Goal setting: the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat

Some of you may remember the ABC sports lead in tag from a few years back “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” It showed clips like Muhammed Ali towering over a prone Sonny Liston for both the victory and defeat. Then there was the poor skier tumbling down the ski slope, looking very much like me the first time I tried to jump off a ski lift, for the agony of defeat. When goals are set, sometimes one experiences the thrill of accomplishment; but one also runs the risk of the agony of failure. This is true for companies as well as individuals. Setting goals is one of the most practical and powerful motivational tools there is. If you can’t see it, you can’t get it. Goals provide direction and purpose for both people and organizations. There is a great Lou Holtz story when he was a defensive coach early in his career at South Carolina. Following the head coach being fired, the new coach decided to fire all the assistants. Depressed, and with little money in the bank, Lou’s wife gave him The Magic of Thinking Big, a book extolling the virtues of setting big goals. Lou decided to set some big goals for himself, 107 to be exact. His 107 included: meeting with the pope; attending a White House dinner with the president; appearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson; and coaching a championship football team. On showing the 107 goals to his wife, she suggested he add finding a job to the list. The magic must have worked, for he has accomplished most of the ones on his list, including the previously mentioned ones. Setting goals is not enough however. One has to have a plan for achieving those goals. Then, those plans have to be successfully executed. I teach my management classes that good strategy consists of knowing where you are now, deciding where you want to go, and determining how you are going to get there. While Mike Tyson is not known for his keen intellect, do not tell him I said that, one of his thoughts was especially insightful: “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. My nephew, in his early 20’s, along with a group of friends, set out last summer to hike the John Muir Trail in California. What a lofty, exciting goal, a trek of 211 miles with elevations running over 14,000 feet. Their youthful enthusiasm and confidence glossed over the reality of what it would take to accomplish that goal. For starters, none was experienced hikers. The weather, the elevations, the unexpected forest fires, combined with the physical demands all contributed to them dropping out one by one after only a

few days in. There can be a long row to hoe from a goal to a reality. One of the easiest things is picking a goal; the hardest part is achieving them. Goals are just pie in the sky unless you have a plan for accomplishing them. An apt analogy might be that of putting the horse before the cart. One has to have a strategy for achieving a goal before it can become a true goal. That is true of personal goals, like losing weight, or a company’s goal of becoming an industry leader. Even if you have a plan for achieving a goal, one has to be able to execute that plan. Experts tell us that execution is harder than the formulation part of planning. It is always easier to say you are going to do something than actually doing it. If you want proof, think President Trump’s goal of making America great again, or President Obama’s goal of change, yes we can. Politicians are good at promising goals, but rarely do they have a plan for achieving them. Achieving these political goals often involves greater sacrifices than voters are willing to make. Politicians find It easier (and gets them more votes) to overpromise and then blame others for under delivering. Very few leaders are good at both strategy creation and strategy execution. A recent research involving hundreds of executives found that only eight percent of them were good at both creating a goal and carrying out that goal. I would venture a guess that same percentage applies to individuals and their personal goals. A good example is that only three out of every 100 Americans reach the age of 65 with any degree of financial security. Although it is always disappointing when one fails to achieve a goal, fear of failure should not keep one from trying. It is better to have tried and failed than not tried at all. Failures are great learning experiences. I learned from my embarrassing tumble getting out of the ski lift that one has to jump, push, and get the heck out of the way.