How to achieve your goals in life...

I recently mentioned a book by Heidi Grant called Nine Things Successful People Do Differently (see my post, "Be an optimist without being a fool").  Dr. Grant also wrote an article for Harvard Business Review with the same title which summarizes the book.  The book version is relatively short at just 112 pages, so I'd recommend taking a little extra time to read the book instead of the article.  I promised then that I would get back to her "nine things" in a future post, so that is just what I am going to do in today's post.  

While there are a number of definitions for the word goal, the best that I've heard is one from Ayelet Fischbach, who defined goals as mental representations of desired states.  Goals describe our idea of how we would like things to be in our personal and/or professional lives.  Dr. Grant's HBR article (and book) focus specifically on the nine things that successful people do in order to achieve their personal and professional goals.

1. Get specific  

I've mentioned the SMART goal framework in the past (see, for example, my post from 2016, "Goooooaaallll!").  Recall that "SMART" is an acronym, with the S standing for Specific.  When you set a goal, it's better to be as specific as possible.  For example, rather than setting a goal to "lose weight", be more specific and set a goal to "lose 10 pounds."  Leave no question or ambiguity about what it is that you are trying to achieve.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals

As I mentioned in a recent post ("Only the disciplined ones are free in life..."), achieving our personal and professional goals in life requires discipline.  We have to take advantage of every opportunity to act on our goals.  Dr. Grant again recommends being as specific as possible.  We should decide what action we will take to achieve our goals, as well as when and where we will take each action.  She suggests using "If...then" statements.  For example (and I will continue to use the example goal, "Lose 10 pounds in 3 months"), "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I will work out for 30 minutes every morning before going to work."

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go

Assuming we have adopted the SMART goal framework, we can monitor the progress to achieving our goal (remember that the M stands for Measurable).  Dr. Grant says, "If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or strategies accordingly."  In her book, she discusses the difference between using a "To Go" versus a "To Date" framing.  I plan to discuss this topic in an upcoming post soon, but simply stated with a "To Go" framing, you count how much work, time, or distance remains until you reach the end (goal achievement).  Conversely, with a "To Date" framing you count how much work, time, or distance you have already completed up to a specific point in time.  As it turns out, our level of motivation to continue to push towards the end of our goal depends upon whether we use a "To Go" versus a "To Date" framing.  Whether we use either framing, Dr. Grant's point here is that we should know exactly how far we've come and how far we've left to go to reach our goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist

I recently posted about a concept known as realistic optimism (see again, "Be an optimist without being a fool").  Particularly when we set so-called "stretch goals", it's important that we have the confidence in our ability to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves.  However, it's equally important that we are realistic about those same abilities.  Studies consistently show that if we think that it will be easy and effortless to achieve our goals, not only will be less prepared when the "going gets tough", we will significantly increase the odds of failure.  It's better to believe in ourselves AND know that it will require a lot of effort, commitment, and dedication.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good

We should have what Carol Dweck calls a "growth mindset" (as opposed to a "fixed mindset"), which she defines as a belief that intelligence, abilities, and talents are not fixed traits but can be developed through dedication, effort, and a willingness to learn. We should focus on continuously improving ourselves by adopting a growth-mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset.

6. Have grit

I've posted a lot about Angela Duckworth and her TED talk that was based upon a research study that she published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ("Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals").  She later wrote a book (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance) that quickly made it to the New York Times bestseller list.   The book was interesting, but if I were to be completely honest, the research study and TED talk were just as impactful (and shorter).  We often, for good reason, use the words resilience, perseverance, and grit interchangeably.  Dr. Grant says that grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals and to persist, even in the face of adversity.  Importantly, grit is something that we can develop over time.    

7. Build your willpower muscle

I've posted about the famous "Stanford marshmallow experiment" in the past (see "Life is a marshmallow - easy to chew but hard to swallow"), as well as a similar study involving marshmallows, radishes, and will power by Roy Baumeister (see "What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes").  Basically, these studies tell us that will power and self-control are a lot like our muscles in that we have to exercise them in order to keep them strong.  In order to build self-control and will power, start out with small, challenging tasks that build over time to bigger and even more challenging tasks.

