It’s a great benchmark question and it deserves to be asked during meetings where the stakes are significant. As much as people like to pretend that they can see well into the future, a year is the most comprehensible and digestible time period for them to noodle on.

Perhaps we’re interviewing for a new role within our organization or with a new company. Most job descriptions are designed to hire candidates for today’s immediate needs. C level roles can include expectations and plans for years and years down the road but nobody really knows what the company will be able to do in three years. Asking what success will look like in one year helps us realistically calibrate what’s in store for us.

We might be bidding for a big contract with a potential or current customer. Go ahead and ask the question: What will success look like to you in one year from now? No matter how badly we may want the income or the prestige that the contract may represent today, if the customer’s one year vision doesn’t align with our capacity and skills and tolerance, then we’re liable to understand what failure feels like in one year.

And even if we’re not interviewing for a new job, we can still ask ourselves the question: What will success look like in one year from now? Except in this case, we can’t sit back and wait for someone else to answer. The burden is on us to be transparent and direct with ourselves. It’s a much heavier lift but if we’re honest about it, we can start thinking and acting like the CEO’s of our careers.