If they don't know where they are headed, how can they help you get there?

Too many leaders struggle to craft and communicate a vision for their team. This is a very expensive problem. If your team doesn’t know where it’s headed, don’t act surprised when they end up at the wrong place. Even if you get to your destination, it is likely that it took too long. In this economy, leaders have to become experts at the “vision thing”.

Is there a problem not having a clear vision? Just ask George H.W. Bush who lost his re-election bid for President: “Bush…suffered from his lack of what he called ‘the vision thing,’ a clarity  of ideas and principles that could shape public opinion and influence Congress. ‘He does not say why he wants to be there,’ complained columnist George Will, ‘so the public does not know why it should care if he gets his way.’” From the US Senate’s website’s Bio of Bush

Visioning starts with a team’s Mission Statement and leads to goal setting. A good Mission Statement tells the world why your company exists. A vision describes the journey we are embarking on to get from where we are today to the realization of our mission. Goals are the challenges we will face along the way.

After the vision is created, comes the communicating. Teams need to hear where they are going (Vision) and what challenges (Goals) they will face along the way.  How many of your teams have a short, motivating Mission Statement, a clear vision and written goals?

Why must these be written and communicated? If you write down your goals, create an action plan and report your progress, you are 50% more likely to achieve those goals than if you don’t write them down (based on research done at Dominican University). Want more proof: in a survey of 400,000 sales people it was found that 100% of the top performers have written goals.

Sport’s psychologists say that you have to have two types of goals: performance (qualitative) goals and outcome (quantitative) goals. When we climbed K2, the world’s most deadly mountain, we had two outcome goals: get to the summit and get home. And we had our performance goal: climb the mountain in a style that we would be proud of. We talked all the time about these goals especially the style goal. Style is subjective, so we worked hard to define it for ourselves. We achieved all three.

In the work that we do with teams we demand that the team chooses an improbable goal: one in which failure is more likely than success. If the goal is too easy, we find that people don’t give 100% and failure is actually more likely. We want a goal that the team can reach only if everyone modifies their behaviors. Once the goal is known, everyone can work towards reaching it.

And another thing: Does everyone have to agree upon the goal for the team to perform at its potential? NO!! As long as people agree with the mission and understand the vision they will support goals they don’t like. Remember  another key characteristic of High Performance Teams – Passion: people putting the group’s mission in front of their personal desires.

I always felt that literature is the foundation to understanding leadership. Great literature (and movies) depict a main character in the midst of a transformational journey. Writers use conflict as the tool for that transformation. Every great leader has been tested, often fail, but always learn from the conflict they are embroiled in.

These are entertaining, gripping, emotionally charged books for aspiring and even  experienced leaders.

The Power of One by Bryce Courtney. This book is an amazing story of a young person facing incredible challenges and overcoming them all. It is extremely well written, and once you are hooked you’ll never put it down. This is a book of fiction, but packed with lessons, that you can read time and time again.

We Die Alone by David Howarth. This is an amazing TRUE survival story.  It will forever put your personal problems into context. It reinforces the idea that all of us are capable of so much more than we ever imagined. Read this on a beach, as it will chill you to the bone. And if you love this book as much as I did, you should also read The Long Walk.

The Go Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann.  This a parable, a fictional story loaded with lessons. A young man, who wants to be successful, but doesn’t know how, finds a mentor. In a quick 127 pages the main character (and you) learn a formula for creating success (and helping others succeed).

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell set out to explore why certain people are successful and others aren’t. His findings might surprise you: external factors matter (when and where you are born), but so does internal factors (like the amount of time spent practicing your craft). This book is fun to read. I once had a foreign exchange student in a business school class awkwardly tell me that the best thing she learned from my presentation is that you “don’t have to be smart or have money to be successful.” Yes, that was a left handed compliment that perfectly underscores Gladwell’s thesis.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. Teddy is arguably the greatest US President. This book explores his colorful journey to the White House. A man of incomparable drive and integrity, Teddy travels the Western Frontier, captures rustlers, climbs the Matterhorn, sends warships to the Philippines, reforms the NY City Police Department, fights against powerful economic forces (and wins). He struggles, fails, succeeds and fails again. It is an amazing story and an important historical contrast to modern day politicians.

