? Can you let go of the idea that everything must move neatly from point A to B?
The greatest leaders don’t just execute plans; they adapt to what emerges along the way.
And that requires honesty, especially with yourself. Are you seeing the cracks in the plan? Are you acknowledging what’s not working and listening to what your gut is telling you?
You know that saying: don’t negotiate with your knowing. The sooner you see and accept those cracks, the sooner you can pivot, before small cracks become deep canyons.
Adaptive leaders understand that the brilliance of the stars can be just as powerful as the promise of the moon, if you’re willing to see it.
When you find yourself somewhere unexpected, don’t just endure it, build from it. What can you learn from where you’ve landed? What new strategies can you see now that you’re here?
One of the most powerful yet underutilized dynamics in ambitious projects is what is often encapsulated in innovation and strategy circles as „positive externalities,” „spillover effects,” or more poetically, „shooting for the moon and landing among the stars.”
Ambitious projects should aim high, not just to achieve the stated goals, but to create platforms for discovery. Positioning is always more important than a single outcome.
When you aim high, when you commit to shooting for the moon, your mind, your team, your resources shift to support that ambition.
You start to see new strategies and new solutions.
Amd sometimes the moon isn’t where you end up, but the stars themselves are a worthy landing place, offering their own brilliance and possibility.
In a world of increasing complexity, the ability to capture what you didn’t set out to find may be your most powerful competitive advantage.
But here’s the challenge: most of the time our traditional approach isn’t set up to catch these spillovers. It’s designed to deliver, not discover.
So, as a leader, you must ask:
- Do our teams have mechanisms to spot and share unintended benefits?
- Are we rewarding only outcomes, or also the insights gained along the way?
- Do we have „boundary spanners”- individuals who bridge teams and projects, to carry knowledge across silos?
It’s all about expanding your objectives to include the possibility of value beyond what you set out to do.
Why does this mindset matter?
Often, innovation doesn’t look like a guaranteed breakthrough. More often, it looks like exploration. You begin with a bold idea, a challenge to solve, or a change to lead and you don’t know exactly what will come of it. And that’s not failure, it’s just uncertainty.
Innovation may be rare. But it’s not impossible. And sometimes it simply refuses to arrive on a schedule.
It doesn’t show up because you hope it will. It shows up because you built the kind of culture where curiosity isn’t a distraction, it’s the engine. You built deliberate structures that catch the ideas that emerge between the lines of the original plan.
Great leaders and innovators don’t aim high just to hit a target. They aim high to open a path. To see what else might be found along the way.
And even when the target is missed, even when the product doesn’t ship, the strategy doesn’t land, the pitch doesn’t close, the path traveled can still yield gold.
But only if you’re paying attention.
Only if you treat knowledge management not as an afterthought, but as a habit. A system. A way of turning stray sparks into strategic firepower.
The goal isn’t just to land where you planned.
The goal is to make where you land meaningful.
In leadership, uncertainty is not just a challenge, it’s an opportunity. The unexpected can disrupt plans, but it can also reveal new possibilities, uncover hidden strengths, and spur innovation.
What distinguishes great leaders is not the ability to control every outcome, but the ability to adapt, reflect, and respond strategically when circumstances change.
Moments of unpredictability require deeper awareness and clearer thinking. They invite us to pause, reassess, and realign with purpose.
Here are some reflections you can consider as a leader to fully capitalize on the unexpected:
1. Serendipity favors the bold
The more ambitious and exploratory your goals, the more likely unexpected outcomes will emerge. Risk and discovery go hand in hand.
Leadership means knowing that value doesn’t always arrive on schedule or on spec.
2. Delivery isn’t everything
Traditional approach focuses on deadlines and deliverables but misses the gold dust of serendipity. When teams are only evaluated by what they shipped, they may overlook what they discovered.
3. Adaptability is a strategic advantage
Agile, iterative approaches and tools like innovation accounting allow your organization to track and capture outcomes beyond the original goal (including insights, prototypes, or new applications that surface mid-journey).
4. Culture is the real engine
As a leader, you must cultivate an environment where learning, curiosity, and interdisciplinary collaboration are actively rewarded. When teams feel safe to share observations or experiment beyond the brief, unexpected breakthroughs follow.
If you’re leading teams toward bold outcomes, the real question isn’t: „Will this work?” It’s: „What might we learn and what else might we find by daring to try?”
Remind yourself that expansion, growth, and possibility lie in the commitment to keep shooting for the moon.
Aiming higher creates bigger strategies. It forces your mind to stretch, to solve, to innovate. And those bigger strategies often go beyond any single outcome, becoming the foundation for even greater things to come.
So, wherever you are today, consider what adaptive positioning might look like for you and your team. Ask yourself: „Are you positioning yourself for discovery, or are you clinging to a single outcome? Are you ready to see where the next landing place might be—and what it could become?”
Don’t be afraid to reimagine the map when the original destination isn’t there. The stars are out there, waiting to be found. Are you open enough and honest enough to see them?
In times of uncertainty, leadership isn’t a solo act it’s a shared responsibility. The point is to keep your vision big and your execution flexible, to see those cracks as places where something even more powerful can emerge.
If you aim high, you’ll find stars you didn’t even know existed.
What if your side idea turns out to be your legacy?
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This is an invitation to pause and think more intentionally, not just about what’s happening around you, but about how you are leading through it.
If you would like to explore more about how to capitalize on the unexpected, the way to reach out to me is by sending an email to monicarovcanin@klytie.eu or using the contact form on the website.
Thank you for your time and for being part of this journey!
