Page 83 - Hard Goals

74 HARD Goals

such a place. And I can certainly picture the world’s thinnest
notebook right down to what it would be like to hold it in my
hands.
Take 1-800-Got-Junk’s vision board. In addition to sales
goals, Scudamore and his staff embraced mental pictures of
goals like getting on “Oprah,” an organizational chart listing
positions that didn’t even exist yet, or a map of all the cities
they’d be in that they hadn’t yet penetrated. They saw it all as
clearly as if it had already happened and then worked toward
making those visions a reality. These kinds of HARD Goals are
rarely accomplished with abstract ideas. However, goose those
goals up with some animated thinking, and you’re well on your
way. I might not know what $100 million looks like, but I can
picture what it feels like to walk on stage after being introduced
by Oprah. I can also hear the roar of the crowd (OK, I’m a big
dreamer) and imagine how excited and nervous I would be. Just
as I can envision an expanded organizational chart and having
a franchise in Pittsburgh. And if I can picture it, it’s that much
easier for me to build some excitement around achieving it.
What about those companies that are absolutely wedded to
their goal-setting worksheets and online forms that only offer
a place for a single number to describe their goal? One of our
clients, a North American division of a European company, had
a software application for recording its goals that only gave peo-
ple a small blank for inputting a number. The parent company’s
leaders didn’t want vividly written descriptions, they wanted a
GM-style number. (I think they were really hoping for everyone
to write “29 percent.”)
So given everything we’ve just learned, what did this divi-
sion do? Well, the leaders weren’t big fans of committing career
suicide, so they turned themselves into a test case. First, they