I recently saw a tee-shirt with the organization name on the front and an organizational goal printed on the back. The goal was, “Pursue what’s possible”. On first reading I thought this was a good goal for any organization. But as I reflected on it, the more uncomfortable I became with the goal. Why? Because by pursuing only “what’s possible” today we are accepting that the status quo cannot be improved.

Jules Verne’s writing is often associated with science-fiction, but some sources say that it was based on carefully researched material which existed at the time. If we accept this, then a trip around the world in eighty days was not possible at the time. Similarly, travel from the earth to the moon was not considered. Verne’s works were considered fictional in nature. Comparatively, Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon series “The Jetsons” which aired in the early 1960’ s seemed to be purely fictional and written for entertainment with little relation to things that were available in that era.

So, looking at these two different views of the world, approximately one hundred years apart, if we accepted “pursue what’s possible”, we would not consider either worth pursuit because they presented the impossible, not the possible.

Yet when we look around us today, we see many of the concepts presented as not just possible but common in day-to-day life. We have had airplanes that could travel around the world at the Equator in about eleven hours. We have robots that can clean our homes with minimal human intervention. We have not only travelled to the moon and back safely but are now considering travel to Mars. We have all of this because some have pursued the impossible and not limited themselves to pursuing only what’s possible.

We could apply the same to many other advances we have had over time, not just recently but since Verne’s time and even earlier. If Henry Ford had accepted that making an automobile available to the masses was impossible, would we still be travelling by horse and buggy? Or, if communicating via wire or wirelessly had been accepted as impossible, how would our lives today be without our cell phones? Even something as seemingly simple as cooling food without the physical presence of ice would make today’s food choices impossible.

So, as I look at that shirt today with its simple goal statement, I wonder who would consider it a worth goal. Are they saying that today’s world is acceptable and there is no room for improvement? Or are they saying that pursuing the impossible is of little value?

While my views may not be shared by others, I think the organization which shared this goal is lucky. Those who wrote or approved the goal are no longer there. Perhaps the new leaders view the world and valuable pursuits differently. And perhaps the organization is now trying to make things better, not just accept things as they are.