The Power of SuperGoals

“Big goals work best when there’s an alignment between an individual’s values and the desired outcome of the goal. When everything lines up, we’re totally committed—meaning we’re paying even more attention, are even more resilient, and are way more productive as a result.”

Most important, momentum matters most. High, hard goals need to be challenging but attainable.

One of the most powerful life skills, and one of the most important to hone and develop for both professional and personal success, is creating clear outcomes. This is not as self-evident as it may sound. We need to constantly define (and redefine) what we’re trying to accomplish on many different levels, and consistently reallocate resources towar

You, too, need a team of absolute specialists — chess pieces — to achieve your ambitious goals.

I’m a huge fan of goals, but they need to be handled correctly. At one point, the malaria team thought we’d eradicate the disease by 2015, which wasn’t realistic. When a goal is too aspirational, it’s bad for credibility. In philanthropy, I see people confusing objectives with missions all the time. A mission is directional. An objective has a set

But a goal set arbitrarily, without an analysis or understanding of a critical challenge or opportunity, is an unsupported goal. By contrast, a good goal is the result of effective strategy work that targets certain actions that will move the organization forward. To avoid confusion, it is best to call this an objective to distinguish it from an un

There’s a lot of career and life advice about setting goals. Goals are fine, even necessary, and measurable targets can be important management tools in business. (Research suggests that the simple act of writing down your goals24 can have a profound effect on outcomes.) But your desire to reach a goal is not going to get you there.