Perry
Welcome back to the lab. As always, we'll start with three ideas from people far smarter than me and then run the concept through the E three framework and see what comes out the other side. So let's get started. Here are our three quotes to start off with. Number one is from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. Aim low, reach your goals, and avoid disappointment. The next one is anonymous. And one I really like. The penalty for setting a goal is achieving it. And finally, a Japanese proverb. Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. So now I'm going to share with you my hypothesis and what we're going to talk about today. Number one, it's kind of the overarching theme is goals are dangerous. And what I liken it to is in my mind, goals are like guns. They are dangerous in the wrong hands and should only be used by those who have invested the time and effort to understand them and wield them properly. So now we're going to do a little bit of exploration. Now here are some research, insights, and current thinking by others that will kind of dovetail into the hypothesis that I just shared with you. So first of all, we've got Scott Adams. He's done some great work on goals. It's kind of funny because he's he wrote Dilbert. So if you think about a person that wrote Dilbert and now he's got a lot of good stuff to say about goals, it's a little disconcerting, but we'll roll with it.
00:01:29
Perry
So he says, and this was one of the I love this quote he has. He says, let's say you want to lose £10. So every day you weigh yourself and you're like, hey, I'm failing. Even if you're getting close, you're in this pre-success kind of semi-failure, purgatory, emotional state, you're not feeling like you're a success. And this is exactly the reason why I don't think we should make big goals for ourselves because I think there's an emotional price we pay. So, one, you don't know if the goal you picked is the right goal. There could be better goals out there. And two, once you pick it now you have blinders on when you have goals because you're prioritizing. And when you do that, you're focused so focused that you might miss other opportunities and related areas because you're not noticing them, because you're so hyper-focused on the goal that you set. And for me, the emotional side of this is the biggest problem is the goals that you're. Once you set goals, you're constantly feeling like a failure because every day you're not there, you're failing. And by the way, the world is completely unpredictable and you can't predict where your career will be in a year. You can't predict what technologies will change the world. You can't predict whether robots will be taken your job.
00:02:42
Perry
So picking a goal in this world definitely has its downsides. Now, what Adam says is the key to success is approaching life like a system instead of through goals. Because, unlike goals, a system is something that you're doing every day to improve your chances of success. Everything you do in your system's approach is to make you a more marketable talent in the long run. And so, again, if we focus on and when we talk about systems, we're talking about activities, we're talking about a process, we're talking about something that we can repeat, something that's sustainable and scalable, which are two things that I love. I love it when any anything that we any strategy that we pick should be both sustainable and scalable. But it's not a goal per se, it's a process. Now, I'm just real quick, I'm not opposed to goals at all. And we'll talk in a little bit. Actually. Emmanuel Acho has some great things to say about that. But I do believe that goals are good for setting a direction. But that's where it begins and ends for me. So now we're going to follow up with Adams with some stuff from Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan. In fact, the two of them wrote a book called The Gap Living in the Gap and the Gain. Right? It's gap and gain. Now, their theory is, is when you measure your progress by the gains rather than from the gap that still remains, you kind of liberate yourself from the feeling of failure.
00:04:10
Perry
Now, think about that. We always have. If you look at if you think about this from a visual standpoint, you have three components. You have your vision of where you want to go, your future state, you have your starting point, and then in the middle there somewhere, you have your current state. So essentially what Hardy and Sullivan are saying is that instead of constantly looking at the gap between your current state and your goal, because again, if we do that, you're always falling short. It hearkens back to what Adam said. You're always failing. But if you choose to look at the other space, which is the gain between where you started and your current state, and mostly that's a very different impact, not only just on you but on your team, because now we're measuring gains instead of gaps. And the more you measure the gains, the more positive energy you'll have and the more gains you'll get by being busy creating the future, you'll be freed from fears of constantly failing and falling short, and that will drive you on a powerful upward spiral, not just you, but your team. Now, again, same three, same three points, right. Future state, Current state, starting point. It's all in how we look at it and what we're focused on.