Building Better Leaders On a Leadership Development Expedition to Cotopaxi, the World's Highest Active Volcano

So you want to build better leaders. That’s a noble undertaking, too bad your likely to fail. Seriously if you follow the well worn path, you’ll fail.

We’ve all been part of the two most popular trends in leadership development trainings:

• Leadership Fantasy Camps (hire big names, sprinkle in some of the CEO’s time and pray that something good comes out of it)
• Team Building Events (make people play embarrassing games, then discuss why their team is dysfunctional and magically assume that talking in a circle will fix everything)

The Leadership Fantasy Camp model usually fails because the presenters tend to give you their opinions, which often contrast with the opinions of the next guy. The audience doesn’t know who to believe and so leave more confused, or even worse mis-informed. They have their fill of cliches, but not skills. I have been a part of many of these events, all very cool, with great food and fabulous bottles of red wine. The most important thing I’ve learned at those events is never be the first presenter on the second morning. A hungover audience is hard to please.

The Team Building Events usually fail because the aging camp counselors delivering them probably never had a real job and never nurtured a team along the time horizons a business does (years not hours or days). I was part of that world for years and while I learned how to facilitate some cool games, it wasn’t until I had dozens of employees and millions of dollars in responsibilities that I fully grasped the challenges facing businesses. The best team building facilitators manipulate your team into making the same old mistakes. Why? Because they know how to facilitate a meaty discussion that addresses that issue.

So how do you create a successful program? You start by looking at the fundamental skills that all great leaders share. What are they?

Learning how to create a mission statement and core values

Mission: A great leader articulates the organization’s mission and fiercely defends that mission. They get everyone in the organization to memorize the mission. They use the mission to motivate at every level so the organization can scale. If you are building new leaders, or making your current leaders better, they have to know how to craft a mission (and yes the accounting dept can have it’s own mission, while the marketing dept has a slightly different one. The trick is that all those missions have to serve the larger organizational mission. The same is true for BOD’s.)

Your first leadership training needs to include a Mission focused approach. Even if your organization has a great mission, your leaders still need to learn how to use the mission as a tool for motivation.

I have been surprised by the lip service that organizations give to mission statements. I know all of us with grey hair suffered through the mission statement craze of the 80s and 90s in which lengthy tomes were created in heated discussions by committees which lacked enthusiasm. That experience turned a lot of us off. We decided that it was more gratifying to just put our heads down and create tactical and strategic successes. Well, as a result our organization’s successes too often depended on external forces  (profits rose and fell with the economy or our competitors catching lucky breaks). Just look at how Southwest uses Mission compared to the rest of the airline industry. That company gets it, and profits because of it.

Using our Mission Statement to Navigate

Before we move on to the next installment in this short series, I encourage you to read this blog post about Mission Statements.

A Wharton Leadership Expedition on Cotopaxi

We will all be called on to lead, and we will be judged by our team’s results. I believe that behavior (not tools or processes) is the most important factor in generating consistent, strategic results. Correctly managing our own behaviors and the behaviors of our team members will ultimately define our path to success or failure. The sheer number and volume of  competing behaviors create the white noise that lulls leaders into a catatonic state of poor performance or success despite their efforts.

Many leaders do not  know which behaviors are mission critical and which are inconsequential. Even when better than average leaders identify a few “must have” behaviors, consistently implementing them can prove elusive.  Luckily the inverse is true: it is far easier to know Dangerous, Unproductive, Dysfunctional (D.U.D.) behaviors when we see (or feel) them. Successful leaders confront the threat of D.U.D. behaviors (fear, selfishness, arrogance, tool seduction, lone heroism, cowardice, comfort, and more).

Can you really afford to have an Idiot on your team?

If your team suffers from subtle or dramatic behavioral challenges, I suggest you look at our book High Altitude Leadership. In it, Don Schminke and I examine the 8 Dangers that destroys teams (or keeps them from performing to their potential). Guess what, all the Dangers are behavioral.

The core responsibility of a leader is to encourage mission critical behaviors and have the courage to fight against D.U.D. behaviors so that behaviors that generate consistent, strategic results can flourish. Once you begin to act in accordance with your responsibility, it won’t take very long for your team to deliver incredible results.

