Big, Scary Goals

If you are going to set yourself goals, why not set huge, transformational goals – things that might seem impossible? 

The thought came to mind when listening to a gold medal athlete at the Paris Olympics being interviewed.

In here teens the athlete had set herself a goal to be an Olympic gold medallist (huge, transformational goal).

She then did two things:

• She concentrated fully on all the things that would get her to her goal.

• She stopped doing all the things she was doing that weren’t adding value. Gone went the nights out with friends and the obsession with social media. 

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In effect she was building on the 20 per cent of valuable activities she was doing and reducing the time spent on the 80 per cent that weren’t adding value.

Setting yourself small ‘day-to-day’ type goals is often a fruitless affair. Even if you hit them, they rarely make a difference. Perhaps this is why over 90 per cent of New Year resolutions are long forgotten by the end of January?

There are parallel ides in business. 

A question that gets senior leaders thinking is ‘if you had to grow this business by 10 times in the next 3-5 years, what would you do?’

There are many examples of companies that have set massive growth goals and then achieved them. Often, they have done this by looking across to neighbouring industries:

1. Southwest Airlines – a small regional airline. They looked across to the coach industry and developed the low-cost airline model.

2. Our own Yellow Tail Wines – they had a localised distribution model selling through specialist outlets. They looked over to the soft drinks industry and developed a Global distribution model through supermarkets.

3. Circus du Soliel – who looked across to theatre and introduced drama and music to the traditional circus model.

If the senior team set goals along the lines of ‘increase profits by 5 percent,’ it often leads to a lack of focus. There are many ways this goal could be achieved. But huge transformation goals generate focus as there will be few paths to get there.

Even if you miss the huge transformational goal you set for yourself or your company, you will be in a much better place than previously.

‘If you aim for the stars and miss, you still end up on the moon.’ (Or something like that).

It’s worth adding that every one of us has examples of where their life has been transformed (moving from the UK to Australia, getting married and having two kids was pretty transformational).