00:05:26
Perry
Are we focused on what we've gained, how far we've come, or are we focused on how far we have yet to go? And you just remember this about Hardy's book. He says, Always measure backwards, which is not what we do. We always measure forwards. We always think about how far we have to go. In fact, oftentimes I hear I hear many leaders and I have conversation after conversation about this. I hear leaders always say, hey, we did a great job today, but we still have we still have far to we sell farther to go, you know, So, you know what, when you say the word, but in a sentence, it negates everything that came before. And I think there's a fear of of taking your foot off the gas. There's a fear that if we just recognize that we've made gains, that somehow people will relax and then we won't reach our goal. And science and research, you can look it up for yourself, doesn't support that at all. And we go back to people do their best work when they feel good. So if we don't if we don't figure out a way to make people feel good about what we're striving to accomplish, about what we have accomplished instead of constantly looking, you know, because goals can at some point be like chasing the horizon, We can keep running and running and running, but it keeps moving with us.
00:06:42
Perry
Because think about it, even if we achieve the goal. What do we do? Almost immediately, we set a new goal. So now we're back in the pre goal failure phase. You know, we had that momentary hey, we reached it. Yay! And then we turn around and go, okay, now what's next? So we're constantly living in that deficit. So, Annie Duke, I love her writing. She's written several books and there's her new book is called Is All About Quitting, which is an awesome read, and I suggest you read it, but there's a whole piece in there on goals, and here are her thoughts on it. So goals make it possible to achieve worthwhile things, but they also increase the chances will escalate commitment when we should quit. So if you think about that and this was fascinating, there's a whole area of study and there are multiple occasions where people, marathon runners have started a race and then either severely injured and or broken a bone and yet finish the race. There. There are multiple times this has happened where people have broken a bone in their ankle, a bone in their lower leg, and they actually ran the balance of the race on a broken bone. Now, some people look at that and go, oh, that's awesome. Look at their commitment. But really. I mean, really, does that make sense long-term damage just because. Well, I started it.
00:08:09
Perry
I have to finish it regardless. Right. So it escalates our commitment when we should quit. Now, if you really want to read about this, just read about folks that scale mountains because there's a there's actually Jon Krakauer wrote a book called Into Thin Air, I think goes the name of it. And it was about the most deadly day on Mount Everest, where I think there were 14 or so people that died. And it was And so imagine this, the people leading those journeys, they have a hard and fast rule. And I believe I'm going to get it right. If you don't summit by 1 p.m., you turn around. That's the rule. The rule is well known. Every guide to get paid. They get paid really well to take people up Everest. That's the rule. They tell everybody the rule. On that day. They didn't follow their own rule. And lots of people died. Right. Escalating commitment is an issue. The other thing is that Annie Duke says, is that goals are pass fail and progress matters very little, which is similar to what Hardy said. Right. So it's constantly we either achieved it or we didn't. There's no gray area. No, we don't get points for we don't get points for progress. And we don't just measure whether we hit the goal. We ask what we ask, what we achieved and learned along the way. So what we should do is not just again, back to the pass fail.
00:09:29
Perry
We shouldn't just look at it as a pass fail. We should say, How are we moving forward? Right. And then in this kind of echoes what Adam said, inflexible goals aren't a good fit for a flexible world. So, you know, again, I think there's nuance here. I don't think all goals are bad, but I think the practical application of how we use them can have a tremendous downside. And I love her. I love the next thing she says, because she says that every goal, everything that we do should have a kill criteria. And what that means is, is that when we set something up, there should always be reasons that we set aside that say and she calls them, we should eat. We should always have one, unless quote unquote, that is, I'm going to finish the race unless I break my leg kind of thing. So, you know, you put in a lesson there and you say to yourself, I'm going to do X unless this or this or this happens, and then I'm not going to do it. And that's to to guard us against the escalating commitment. And and also it's sunk cost, right? So we have this we have this mentality that once we've invested time or money or effort into something, we have to keep going. Because if we if we stop, then that's all wasted.
00:10:44
Perry
And waste is a forward looking problem, not backward looking. So think about it that way. Don't think about what you have already spent. Think about the things you will continue to spend. That could be waste because we tend to look backwards at it instead of forwards. We don't look at what additional resources we may waste because we're going to keep climbing that greasy flagpole. We look at, well, we've already spent X number of dollars, so gee, I got to keep going or I've done all the training to run this marathon for the last six months. I broke my I have a broken bone or I can barely move my ankle. I should keep running. Those don't make any sense. Right. So judicious. You know, we have to be judicious, judicious in this process. So now I'm going to get to Emmanuel Acho. He's actually a he's a Nigerian ex NFL player. And he tells this great story about how this whole thing came about for him as far as goals go, because he's retired from the NFL and he essentially got a letter from the NFL that he was going to be drafted in the fourth through sixth round, not first, through third. So he said he put that letter above his bed and for a year he read it every morning before he went to practice in college and then every night when he got home. So then he gets to the they go to the tryouts, right.