8. Don't tempt fate

If our will power and self-control are like muscles, we need to recognize that muscles can become fatigued with overuse.  We shouldn't try to take on two challenging tasks at the same time (for example, quitting smoking and losing weight at the same time).

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do

Replace bad habits with good habits.  If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, frame what you will do in the positive as opposed to the negative.  For example, "I will walk 30 minutes every morning" as opposed to "I will sitting on the couch and watching TV."

Dr. Grant makes a number of great points here.  Collectively, these "nine points" will help you to set not only the right kinds of goals for yourself, but also they will help you successfully achieve them.  As mentioned above, next time I will talk a little more about the research on using a "To Do" versus a "To Date" framing when measuring progress towards goal achievement.

Ripple

I've always enjoyed music by the American rock band, The Grateful Dead, even if I am nowhere near to being called a "Deadhead" (I never once saw them play live, which I think is a requirement).  I owned at least three Grateful Dead albums over the years - American Beauty (one of their greatest), Skeletons from the Closet: The Best of the Grateful Dead, and What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been.  Their fifth studio album American Beauty was released in November 1970, and it is fantastic!  The song "Ripple" is one of my favorite songs on the album.  It was originally released as the B-side single of "Truckin'", and it has grown in popularity over the years, even though the band rarely played it live (I read somewhere that they have only played the song live just 40 times over their many years of touring).  The song was written by long-time lyricist and former member Robert Hunter.  Founding member and lead guitarist Jerry Garcia added the melody, and the song debuted on August 18, 1970 at Fillmore West in San Francisco, California.

In 2024, Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Ripple" at number 334 on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  It really is a great song.  More importantly, it's a great song with an even greater message.  The song has been called a meditation (some have even called the song a spiritual hymn) on the journey through life, wisdom, and relevant to this blog, leadership.  Here are the lyrics to the song:

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine

And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung

Would you hear my voice come through the music?

Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken

Perhaps they're better left unsung

I don't know, don't really care

Let there be songs to fill the air

Ripple in still water

When there is no pebble tossed

Nor wind to blow

Reach out your hand, if your cup be empty

If your cup is full, may it be again

Let it be known there is a fountain

That was not made by the hands of men

There is a road, no simple highway

Between the dawn, and the dark of night

And if you go, no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone

Ripple in still water

When there is no pebble tossed

Nor wind to blow

You who choose to lead must follow

But if you fall you fall alone

If you should stand then who's to guide you?

If I knew the way I would take you home.

The late Jerry Garcia once suggested that he felt like a Presbyterian minister whenever he was singing this song.  The late Bob Weir, founding member, songwriter, and guitarist, said that he was frequently asked by Deadheads to sing and play the song "on their way out" when they were on their deathbeds.  Longtime Deadhead, NBA basketball player, and Hall of Fame NBA Coach Phil Jackson used lines from the song ("There is a road, no simple highway...") in his philosophy of basketball and life (see his great book, Eleven Rings - see also my posts, "White Elephants and Wheelwrights" and "Chop wood, carry water").

The title of the song ("Ripple") is often interpreted as the idea that small actions, words, or moments of kindness spread outward, influencing others in ways we may never fully see—like ripples on the water.  I think that same sentiment applies to leadership.  The impact that we have as leaders spreads outward like ripples on the water.  One of the lines in the song ("You who choose to lead must follow...But if you fall you fall alone...If you should stand then who's to guide you?") speaks to a theme that I've often referred to in this blog, the so-called loneliness of leadership (see "12 O'Clock High", "Reflections on leadership", "It's lonely at the top", and "Now is the time to lead").  Leaders often stand alone and bear the ultimate responsibility for many, if not all, of their decisions.

There is apparently an additional verse from an earlier draft of the song that wasn't used in the final recorded and released version.  The line speaks to two of the most important leadership characteristics, wisdom and humility.  As I've stated in the past, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates said of wisdom, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."  The narrator in "Ripple" would agree ("The wisest man is but a pilgrim, he will not claim to know the way").  However, in order to recognize that you can't know everything requires a certain degree of humility as well, which is why humility is one of the most important leadership traits of all (see my posts, "Oh Lord it's hard to be humble...", "Lessons in humility" and "Be humble").