Creating a High Performance Team

What is a High Performance Team? There are so many definitions out there, but we all agree that HPT’s outperform their peers, even if they have fewer resources. Where the definitions differ is over semantics: do team members share the organization’s goals or will they still be successful when they disagree with them? Is leadership shared or dictated? I think that these differences exist between corporations hesitant to demand too much from their employees and those leaders running teams where lives are on the line. We’ve found greater success when we look to teams where consequences include death, for inspiration. After all, if my business fails, the consequences aren’t pretty. We can’t afford to fail.

I think the following best characterizes a High Performance Team:

Where does your team rate on this scale?

It is easy to judge your own team’s based on this simple definition.

Motivated by the Mission: Do you have one of those mission statements that read like a phone book? Or have you scrapped that and come up with something that better defines your company’s purpose, while being short enough to motivate all of your employees? The best mission statements answer the question: Why does the world (my customers) need this team to succeed? Your mission is your purpose for being; it is your vision for a better future.

Some Examples:

Nike: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.

ConocoPhillips: Use our pioneering spirit to responsibly deliver energy to the world.

CVS: We will be the easiest pharmacy retailer for customers to use.

Dow Chemical: To constantly improve what is essential to human progress by mastering science and technology.

Southwest Airlines: The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.

United by the Values: There is something primal in all of us that reacts strongly when professed values are violated. In our work with companies, even those with uninspiring missions, we’ve found that shared values contribute beyond seeming proportion to a team’s success. A good way to identify your company’s true core values is to ask: if by random chance, some of my employees and customers met at a party, what values would I want them attributing to this company? Think about it. List three or four values that you hope they would use to describe the organization. Do these values differ from the values that you currently print in employee handbooks?

It’s best to keep the list short. Three or four core values are plenty.

If you want to explore a company that gets Core Values, spend some time on the Southwest Airlines “About Southwest” section of www.southwest.com . Southwest promotes the Southwest Way, which includes the Warrior’s Spirit, Servant’s Heart and Fun-LUVing Attitude.

Proud of the Reputation: How rich is your history and who even knows the whole story? Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz emotes creatively and compellingly through his books. These capture the big moments and inspire the troops, but do you know that they have an active internal communications dept. (as do most bigger brands). Here is a comment I found on a blog about branding: “I managed internal communications at Starbucks for four years: Our primary role was internal brand building. I can assure you that the philosophy that drove Starbucks growth is that great brands are built from the inside out, beginning and ending with employees. And that very little budget was invested in external marketing, including advertising. I have been gone for nearly a decade, but the stores I visit regularly still have that passion for the brand.”-Lewis Green.

Can you imagine how powerful your company would be if your team were given reason to be proud of their reputation? Can you imagine your corporate pride, if you advertised internally more than you advertise externally? Can you imagine if you had a team like Nike’s Internal Communication’s Team? Here is what they are responsible for:

1. Inspire employees through innovation and inspiration

2. Inform employees about Nike’s strategic priorities; drive business results.

3. Engage in Nike’s business – listen, learn, be inclusive

4. Educate and empower managers

5. Excite employees about the brand initiatives; build momentum

Follow Nike and Starbuck’s lead. Look at your culture as a profit center or as Southwest states it: “Our people are our single greatest strength and most enduring long term competitive advantage.” Telling the story of your company and its people is critical to your success.

All of the High Performance Teams I’ve worked with share the above three points (they are motivated by their mission, are united by their core values and are proud of their reputation). And most well performing companies I’ve worked with share one or two of them. I was once asked by the manager of a cardboard box manufacturer to explain why his company does so well, when no one there is particularly excited about cardboard.  When we dove deeper we found a powerful bond among the employees based on their core values. They behaved like a loving family. The level of caring was powerful and in a humble way, shared by all the employees. They also took tremendous pride in the quantity and quality of their products. Cardboard boxes are a commodity, yet this group created industry leading profits

Do you have your priorities in line and in the right order?

It is the responsibility of the CEO and senior management to identify the mission and establish the core values. Hopefully this was done by the founder, before making the first sale. It is also senior leadership’s biggest responsibility to protect the organization’s mission and core values from internal and external threats and promote them to all the stake holders.  Like every employee, senior leaders need to be held accountable to this responsibility. One of the greatest threats we face is mission creep, in which the lower level organizational activities or temptations lead us away from our mission. Leaders who are also tacticians (great accountants or engineers or salesmen) are more likely to see the organization through a lens that favors their strengths. We don’t need to look further than the finance industry to see the effects of mission creep: subprime lending. Since the fall of 2008, I’ve worked with three of the top financial companies in the country. One lost $9 billion dollars because of a small group of subprime traders. The other two avoided subprime lending. When I asked the CFO of one of those banks why they escaped the temptation, he said when he first heard of it, “it didn’t seem right.” On a primal level it went against his personal and his organization’s core values. A regional president of the second bank told me essentially the same thing. These bankers knew their mission was to protect and grow the wealth of their customers.

