Part 3 Envisioned Future….
It is something which can be set for the future and once achieved there can be another goal for the future that can be set. Purpose is something you cannot achieve because it is something you can only dream but goals can be achieved, and they change once the 1st goal gets achieved.
Goals need to be big, audacious, and hairy commonly known as BHAGS or Bee HAGs. The goals need to be creatively visualised. I was once coaching a client on what she wished to achieve in her career. She provided me with a lot of examples however when I asked her can you see yourself achieving these, she asked me what do you mean? I asked her to carry out a small exercise. I told her that whenever it was possible to imagine herself already having achieved those goals and, in that place, and situation and get habituated to that. She carried out her task religiously. Each time we would meet for a session I would ask her did you imagine yourself in the future as what you wish to be and where you wish to be, and she would provide me an affirmation. Our sessions got over after some time.
I met her recently and she proudly told me that she was currently where she wanted to be. It had taken her six years, but she mentioned it was worth it. I asked her again now what else do you wish to achieve, and she had her list ready. Those many years back when I had asked her whether after she achieves what she wanted to do what will be her next goal she had provided me a blank look stating that’s it what else should be there. That is when I had asked her to think as an exercise whether she would want to stop after achieving what she wanted or had something else in mind to achieve and ponder over that.
When we met for our session next, she had another list of goals which she had listed out and which she would achieve after the set of goals from her first list would get accomplished.
The goals not only have to be endless, but they must be scary enough for an individual to ponder over whether he/she will be able to achieve them. They must appear unachievable. Here I am reminded of the movie ‘Independence Day’. In the movie when the male protagonist tells his accomplice who would accompany him on the mission that they need to take the alien spaceship inside the mother ship of the aliens which was in space and upload a virus into it. This will entail in all the child spaceships into the earth’s stratosphere to be pulled down. His accomplice asks him a question ‘do you think you can achieve that bullshit that you just told me about?’. Yes, indeed the goals need to appear as something out of this world, completely unachievable for them to be only imagined but to be worked upon.
A lot of organizations draft their vision, their goals that they wish to achieve but fail to imagine all about it. They fail to imagine it. This leads to them not being able to achieve them.
References:
Collins J.C. & Porras J.I. “Building your company’s vision”, On Strategy, Harvard Business Review