00:12:11
Perry
They go to for the where the folks go for the tryouts and the words escaping me right now can't remember it, but you know what I'm talking about. So they go and his goal is to run. I'm going to I'm going to think I'm going to get this right. He's going to run a four for six or below 40. And if he does, it's worth $2 million. So his whole this whole year is on this 140. If he runs below a46, it's going to be $2 million more than if he runs above a46. And it's the combine just came to me. It's the NFL combine. So he starts off and in about the 20 or 25 yard mark. He tears his quad away from the bone and goes down. It's over. Done. And it was it was that event that led him to understand how dangerous goals can be. Because at that point, he had nothing like he didn't know what to do. So he's he's got a whole he's got some really interesting points around this. And that is, you know, life is is fascinating and beautiful, but it's not set up for goals. Right. And it's not a zero sum game, but goals are zero sum. And we shouldn't make our life zero sum. And he doesn't believe in setting goals because. If you set a time, if you set a goal, you don't know if that's the limit or not.
00:13:46
Perry
Because once you've identified this as my target, you're going to achieve that target and nothing more. So he says he doesn't mind goals because if you have something clear like that, if you have something that cannot be improved, then he says he actually uses this term I'll submit to goal setting. If the mark cannot be improved, but if you're doing anything that can be improved. And he gives the example of Roger Bannister and the four minute mile. Years ago there was actually the Roger Bannister was the first person to run a four something under a four minute mile. Right. So before he ran that, they said it couldn't be done. They actually there was research, quote unquote, research done that said that a person's heart would explode if they ran under a four minute mile. Now, what's funny about that is after Bannister broke the four minute mile within, I think 12 to 18 months, ten other people had broken his record. So it just took that one person, right. But it wasn't just that nobody could do it. And when I think what he ran was like 3 minutes, 3 hours and 3 minutes and 59 seconds, you know, because his goal was to run under a four minute mile. His goal wasn't to run a 350. Right. So he said and he also shared something his coach would often say, which is Ako, don't be like water.
00:15:05
Perry
Water takes the easiest route. And when we do that in sports, but and honestly in our lives, challenging everybody to be introspective for a second, we take the easiest route. And I know, he says, I know the grocery stores are designed in a certain manner to make you walk down certain aisles. So he doesn't do that. He fights the natural inclination to walk a certain way because he's consistently trying to train his mind and body to fight against ease. And that's the problem with goal setting goal settings. Easy. You know, if you say, like, I want to make $100,000 by the time I'm 28, great. I have a finite marker, a finite age. This is what I want to do. I don't have to think about anything else. It's much more challenging to live life abstractly because now every day is a challenge, and every day is a constant pursuit towards greatness. So the way he looks at it is goals are too limiting. That's his mindset. Now, again, back to if the mark cannot be improved, then he'll submit to goal setting. But other than that, he says it's far too limiting and it takes the easy way out because we set a goal and and if you listen to what he says, what Annie Duke said, what Scott Adams said, the world changes very quickly. You know, back to one of my favorite acronyms is VUCA, right? Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.
00:16:21
Perry
Our world is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and it's not getting less so. It's getting more so. So if you think about that from the terms of goal setting, even in the business world, we it's, you know, the fourth quarter of every year, typically everybody's deep into planning for the following year. And we we spend a great amount of time sometimes a lot, sometimes not so much in planning what we want for the following year. And then we kind of forget about it. We go, okay, that's it. We're done with planning. Now let's achieve. So just think about it from a practical standpoint. How often do things stay? We made all these assumptions in the fourth quarter. Let's say we're doing it this year. In the fourth quarter of 2022. We're making all kinds of assumptions for 2023 on which to base our goals. How often do we go back and figure out at the end of the year if all of those assumptions were accurate? And if we could, did we accurately forecast everything that we needed to? And all of those things happen just as we imagined. And that's how we achieved our goal. Because in my experience, not too often does that happen. In fact, I worked for a really large company one time and we start our we started our budget process in August.