Nanga Parbat, in Pakistan, is the 9th largest peak in the world

We learned that the first person was dead when we were baking the cake. By the time I blew the candles out, the second person was dying. This was my fourth birthday celebrated in Pakistan, and like all the others it was more painful than fun.

Karl Unterkircher, of the Italian team, was a great climber. He summited both Everest and K2, pioneered a new route on Gasherbrum 2, and now suffered a fatal fall into a hidden crevasse on the Raikhot Face of Nanga Parbat. His partners struggled through the night to get to his body, wedged some 50 feet deep in the crevasse, where either the cold or injuries or some combination slowly stole his last breath.

A phone call from Italy, interrupting the hourly calls from Iran, brought us this news. Karl’s partners were unable to reverse their route, the Italian said, and were now forced to descend our face on Nanga Parbat. Could we help?

High above base camp, our Iranian friends were caught in their own epic struggle for survival. Their summit bid was harder and longer and more exhausting than imagined. Leaving Camp 4 just past midnight they didn’t start to summit until 4 p.m., the last of climbers topping out at 6:30 p.m.

Below the summiters, a single Iranian climber, Saman Namati, was struggling  in a futile attempt to reach the top. Earlier in the day he had agreed to return to Camp 4, but for some reason (probably driven by the delusions of Cerebral Edema) he first turned toward camp, then started back up. Separated from his team mates and with no walkie talkie to communicate, he wandered all alone, following their foot prints, but lost none the less.

Just shy of 7 p.m. , with less than two hours of sunlight left, the Iranians began their descent from the summit. From base camp, their progress seemed immeasurable. All radio calls went unanswered. It was clear that this was an exhausted team, incapable of making it even to the safety of Camp 4 this night.

As darkness descended, the head lamps made it easier to see the climbers. Without those lights, or the strongest pair of binoculars in base camp, it was nearly impossible to distinguish a rock from a person, without a vivid imagination. But base camp was not short of anxious spectators. All sorts of rumors had circulated throughout the day, and the question of where was Saman, had all sorts of answers.

At 9:30 p.m. we saw Saman’s light, far off to the right of the rest of his team. For some reason he left the trail of foot prints and traversed some rocky terrain, heading for a steep cliff band. He was hidden from his friends, on a slope that lead even further from Camp 4 and the route to base camp. His light stopped shining shortly after that. We now had one confirmed sighting of Saman, and it foretold the worst.

A storm blew in that evening, as predicted. The five Iranian summiters gave up the fight for the tents at 1:30 a.m. and huddled together to await dawn. They were at a height of 25,000 and without sleeping bags or shelter we all feared frostbite or worse would grab first one of the weakest, then the next.

At 5:30 a.m. base camp overheard a radio call. The tent was found. They had survived the night.

All morning, we received short calls from the team. They would try to reach the safety of Camp 3. But overwhelmed by grief and exhaustion, their 11:30 a.m. departure slipped to 1 p.m. then finally 4:30 p.m. Again it would be a struggle through the night, to reverse their steps and upon reaching C3, to erect tents.

Saman, it was assumed by all, was dead. He spent two nights without shelter, above 25,000 feet. The first 24 hours were spent in a struggle towards the summit, the second 24 hours were spent laying in the snow. It seemed logical that he would be dead by now. But at 10:30 p.m. 25 hours after his light was last seen, 46 hours since leaving Camp 4, a flash of light sparkled from the remote right corner of the summit pyramid.

I was stunned when I saw it. I called to my team. Get out of your tent. Tell me if I’m seeing things. And the light flashed again. Somehow, after 46 hours of struggling, in sub zero temperatures, with waves of storms hitting the mountain, Saman Nemati, a 27 year old climber, from Iran, with no prior 8000 meter peak experience, had kept himself alive. He had no food, water or shelter. His brain was likely affected by the swelling effects of Cerebral Edema.  There were no explanations for how he survived, and there was no realistic hope that he would survive another night. At least among the experienced, there was no hope. Among those who knew no better, Saman was alive and a rescue should be launched.

