I consider a business meeting successful mainly if we know what we're talking about at the start, and we have a clearly defined next step by the end. My favorite question in any conversation about an idea, project or task is: "What is the next step?"
The path to a specific goal, business or personal, is made up of a large number of small steps. Those small steps are the building blocks of every success. No matter how far away the final result may seem, what is closest to us right now is the very next step. That's why it's important to define it immediately, and then act on it.
Those completed items create the path we walk toward our goal. Briefs, brainstorming, and modifications are also important elements of the journey to success, but in order to actually get there, we have to turn them into clear steps.
The initial enthusiasm for achieving a goal is short-lived, and I'm sure it has swept each of us away at some point. We know it disappears quickly, like a balloon deflating. When that happens, it's important to have a small list of steps waiting for you, steps whose completion is absolutely possible and which our brain likes to define as realistic. Having the final goal as a vision matters too, but it's easy for that vision to fall apart or even collapse, precisely because we didn't build a plan between it and the present moment.
"Motivation is a great and necessary thing, but its companion, discipline, plays a much more concrete and arguably more important role in the whole process."
There are days when motivation is nowhere to be seen. On exactly those days, it would be worth having a ready answer to the question: "What is the minimum I can do for my goal when I have no motivation for anything?" It can be something that doesn't weigh on you, yet makes a real difference between: I did nothing and I did something.
Motivation is a great and necessary thing, but its companion, discipline, plays a much more concrete and arguably more important role in the whole process.
So whatever you're working on, wherever you want to be, ask yourself and the others who are part of it: "What is the next step?", and do what that answer contains.