00:17:43
Perry
Went through all the final rounds. Multiple presentations had it all finalized by early December. Budgets were done for the following year. This was about ten. Is actually probably about 15 years ago. After January, one month after January. We had to redo the entire year. Because of one month. Because so much had changed in that one month that the rest of the year didn't make any sense. And that's why we have to be careful. I don't again, I'm not saying throw goals out the window. I'm just saying we have to put them in the right context. They're a tool. They're actually the goal isn't the end. The goal is the tool. To direct us to develop a system that enables us to achieve whatever that thing might be that we want to achieve that continues to evolve. All right. So the last little bit of research is by some folks, actually, this is actual research by goal setting done by Locke and Latham. And so their theory is it requires three things clarity, challenge and commitment. But they break it down. And there's actually three different types of goals, which I don't think we're we don't do enough research to really understand this. So they talk about outcome goals, performance goals and process goals. Now outcome goals are the big picture achievement that you don't have full control over, right? So something like customer satisfaction rankings within your industry. These are outcome goals.
00:19:26
Perry
We don't have control of them. There's something that happens as a result of the things that we choose to do. So then we have things, then outcome goals. Now we have performance goals. Now these are personal achievements that contribute towards the achievement of the outcome. Right. So again, these are things that we're going to do that will influence the outcome goal that we're talking about. So and then you have process goals. Now, these are the things that we're fully in control of. These are these would be leading indicators in business, right? So if you think about this, if we're setting outcome goals, because typically what we do is we set outcome goals and then we never get to drill down underneath that and then establish performance goals and process goals in our world, in our business world. And that's what we should do. We should we should take the time to figure out, okay, we all think this is the right outcome, goal. This is what we want to achieve. But then let's back down one step and say, okay, what are our performance goals? Right? These are still lagging indicators. And then we get to process goals which are leading indicators. So the process goals we can we're fully in control of. So we have to understand there are three levels for goal planning. Right outcome, performance and process. The most focus should actually be on the process goals because those are the things we can control.
00:20:47
Perry
So we've we've done a little exploration. Now let's talk about some experimentation. Now, these are things that I've done what I found out, what I believe you'd have to do this for yourself. So again, it isn't that I don't believe in goals. I just don't believe in how we bastardize the process. I don't believe that we should make them the end all, be all. I think there are two. There are valuable tool, but we have to see them in context. And I think they're important if and only if we take the time to understand what they're telling us about ourselves. And then we take the time to figure out whose goals are, what the goals are telling us about what we need to become. So this is the thing for me that nobody really spoke about this in the research, but when I when I work with people, I say, okay, if this is your goal. These are the things you want to achieve, right? Then who do you have to be in order to to do that? Because most likely you've got to be different. Because most goals are really derived created. To influence behavior. That's where the breakdown comes in. Because what we're trying to do is change behavior, because if we didn't need to do that, the goal would already be achieved. We'd already have achieved it if we didn't need to change something within ourselves.
00:22:11
Perry
So again, if you think about this, I'm all for goals. If we really talk about what we're trying to do, the goal is an indicator. What we have to figure out is what's it telling us about who we want to become? Then let's work on that. You know, it's not about what we accomplish. It's about who we want to be in the future. We can leverage these goals to create our own evolution as a leader. The goal itself after we said it is irrelevant, it's how does it impact us? What does it make us become? Now I use goals to set direction and then revisit them on some regular cadence to determine if they're still pointing me in a direction I still want to go because. You know, you spend resources and efforts on developing the process and system for the activities that will put you in a position to be more successful regardless of the accomplishment of the goal. Again, it's progress. Like it's the goal is helpful because it's directing us, but we're still going to make progress along the way, even if the goal isn't reached. And so right now I'm incorporating this process of goal planning, as I call it, into work that I'm doing to see how folks respond to it. Because quite honestly, there's going to be some pushback. Everybody loves goals and they think that's that's what everybody should do.