Climbing above Camp 1 on Nanga Parbat

In the early hours of the Iranian descent, the Iranian base camp was in contact with the families in Iran. When Saman’s light stopped flashing that first day, the family was told that he was likely dead.  Now it was reported that he was still alive. The family wanted a rescue, but there was no one within 3-4 days of him with the strength to rescue him. Even if he was alive when a rescue attempt was started, he was clearly so bad off that he wouldn’t survive to see his rescuers. And that is assuming anyone could even get to him. A series of blizzards were forecast. Any rescue attempt would put lives at great risk. How many lives? We would need nearly ten climbers to move him across the treacherous terrain to base camp. A helicopter could land no higher than 20,000 feet, and with the steepness of the terrain, the first landing zone was at 17,000 feet. If we found him alive, we would have to lower Saman for nearly 8000 feet, which would take ten rescuers over 4 days to accomplish.

I prayed that Saman, who flashed his light 5 times in those 40 minutes, then stopped, was saying goodbye. But in Iran and in the minds of a few Pakistani kitchen staff and one exhausted Iranian in base camp, Saman was telling us to come and get him. It was easy to see the source of this hope. But it was impossible for me to see past the dangers of this renewed call to launch a rescue.

The Iranian and American teams on Nanga Parbat before the fatal Iranian summit bid

I tried to caution their enthusiasm, but it consumed them.  By dawn there were rumors, coming out of Iran, of a Pakistani helicopter that could fly from to 25,000 feet on Nanga Parbat to pick Saman up. There is no such helicopter in Pakistan. But no one would listen to the many old hands around who kept telling them this. The Iranian Embassy was now involved. Meanwhile the five surviving Iranians were still struggling in their own fight to descend. It was after 2 p.m. when they finally crawled from the tents at Camp 3 to return to the struggle of the descent. At dark they reached Camp 2 only to find all their equipment had been blown away. For the survivors it was to be another epic night.

Shaka Khan, our expedition Cook-Boy

Meanwhile, our porters had come. Our camp was packed and I lingered behind the team to be a voice of reason for the Iranians, who were falling prey to a local school teacher who claimed to see Saman sitting, then fallen over, on a distant patch of snow. Trying in vain, with my 20/15 eye sight and those same old binoculars, I couldn’t tell if this was a person or one of a thousand rocks. No one else could tell the difference, but none the less this rumor fueled the need to launch a rescue.

High Altitude Porters from Skardu were rounded up. Bruce Normand, who climbed K2 with me in 2007, was enlisted as the leader of the rescue team. On the morning of July 20, as my team walked to the trailhead, Bruce and his team were flown to Base Camp. The mountain was again covered by storm. Rain fell in base camp and snow higher on the mountain.  Any recon flights were impossible.

I am home now. Saman rests high on Nanga Parbat. Karl Unterkircher rests deep in a crevasse on the mountain’s far side. The surviving Iranians reached base camp safely. On the Raikhot Face, Karl’s two partners struggled for ten days to reach base camp.

I have witnessed so many deaths on 8000 meter peaks that I have long come to recognize that only when you make it home have you “won” at this game. Both the inexperienced and the elite die with frequency on these peaks. It was too easy for these climbers to be seduced into climbing, when our team was easily convinced that the risks were too great. There is a seductive quality to these peaks. According to Karl’s website, “Karl was clearly exceptionally concerned about the danger of the big climb that they have been building up to all this time.” But he still chose to climb.

Why is this 8000 meter peak game so alluring? Why do gifted athletes like Karl Unterkircher put themselves at such risk? There is a picture of Karl, his wife and their three young children on Karl’s website. For most of us, that scene, not some posed summit photo, captures the essence of human achievement.

Karl and his family just before he traveled to Nanga Parbat

After our 2007 K2 expedition, I went to Italy to visit the family of Stefano Zavka, who sat down on the way back from the summit and died.  As we talked about Stefano’s last climb tears poured down his parent’s cheeks, his sister sobbing.  We were all still grieving a preventable death. A few days later I met with Marco Mazzochi, the Italian film maker and sportscaster, who filmed Stefano’s expedition for Italian TV.

