Next time...aim higher

About a year ago my team had a ticket from a manager of our company that wanted to add a motivational phrase to his email signature. Lots of the managers were doing it and needed to be walked through the process, so this was not a surprise. What was surprising was the choice of phrase: "Today we aim higher."

While I can appreciate the sentiment behind this choice and the ultimate goal of having his team continually improve, the phrase itself just did not inspire anything in me. It struck me as the kind of wimpy phrase you'd use with a little league team, usually followed with "it doesn't matter who wins, let's just have fun out there." If anything, it seems to motivate a person to do the bare minimum to make this day better than the last. That may eventually get you to where you want to go, but it's not in the same league as the 'shoot for the moon' type inspirational phrases you see in other places.

Well, I say it didn't inspire me to do anything, but that is not accurate. It inspired me to make fun of it, no offense intended to the author (in case he one day finds his way to this blog).

Using the Motivator website I came up with the posters found to the right. Most are tame enough for general consumption, but the last may be crass enough to offend some people (as you may expect from a motivational poster featuring a urinal).

Click on the image to see a larger version.