00:23:33
Perry
We've you can read tons of stuff on hey, set goals, set big, hairy, audacious goals, set a big, you know, do that, set it, doesn't write it down, share it with somebody, tell somebody all of those things about goals. But we never get down to actually talking about the work that needs to be done inside. Who do I have to be to achieve that goal? It's the classic, be do have, have do be, right? So most of the time we think have do B. Once I have X, I'll be Y, then I'll do Z, Right? Well, it's actually the opposite of that. You have to you have to turn those around. You have to be first, then do, then you'll have. So think about that. It's not have do be it's be do have. And that means we have to be something different. So. Now we'll move on to a little evolution. What will we do with it, if anything? So what will I do? I'm going to continue to experiment and track results for myself and others. But again, this is really challenging because we've always been taught that goals are central to success and that goals are the end all and be all that they drive everything. I've actually seen them drive bad behavior more than good behavior. Because as things get tighter and we're falling farther and farther behind, we start doing things solely based on the achievement of the goal and not the spirit of the goal.
00:25:09
Perry
So I have some behavioral and emotional challenges in my area. So these are the things I'll share with you as far as what how I would have to be different. So I have a control issue. You know, and it could be either control or being in charge. Those are different sides of a coin. So it isn't as much control for me because that's more about data and detail, which ain't my thing. But being in charge is influencing, you know, being able to impact how my surroundings unfold. Big issue for me. Success, winning, ranking, all those things, you know, having some having some scale that I'm at the top of makes a difference. Always has. That's how I was. It's how I evolved. Right. As being in sports, being in school. You get graded sports, you win, you lose, you know, all those things. So that's hard to get out of your head that there has to be some external measurement of my success. Accepting ambiguity. That's a huge one. I'm okay with that. Like I can live in ambiguity, although I don't know how it impacts other people around me because I know if you talk to my wife, I'm a little too okay with accepting ambiguity and rolling with the punches. She'd like a little more structure, so trying to balance that.
00:26:33
Perry
Another one's adopting a process mindset and doing the work every day, not always swinging for the fences. I get and this goes into kind of emotions and how those play into it for us because dopamine and all of the neurochemicals that we have, we get a rush from that stuff. I love new stuff. I love big transformational things. You know, having a process, mindset and work in the plan doesn't excite me. And it needs to structure process. I mean, to be quite honest with you, starting this podcast and having to follow a structure and create a process and adhere to a schedule, I did it as a forcing function. Because I think leaders need to figure that out. We need to commit to things that we're going to be wholly uncomfortable with to grow. And so sometimes it isn't good enough. The discipline, quote unquote, that we try to exert on ourselves isn't going to work. So we have to create outside forcing functions that make us do it. We have to commit to things that involve other people. And that's one of the things I'm doing, is engaging in those types of activities because I think there's tremendous value in process. I'm just not very good at it. And then finally, humility. I actually think humility is a big part of it. And that's being you know, I still believe in one of my central themes is our behaviors have to be subservient to our goals.
00:28:03
Perry
So our behaviors have to be subservient to our goals. And what that means is who do I have to be if this thing is important to me? If. If helping my children be successful as adults, if working, doing things with my spouse, if working with my clients, who do they need me to be? And then having the humility to be able to adapt. And become something of greater value. Not changing who I am, but evolving towards a goal that I have in mind and that thing changes all the time. It's always changing. It can change. You know, it changes sometimes hour by hour, because I meet with different people and they need different things. I can't just be me. I never lose the essence of what I do, but I have to listen differently. I have to. I have to talk to people differently in order to help them. And if helping people is my goal, then. That that change in behavior is necessary. Isn't easy. Takes energy, but it's necessary. All right. So we'll we'll close this thing up. I'm going to give you three closing thoughts from some pretty brilliant people. And then I'm going to have a call to action for you. All right. So first on Winston Churchill. Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue the counts. The next one is Ernest Hemingway.
00:29:38
Perry
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self. And finally, one of my favorites, John Wooden success is Peace of Mind, which is a direct result of self satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable. And all of these share a common theme, which is it's all about us. Not about external measurements. It's about are we doing the best we can to get better? It's a process, not an event. But if we focus on us, we can make the world better. So I'd like to thank you for investing your time and listening. And I hope there was at least one thing you heard that will move you along your evolution and becoming the leader you were meant to be and quite frankly, one that we all need you to be. And remember, teaching is the opportunity to learn again. So here's the challenge. Share whatever you found interesting today with others and add your own insights and opinions as well, because that will increase the likelihood you will retain it for future use. Have a great rest of the week and I'll hope I see you back here in the lab soon when we explore an idea that leaders must be selfish. I'll leave you with this final thought. If leading were easy, everyone would do it. And that is definitely not the case. See you back in the lab soon.