“Marco, what did you learn about mountaineers?”

“I learned that they are the biggest ego-tists in sport. No other athlete would leave his family to risk so much.”

When I met with Danielle Nardi, the leader of Stefano’s fateful expedition, and asked why Stefano was left all alone on that descent, he gave the mountaineer’s pat reply: “It is every man for himself above 8000 meters.” Every time I hear that statement, my blood boils. Only a sport full of “ego-tists” could create and perpetuate a myth such as this.

The mountains aren’t to blame for all the deaths that occur on their slopes. Reviewing Accidents in North American Mountaineering, human error accounts for the top four causes of accidents and deaths. Bad weather is number five.  The mountains aren’t the villain. Climbers are skilled at killing themselves.

I can’t speak to the motivations of Karl or Saman, but I can speak in general about the motivations of 8000 meter peak climbers. Too many of them define themselves by their participation in this game.

The climbing community has nearly lost its soul with the introduction of these silly, external, measures of excellence. Climb the Seven Summits and you are suddenly a person of importance? Climb Everest and you are an elite mountaineer? Top out on the Fourteen 8000 Meter Peaks and your name is inscribed on some Mountaineer’s Pantheon?

30% of the climbers with more than ten 8000 meter peaks lost their lives in pursuit of number 14. For every one person that enters the Pantheon, hundreds die trying.  They’ve left behind children and wives, husbands and parents, brothers and sisters, all who loved them despite the months and years these climbers spent far away from home. In the end, for the few that reach the peak, many miss the very point.

Willi Unseold, the American mountaineer who in 1963 traversed Mount Everest, described an expedition as being successful only if you can apply the lessons learned on the mountain to life back at home. Willi had it right. What good is all the struggle if it doesn’t positively shape how we live our lives?

For me to say that Saman Nemati and Karl Unterkircher took an unnecessary risk, would seem hypocritical. Don’t I expose myself to these same dangers, and don’t I have a wife and young daughter at home? Like Willi Unseold, might I not die in the mountains? If I am take such risks, mustn’t there be a return?

The memorial to Saman Namati

Mountaineering expeditions have so much to offer us. From the camaraderie we learn to love. From the struggles we gain strength. From adversity we gain humility. From the summit we gain confidence. All of us need a few expeditions in a lifetime to prepare us for life’s mis-adventures. But we also need to come home from the summit so we can face the true tests of human excellence.

We are all home now, enjoying this precious time with our families. We arrived too late in the season to make a serious bid for Nanga Parbat’s summit. By the time we arrived in base camp, the monsoon was taking hold of the mountain. Near daily storms hit the mountain, with heavy rains falling to 19,000 feet and snow above that. Rock fall and wet snow avalanches were altering the mountain, increasing the dangers beyond a level acceptable to our team. Too often I’ve been on teams that cannot agree on the severity of the risks. This time we all shared the same perception.  Of course we didn’t like making the decision to end the expedition, but we’ll learn to live with that disappointment.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Notes: Nanga Parbat is the 9^thhighest peak in the world. I first attempted it in 2004, stopping 300 feet short of the summit to help a struggling team descend safely. In 2008 I went back with a team of friends. We barely made it past Camp 1, because of the obvious dangers.

Are behaviors preventing your team from reaching it's goal?

I’ve never met a group that didn’t see the connection between goals and behaviors. Ask too little of people and they become lazy. Ask too much and they become quitters. The trick is finding goals that are improbable, not impossible.

There is great goal setting research out there. And most of the findings are common sense. If the task seems too easy people have trouble getting started. If it seems too hard, people give up. The amount of stress associated with the challenge plays a huge role in our performance.

You’ve probably seen a chart like this:

We have to choose goals that cause enough stress to get everyone aroused.  As leaders, we have to manage that stress in a way that makes the impossible improbable, and the improbable seem possible.

From our research, the best goals are those that can only be achieved when the team modifies its behaviors. Do you want to run a marathon? You’ll have to become more disciplined and focused. Do you want to increase sales? You’ll have to serve your customers better. Do you want to be more innovative? You’ll have to create an environment in which people take risks.

Whether you call them Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals or Stretch Goals, or use metaphors like Climbing Mount Everest, there has to be a sense that “what got us here, isn’t enough to get us there” if we are going to modify behaviors.

Are your goals bringing out the best in your team?