Beyond SMART: How Bold, “Unrealistic” Goals Unlock Innovation and Passion

Conventional management tells us that if we want to succeed in our business, we must create SMART goals.

The A in SMART stands for Achievable, which in other words means Realistic. In fact, if you Google ‘Achievable’ under SMART, it states: “Goals should be realistic – not pedestals from which you inevitably tumble.”

Realistic is often analogous to Familiar and within our comfort zone.

When people create realistic goals, they naturally rely on their past experiences. Essentially, this involves reviewing their past successes and failures, analysing them, and deriving rational explanations and conclusions about what worked and what didn’t, why they achieved certain results, and what they can and cannot do in the future. Based on that analysis, they make realistic predictions about the goals they will commit to for the future.

If you think about it, realistic goals are goals that you already know or feel you know how to achieve. In simple terms, this is the past repeating itself.

The main flaw in this past-based approach to goal setting is that it drastically limits our scope of possibilities, and consequently imagination, innovation, resourcefulness, passion, and growth.

Our state of mind and state of being are very much shaped by our goals. Not just by whether we achieve them or not. But by their degree of boldness and challenge. Realistic goals are often predictable and small, so they don’t inspire.

I recently spoke with a senior product executive client who was searching for a new job and had received offers from two companies. One offer was to join a large, mature product firm with a secured pipeline of orders for the next three years, at a mid-level position (lower than his previous role). The second was to join a smaller, well-funded startup with a new proven proprietary product that they needed to optimize, market, and sell effectively at the C-suite level.

The executive, who is a very smart, dynamic, and passionate leader, was weighing the pros and cons of these offers, trying to convince me that the first offer was a wiser choice because joining a large, stable company would provide him more stability and security in the long term. When I probed deeper, he shared that the CEO of the large company assured him of a promotion to a more senior and influential role in 2-3 years, assuming good performance. The CEO of the smaller startup, on the other hand, enthusiastically offered him a strategic position in co-creating the future of the company.

When the executive described the large company, he said all the right things, but his tone was monotonous and disengaged. I could tell he was speaking from his head. However, when he talked about the smaller company, he was excited and lit up. It was clear he was speaking from his heart.

When unrealistic goals are authentic, in other words, they come from our heart, they stimulate, inspire and drive us to think differently (outside the box). They compel us to be innovative and figure out new ways of doing familiar things.

Deep inside, most people thrive on challenge. To stay motivated, our goals must be greater than what we are currently capable of. Great goals should evoke an emotion of excitement and fear.

As Joe Vitale (author) wrote:

“Good goals should scare you a little and excite you a lot”.

But unrealistic goals should not be treated as pedestals from which you inevitably tumble, according to the SMART definition. They must be accompanied by action.

When you take on realistic goals, you often already know how to achieve them. However, it’s okay not to know how to achieve your authentic, bold, and unrealistic goals when you take them on. You should be excited and clear about your goal description, then you must take action.

Knowing the entire plan for their execution is not possible or necessary. However, you must take baby steps toward them. Your first steps will reveal your next steps, and so on. The path to realize bold and unrealistic goals is not a straight line. It often has unexpected twists and turns along the way. You achieve bold and unrealistic goals not through prediction or certainty from what you already know, but through real-time discovery, insight, learning, and growing.

As Goethe wrote in one of his couplets:

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

Larry Page, the founder of Google, has driven a goal-setting philosophy within the company that promotes setting ambitious goals where there is roughly a 50% chance of success. Larry’s leadership approach comes from the rationale that inspired people tend to come up with much greater ideas. His approach is not about setting intentionally unachievable goals, but rather about pushing for significant, potentially transformative results, even if it involves a higher risk of not fully reaching the target. What he has found is that the goals that do succeed make a much greater impact. If you want to subscribe to this approach, make sure that around 50% of your goals have a 50% likelihood of success.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the kind of person you choose to be.

• Do you want to be someone who consistently achieves 100% of your goals by keeping them safe, familiar, and comfortably within reach?
• Or do you want to set bold, transformative goals that stretch your thinking, fuel your growth, and position you to make a far greater impact?

The choice is yours: pursue certainty and stay where you are or embrace challenge and discover just how far you can go.

Gershon Mader

Founder and President of Quantum Performance Inc., a management consulting firm specializing in generating total alignment and engagement in organizations.

His work has encompassed a broad range of industries including banking, telecommunications, manufacturing, entertainment, real estate, retail, startups and non-profits.