Page 176 - Hard Goals

Conclusion: Starting Your HARD Goal 167

Remember, there were eight CEOs at this retreat. Within
three seconds of Chris’s comments, the other six people had
paired up to do the same thing. It was so simple, so obvious,
so easy, and yet it just hadn’t occurred to me, or anyone else I
knew. Making things even easier, all their secretaries had spo-
ken to each other plenty of times, so they just assigned mak-
ing the daily calls to them (their assistants were truly expert at
making their bosses stop what they were doing for something
important like this).
Now, these CEOs weren’t going to respond to judgmental
nagging any better than you or I do. So rather than having their
friend call and badger them about not getting enough done, they

added a new twist: they would all write five to seven questions
about their HARD Goal that they wanted that friend to ask
them when he or she called.
Four of the questions were basically prompts about the ele-
ments of their HARD Goals. For Heartfelt, they might ask,
“Why do you care about your goal?” For Animated, the ques-
tion might be, “Tell me how it looks or feels when you hit your
goal.” For Required, they might ask, “Why is this goal nec-
essary right now?” And a Diffi cult question could be, “What
are you learning because of this goal?” These questions are
important because they all knew that the more they thought
about their HARD Goals, the more integrated into their lives
the goals would become. They weren’t calling to chat and ask,
“How’s your day?” One and all wanted to nicely, but power-
fully, ensure that each person’s HARD Goal remained seared
in his or her mind.
Then, the other one to three questions would be of the “What
did you do today to advance your goal?” variety. Remember the