He agreed and asked me if I could kick off the two-day session and speak briefly to his team. Unfortunately I was on a business trip on the day but nevertheless agreed to speak over video-conference. Just before I headed out to the airport the previous day, I called the leader and his next level managers for a quick chat on what they were planning to accomplish in the boot-camp. They gave me a run down and the agenda was quite comprehensive. Then I asked the leader what near term goal he had for his team to accomplish during the two-day session…
When a group of capable people get together on a mission it is great to discuss priorities, target zones, strategy, resources etc. But there needs to be a shared goal! A goal motivates, drives, measures and spurs performance. It also helps track the worth of all the work that went in. So my sales lead and I decided on a “big, hairy, audacious goal” and rolled it out to the team as I kicked-off the session. It was then clear to the team that everything that they would do over the two-day session was to drive that goal!
When you set goals … set them high! I was lucky to be trained on the art of goal-setting early on in life. During my kiddy walks with my mother, I loved to aim stones at the clump of green mangoes that the trees bore during the summers. My mindset was naturally to go after the lowest hanging clump of fruits. More often than not, I would miss! One day my mom stopped me just as I was about to launch my ‘throw’, she looked me in the eye and asked me to aim at a clump on a higher branch rather than the lowest hanging clump. I tried with earnest …. Well my stone did not quite get to the clump that I had aimed for, but guess what! I caught the lower clump and down dropped the mangoes to my utter delight! Great lesson learned … Stretch your goals, make them bigger and you will get pretty darn close to it even—if you do not hit it!
Take golf ….. during amateur weekends, you may see golfers step up to the tee box, check the yardage (the distance of the pin from the tee box), take one look at the fairway ahead, and then hurriedly launch their shot. There is minimal consideration on where the ball needs to land, roll and stop. On the other hand, when you observe professional tour play, not only is the pro golfer aware of the yardage—he will actually determine the exact location of the fairway where he wants the ball to land. This is his goal! This location will be decided based on what he wants his second shot to be, the location of the green and the location of the flag. Once he determines his goal, he will decide what club he will need to use and how he will shape his shot in order to get there.
Ben Hogan is a golfing legend. The story goes that he was once playing with a new caddy and as he placed the ball in the tee box, he looked at his caddy for guidance. ‘Aim at the pine tree to the right of the fairway, Mr. Hogan’, the caddy said. Ben Hogan asked, ‘I am looking at the right of the fairway, the left pine tree or the right pine tree?’ The caddy then noticed that there were indeed two trees in the direction that he had pointed. This is the precision with which champions set goals. No wonder they come out with incredible outcomes!
Goals and attainments are not an end to themselves—they are great feedback mechanisms! The untrained mind focuses little on setting goals and planning attainment but mulls longingly on the results which are often unsatisfactory. On the contrary, champions focus on goal setting, then plan and execute the path to attainment with precision and finesse. They inspect results as feedback. They do not dwell on results for more than determining what they learned and then making suitable adjustments.
So what does it take to build great goals… two fundamentals:
Make Goals Practical & Relevant – When goals do not match internal and external readiness, they are pointless. Internal readiness is the preparedness of the team seeking out the goal to actually achieve. External readiness is the preparedness of the environment to absorb the efforts of the team and give them the result that they seek.
Make Goals Quantifiable & Measurable – If they are not, then they do not provide feedback, which cannot be subsequently acted upon. Quantification enables teams to stretch their goals. This lays the primary seed of experimentation, innovation and growth.
So let’s set our goals wisely … and let’s set them high!
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