When you start a new venture — a company, a team, a job, a product, a project — setting goals around its success can be stressful. You don't know how fast things will move and how successful you'll be.

Further, lots of people are afraid of being held accountable, much less being held accountable for something that isn't yet understood.

So there's a temptation to just get started without setting goals and see how things go.

For example, I've seen many startups not set sales goals in the early days because they feel like they don't have enough information.

This is a bad idea.

Setting a goal gets you and your team rallied around a target. If you meet or exceed the target, the team will feel great, and you can celebrate. If you miss, you can surface learnings and insights relative to the goal you set.

If you're hitting or exceeding your goals, surfacing learnings is less important. If you're missing, learning is crucial. A learning that isn't connected to a goal is much less powerful and much less interesting than one that is. This will also create the habit of being held accountable and reporting on failure as much as you report on success.

Put a stake in the ground. Set a goal. If you hit it, great. If you miss it, you'll feel a great deal of pressure to surface high-quality learnings that will get you closer next time.