The importance of goals

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit an award celebration for a Boston area non-profit called "Social Capital Inc." (really cool organization if you're interested in non-profits helping develop capacity in urban areas - check them out at www.socialcapitalinc.org ).
As some of the award recipients were speaking, it struck me how inspiring their stories (and consequently their activities) were. I drove back to NH thinking to myself "how can I come up with an inspiring story like that to tell about myself, or teach my students to create such inspiring stories for themselves?"
The reality is, most of us who work in the business world rarely get to deal with truly "inspiring" goals. We are handed goals such as "increase profits by x%", "cut costs by $x", or "complete this project within the next 3 weeks". These don't exactly inspire most of us to climb up to the rooftop and yell "look what I do!"
So how can we translate our relatively mundane organizational goals into something that will get people excited?
The old MBO (Management By Objective) philosophy still applies - even though it has been forgotten by many as a "fad". If you can tie someone's work directly into a larger (strategic level) goal, it often gives the goal more weight and more inspirational appeal.
One of the best examples I know of is a DOD contractor who has their headquarters relatively close to us here in NH. Their company motto is "we protect those who protect us"; and indeed that is precisely what they do. Their products make for greater safety among U.S. pilots, sailors and infantry. They get the wonderful benefit of periodically having servicemen and women come back from overseas, pay the organization a visit, and talk about how a particular piece of equipment saved their life. Now *that's* a goal!
How can the rest of us get this sort of excitement out of our jobs and our goals? When you start a project, make sure you have a good idea of what its potential impact could be. How does it tie in to strategic imperatives at the organizational, divisional or even departmental level? How will it impact the lives of others (both inside and outside the organization)? The more things you can tie into your goal, and the more expansive you can be in describing it, the better able it will be to inspire motivation among your team members.