We tried our best!

There are some things people say that on reflection are quite ridiculous - and we're all guilty of saying them! 'We tried our best' is surely one such saying! Is it really good enough that your football team 'tried their best' at the weekend - but lost, or that you 'tried your best' to pass that exam - but didn't? Worse still, is it really good enough for a company to have 'tried its best' to sort out health and safety when someone just got hurt?

The fact is that in all of these situations what you should be doing is setting an objective and applying the necessary resources to achieving that objective. In other words you can only achieve what your resources allow you to achieve, it's just about setting the right objective and applying those resources effectively.

The resources can be anything at your disposal; money, people, time and equipment and they should be employed after careful consideration of every factor you can possibly think of. This means considering everything that could possibly get in the way of achieving what you want to.

If you fail or if you don't meet your objectives this really should be against all the odds - you should have weighed up the odds after all (I think they call it a risk assessment) The outcome shouldn't be a surprise!