Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.

―Norman Vincent Peale

Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.

―Vince Lombardi

Goal setting seems easy enough. Set a goal, get it done. But we all know it’s not really that easy. And that knowledge can lead us to aim pretty low. In fact, I recently read about an organization that set a fairly low goal of improvement. The leader went on to explain that they set the goal low so they could achieve it.

Think about that! Will the “setting goals low on purpose” approach truly achieve what leaders want? Probably not. So why do companies and their leaders set all-too-achievable goals, or worse yet, no goals at all?

Sometimes leaders don’t set goals because they are so busy trying to manage the day-to-day workload that they barely have time to think about the future and what they want from it. They are in survival mode. Yet goals are important. Without them we drift aimlessly without a motivating sense of purpose. Goal setting is how you get intentional about accomplishing your vision.

In other cases leaders may set goals but stick with modest ones. Perhaps they had set lofty goals previously, and when those goals were not reached, they were criticized for not achieving them (even though they did show good improvement). All too often that’s when the “playing it safe” goal is born. And that’s too bad because lackluster goals are not good for organizations.

Jim Collins demonstrated that the best companies and companies that became great set what he termed “BHAGs.” BHAG stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. While that goal was not always achieved, or maybe took a while to achieve, the organizations that set BHAGs did better than ones that did not set such goals.

I learned the value of setting big goals from Mark Clement, my former boss and a hospital CEO in Chicago, Illinois, in the mid-1990s. Mark had taken the role after the hospital had a significant layoff, lost around $7 million, and was struggling in many performance areas. One day at an executive team meeting the agenda was to set goals for the next year in several areas: quality, employee turnover, patient satisfaction, profit (as in let’s have some profit this time), and so forth.

We started with patient satisfaction. Our rating was dismal, with a satisfaction percentile in the single digits nationally. Considering our terrible rating, we suggested the goal be the 50th percentile: just get to average. And even then the senior leader team was worried we had gone too far.

But Mark disagreed. “I’m not taking the goal of being average to our board,” he told us.

So, we slowly raised the goal number to the 75th percentile and finally Mark was satisfied. I was told by the company measuring these satisfaction ratings that this kind of jump would be extremely difficult. Still, Mark shared this lofty goal with the board of directors and off we went.

With the goal so far from our current state, it quickly became apparent we would have to do things much differently. So, we did. We learned from others. We made a big effort to connect people to the “why”—meaning, why patient satisfaction was important and why we should make our company a better place to work for employees.

We missed the 75th percentile that next year. Instead, we made the 92nd percentile.

I firmly believe if we had left that meeting with the goal as the 50th percentile, we wouldn’t even have reached that. Setting a high goal created an urgency to change and change quickly. Why? The patients deserved the best care. That is what the mission said.

That lesson followed me a few years later when I became the administrator of Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, Florida. During my first meetings with employees I shared that our goal needed to be to become the best hospital in the country.

“Do you mean county?” one employee asked. I clarified that no, I meant country—nation—the United States. Did we get there? In a few areas, but not every area. Still, we were better because of a lofty goal.

We learn from many others. Martin Luther King Jr. set lofty goals in civil rights. While we still have a long way to go, would we be further along if he had set low goals? I doubt it. President Kennedy said we would get to the moon. This lofty goal, like Dr. King’s, inspired people.

If setting BHAGs is too much for you then set a milestone goal, then set stretch goals with a timeline. Just don’t shy away from lofty goals, whether they are personal, work, home, or striving to make our community better.

A few goal-setting tips:

• First, don’t set too many goals. Remember, we have limited time and focus. When we set too many goals—say, more than seven or eight—we can’t give each goal the attention it deserves. This is especially true when we’re setting BHAGs, each of which will require a substantial amount of energy. Also, be realistic about timelines. Some goals can’t be achieved in a year. They may take two or three years.
• Be sure goals are aligned with your mission and vision. That way the sense of meaning and purpose—which is needed in order to inspire people put forth the extra effort—will be built right in.
• Make the goals very specific, objective, and metrics-based. Goals should not be stated as: “We’re going to improve our customer satisfaction scores” or “We’re going to start a blog.” They should be more like “We’re going to move our customer satisfaction scores from 50 percent to 75 percent” or “We’re going to write 15 blog posts a month.”
• Put one person in charge of each goal. (If everyone owns the goal, no one owns it and it won’t get done.) Make sure meeting that goal is linked to their performance evaluation. It’s even better if you can assign a “weight” to each goal so the responsible person will know how important it is to focus on in the grand scheme.
• Check back in regularly to hold the person accountable for the goal. As we discuss in Chapter 38, performance evaluation systems work best when you hold quarterly reviews. That way you can ensure that the person responsible for a goal is making progress toward it. If they are not on track to meet the goal they’ll know early in the year and will have time to course correct, receive more training, or whatever it takes to improve performance in this area.
• Communicate goals company wide. Whether you have 5 employees or 100 (or more), everyone should know what the goal is and their individual role in meeting it. Clarity and transparency are essential if you’re to engage people and create ownership. Remember, everyone plays a role in reaching goals. If your goal is to improve cleanliness, it doesn’t just fall on janitorial staff. It falls on everyone.
• Constantly and consistently connect back to the why. Why do you want to meet this goal? How will the company benefit? How will the customer benefit? I have found that most people truly want to do the right thing. When leaders do a good job communicating the reason for the goal they will step up and make the effort.
• If you don’t achieve a goal, evaluate why. Keep digging until you find a root cause—maybe there is a flaw in one of your processes or maybe key people need additional training in a specific area. Use the missed goal as an opportunity to refine and perfect your organization.

Goal setting matters because it drives people to put forth effort, improve performance, and generate more revenue for the company. But it also matters because it drives personal growth.

Zig Ziglar said, “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” I believe that. Goals empower us to become the best we can be not just as leaders or employees, but as human beings. When we’re betting on ourselves we need to think big. We’re worth the effort.