When you want to reach a dream, do you design your stairway first and then build one step at a time or do you identify your objective and then decide whether a stairway – or some other means – is best suited to the journey?

"The latter is the method we have selected,” says group CE, Brian Bruce. “It involves looking at where we want to be, unconstrained by where we are today, and then working out what we need to do now to get there," he says.

This method is consistent with the systems thinking approach adopted by Murray & Roberts and the mantra that the company uses to explain its strategy: “The destination is our point of departure.”

Aspiration differs from goal-setting in that it is more qualitative than quantitative and requires an emotional commitment and a strong sense of belief in the ultimate destination.

Aspirations, or aspirational ideas, can determine the culture and philosophy of societies and the pace at which they develop. They can create a quantum leap in thinking which stretches underlying capacity.

The decision to put a man on the moon was not based on an incremental approach. It was aspirational and it had a fundamental impact on world relations and communications.

A systems thinking aspiration is one which takes no cognisance of economic or social factors, other than in short-term tactical measures to achieve long-term aspirations.

"People can convince themselves that the world we are living in now is a bad place and that they will be unable to achieve anything in it. But when you aspire to something, you have to cut through current circumstances, or you run the risk of losing sight of the original dream,” says Brian.

“At Murray & Roberts, we adopt a mindset, for example, that we can double in size in a particular market. We then go about making that happen by accumulating the capacity to achieve it, and removing the constraints that prevent it."