“We don’t do PR for PR’s sake,” I told Malika Moore, Mango Media Caribbean’s new Senior PR Assistant.

“We always ask ourselves, what's the objective? Are we changing attitudes? Increasing awareness? Changing behaviour? And if so, by how much?

That’s the strategic thinking behind any PR campaign. It requires setting measurable goals and working toward them, defining and refining the tactics as you go along but always keeping focus on the objectives.

Sure it can be boring. Painstaking even. Sometimes it’s more exciting to do things on the fly.

Same thing applies to life, I suppose.

If you don't have a goal  (a market share goal, a PR goal, a  personal career goal, a get fit goal) then all you can do, well, is just your best. 

You can take things as they come. 

You get to be more impulsive. 

You can switch things around regularly. 

And as for missing your goal, well no need to worry about that, because you never had one in the first place. 

See, what I mean.  Living your life with no goals has to  be so much fun, at least in  the short run.

It seems to me, though, that the people who have a destination in mind are the same folks  who lead, who grow, who make a difference and who make an impact. And almost always those are the people with goals.