In 1975, my family fled Angola during a civil war. My father had managed to secure seats on the last commercial Varig flight out of Luanda. We knew the destination: Brazil. What we didn’t know was almost everything else.

To get through customs without having our money confiscated, my parents hid the cash at the bottom of a cookie box and placed it in the hands of my youngest brother, still a toddler. Nobody would suspect a toddler holding a box of cookies. The problem was that the line was long. He got hungry and started eating them, one by one. My mother took the box from his hands. He started crying, drawing the attention of the guards. She gave it back. And stood there, unable to do anything, watching him eat.

My father did not board that flight. He stayed behind to look after the company and the employees who hadn’t managed to leave. We didn’t know when, or whether, we would see him again.

When we finally sat down on the plane, she took the box. Two cookies left before the money.

Having a destination is not the same as having a goal.

My family knew where they were going. But there was no criterion, no deadline, no way of knowing, at each moment in that line, whether it was going to work. Progress was happening. So was the risk.

This is exactly how most companies treat corporate language programs.

The destination exists: we want a team with advanced English, fluent, capable of performing in international meetings. But there is no definition of what that means for that specific role. No arrival criterion. No way of knowing, throughout the process, whether the program is working or whether the cookies are running out.

The result is predictable. Employees study for months, show up and stay engaged, and the manager only finds out the level wasn’t enough when the person is sitting in an international meeting unable to speak.

Progress is not a goal. Attendance is not a result. And “advanced” means nothing without a criterion that defines what advanced looks like for that role, in that company, in that context.

At BIRD, no program starts without a defined language goal: specific skill, numerical level, deadline and verification method. Not because we are methodical by nature. But because we have seen what happens when you know the destination but don’t control the path.