Hitting milestones
In business, a milestone is a significant point or achievement in a project, plan, or business initiative that marks progress towards a larger goal. It's typically a specific, measurable event, like completing a phase, securing funding, launching a product, or hitting a revenue or sales target. Milestones signal important stages at fixed moments in time.
They're useful for maintaining momentum, celebrating progress, and identifying when things might be going off track.
And they’re not to be missed.
Missing milestones is a red flag as it means that a) the planning is unrealistic; b) there are misaligned assumptions; c) the team lacks the capabilities to do the work; or d) the discipline of the person/team is poor.
I worked with a major programme team to help them reset their culture and all of these issues were prevalent, despite the fact that hitting milestones was what they were paid to do!
The team had drifted into a culture where missing milestones carried no consequence, so naturally, they kept missing them.
The reset required brutal honesty about capability gaps, a complete overhaul of their planning process, and most importantly, reinstating the expectation that commitments matter.
The difference wasn't new skills or better tools, it was treating milestones as non-negotiable markers of progress; because if you're comfortable missing them, you've stopped taking your work seriously.
Milestones aren't box-ticking, they're the heartbeat of goal delivery. If you don’t respect them, you’re accepting that your results will always disappoint.
