Challenging Goals vs Unrealistic Goals

ONE of the most basic tips to strategic goal setting is to deliberately set goals that are beyond your current capabilities and abilities.
In other words, do not set goals based on what you can or cannot do at the current state in time.

The reason for this is that the goal must require a higher, better version of you for it to be achieved in the first place.

A goal must require behavioural change that is above and beyond the norm.

This forward-looking approach allows for the cultivation of new competencies and the strengthening of capacity to achieve higher-level targets.

Too often I witness how boards or executive management opt to reduce specific goals or targets simply because the current state makes that goal seem unrealistic.

To be fair, we certainly do need to be empirically realistic with goal setting, but there always exists a fine line between what is challenging and what is unrealistic.

We must find that delicate space where the two meet and peg most of your goals there.

People and organisations who peg their goals at this space often ride through the discomfort and eventually achieve the goal.

Most importantly, even when they fail to achieve the goal, where they end up at is still far beyond the initial conservative goal.

Even a failed attempt at a challenging goal is far better than when you meet or exceed a normal, conservative goal.

Ideally, a goal should make you feel slightly uncomfortable and unsure whether you can achieve it or not.

Unfortunately, in the world of performance management, most people cannot accept a goal they cannot guarantee they can easily achieve, and this leads to a culture of normalcy and mediocrity.

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