Once a global meet was organised at our office with the Board of directors. One of the agendas of the Geo's head was to review our future plans.

A lot of background work had taken place to project our next year's sales target. We had used historical data, growth prospects, capacity, macroeconomic indicators, budgets of our customers and finally reached a very aggressive target, which was many times more than the previous year.

When the sales target slide came up, the chief got up from his seat, took out a whiteboard marker & added another zero to our sales numbers. By doing this, he increased our sales target by ten times. 

This new target filled all the discussions in the subsequent days. It soon dawned upon us that the new target was etched in stone. 

We could achieve about half of the target set one year later but many times more than our original target. The new markets we explored helped us achieve these numbers.

Though we had done our homework and used all the scientific ways possible to forecast our sales numbers for the coming year, the boss had come with a different perspective. If he had not pushed us, we would not have explored new markets.

I am not sure if the boss knew of the new market opportunities, or was he trying to make us stretch to achieve more, or was it just a principle of setting a fire under an employee's seat to get them out of the comfort zone.

These principles are good when there is a success, but we often see it backfire, which may be demoralising for the employees.