So a few days ago I mentioned the 7 Whys technique as an example of how to drill into a root cause to truly discover the power necessary to persevere in your goal or more broadly – your mission.
Establishing the underpinning reason for what you are doing, where you invest your time, where you invest your money, and then the resulting action – is critical to long term resiliency when pursuing your goals.
Many times the goals can be especially audacious and damn near impossible to achieve. These are sometimes the best goals to have when you have a supremely disciplined and motivated group of people on the same mission. As an individual – these are the types of goals that can literally kill you if you approach it the wrong way.
There was a time when I was a fixated guy on goal attainment – in all facets of my life. I’d grip the hell out of the goal as I slogged and ground on towards that mountain top of goal attainment. Work had to be hard. My personal life invariably had to suffer to reach the crazy goals I had set.
As a coach said to me a couple years back, and I now know this is a cliche, something that worked wonders for me – as I had never heard this cliche.
‘You are climbing the tallest ladders you can find, and attempting to climb them very fast Mark. What if I told you that the ladders you were climbing were leaning against the wrong wall? Are you climbing the ladder just to climb it? Do you know which ladder you should be climbing? Or could you do the same journey by taking the stairs? Or the elevator?‘
So the notion of climbing the wrong ladder, but not knowing until you got to the top rung – truly resonated for me at the time. For me, it was a moment in time that I’ll never forget.
The question that was posed about the relevancy of the climb, continues to be an overarching theme now in my life. At this point, I am exceptionally clear on what I need to pour myself into, and it varies by week and by season.
This notion of uncovering relevancy is something I will be hitting upon shortly – as part of a shout out to a key master that helped me unlock somethings that were in front of me for over two decades.
Goal attainment. Results. Are they synonymous? Let’s think about it.
For the longest time, I have equated results to goal attainment. I hate tie games and penalty kicks in soccer. Same thing in hockey. Historically, this is how I’ve lived my life as well – kick some ass in business and win as a team. Falling short of the goal is a failure, period. In my non corporate life, I’ll say that historically – I’ve been a bit more forgiving although largely a hard ass in many ways.
Very recently, I decided this attitude can be useful in certain circumstances, but it is not useful as a default attitude. Now, I am just as interested in the how we get the goal accomplished. I was recently listening to a podcast where someone was saying they had envisioned building a billion $$ business – two years ago – within 5 years, from scratch.
This is audacious as a goal, and exceptionally unlikely if you believe in averages in the business world. The point that was being made by the author was this:
- The journey is as important as the goal.
- The direction the goal provides is the key, not the attainment.
- The results are not solely tied to the goal itself being attained, rather it is the personal (or organizational or familial or community) the goal pursuit that can become even more compelling than the actual achievement.
Putting it another way – many times the process of goal setting and goal pursuit – sets the stage for an even more audacious journey – once you are prepared for it. Being open to the possibility that a seeming failure could in fact be the most rewarding event of your life requires some radical clarity and flexibility on one’s part.
Being open to course correction – once you are in motion – is key to the business world, and I am saying in life in more general terms. You need to be in motion with energy fueling the action. If you are at least in motion – then I truly believe – course correction in the spirit of betterment is part of the game of life. However, if you are sitting in front of your Facebook feed for 8 hours on a Saturday bitching about your lack of progress, and you decide to change the course you were about to execute – prior to the Facebook marathon – this is a form of thrashing in my opinion.
Results do not equate to goal attainment. The action towards a stated direction is what unlocks the results.
Many times the results supersede the goal itself, and the innovation triggered along the journey towards a goal is many times the unintended creation of those ready to act in pursuit of the goals.
If you view the goal a a direction setting device – in addition to a scoreboard keeping device – I believe you get the best of both schools of thought. You must act in support of the direction that goal has established, be open to unexpected results along the way, better information being uncovered, and ultimately being ready to shift gears if the conditions warrant it.
Bringing it all the way back to the front of this post, if you were climbing a ladder set against a burning building – would you race to the top of that ladder?
What if you did not know the building was on fire until you got towards the top of the ladder? Would you stop climbing then?
What if the ladder was known to be set against a burning building and there were people waiting for your help at the top of that ladder?
Here’s the point with all these ladders analogies – when it comes to goals – here’s a philosophy that I operate with nowadays – I believe it is useful:
- You have to know the why behind a given goal.
- You have to establish what success looks like before you begin.
- You have to be sure that those involved with attaining the goal understand the two prior points as deeply as you do.
- You have to use the goal as a directional beacon, rather than a fixated string of deliverables that get you to the goal.
- You have to imbue the journey with a duality of plan-fulness and of flexibility as you uncover new information.
- You will go much farther down the road if you bring people along with you.