The wisest man is but a pilgrim

He will not claim to know the way

He will not promise dreams of glory

His words are few and his ways are kind.

The song's lyrics suggest that some of life's deepest truths can't just be taught, but they rather have to be experienced firsthand. For example, the line used by Phil Jackson in his coaching philosophy ("There is a road, no simple highway") implies that each person has to find their own path.  Again, I think that this also applies to leadership.  I've stated many times that I do not believe that we are born with a ready-made set of traits, characteristics, and skills that make for great leadership (see, for example, "Once again...are leaders born or made?" and "Why do giraffes have long necks?").  However, genetics definitely play a role - some studies suggest that approximately 30% of leadership probably comes from the traits and personalities that we inherit.  The majority of leadership development, however, occurs through our experience - we gain "leadership wisdom" all along the way.  There is a well-known model of leadership development called the "70-20-10" rule that states that leadership development is 70% experiential ("learning by doing"), 20% social ("learning from coaching and mentorship"), and 10% didactic ("learning through formalized education).  

The song ends on a hopeful note ("If I knew the way I would take you home").  Even though the road is difficult and uncertain, there is beauty, guidance, and companionship along the way.  Life is a journey, just like leadership.  Trust the journey, rather than fear it.  Finally, the song suggests that there is a higher power ("Let it be known there is a fountain...That was not made by the hands of men") that is always there to help guide us through life, and that too is an amazing, reassuring, and beautiful thing.  Check out and enjoy the song, "Ripple" by the Grateful Dead.

Blind taste tests...once more

I mentioned the book The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by the physicist and Northeastern University professor, Albert Laszlo-Barabasi in a recent post (see "Blind Taste Tests and the Universal Laws of Success").  Laszlo-Barabasi uses professional wine tasters as an example to help explain why there isn't always a perfect correlation between performance and success.  In reality, there's often a fairly poor correlation between the two!

Given my growing obsession with wine, I was fascinated by his claim that professional wine tasters aren't always accurate in their assessments of fine wine!  In his book, Laszlo-Barabasi references two studies performed by Robert Hodgson, an emeritus professor of oceanography and statistics at Cal Poly Humboldt.  Hodgson is also a vintner who started making wine in 1976 at the Fieldbrook Winery, which he co-owns and operates with his wife Judy, in northern California.  As the story goes, Hodgson started wondering how one of his wines could win a gold medal at one wine competition and "end up in the pooper" at another competition held in the same year.  So, in order to better understand how professional wine tasters evaluated wines, he studied to become one himself.  At some point, he became involved with the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest and most prestigious wine competition in North America.  He convinced the other judges (after what he described as "lots of begging") to allow him to run a controlled scientific test of the wine tasting competition held there.

As he discussed in a podcast called Vintage Year, hosted by the Journal of Wine Economics, which published his study (see "An examination of judge reliability at a major U.S. wine competition"), Hodgson found that expert wine judges are rarely, if ever, consistent.  Between 65-70 judges participated in the study at the California State Fair wine competition held every year from 2005 to 2008.  Each panel of expert judges received a flight of 30 wines, which included four triplicate samples of the same wine poured from the same bottle (unbeknownst to the judges).  Only ten percent of the judges were able to replicate their scores on the same wine.  According to the 100-point wine rating system first popularized by the American wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr (more on him shortly), the judges' ratings typically varied by plus or minus four points on scales ranging from 80 to 100.  In other words, a wine rated 91 by one judge at the first tasting could be rating an 87 or even a 95 at the next tasting (again, each wine was scored three different times by the same judge in the same flight).  Only 1 judge out of 10 could score the same wine with a two point range using the same scale.

In a follow-up study, again published in the Journal of Wine Economics (see "An analysis of the concordance among 13 U.S. wine competitions"), Hodgson analyzed over 4,000 wines entered into thirteen different U.S. wine competitions.  Of the wines entered in more than three competitions,  roughly 47% received a Gold medal at at least one competition. However, 84% of these exact same Gold-winning wines received no award at all in at least one other competition.  When he analyzed all of the data, Hodgson concluded that the probability of receiving a Gold medal at any competition depended largely upon chance alone.  Importantly, certain wines consistently received no award or Bronze medals across multiple competitions, suggesting that judges mainly agree on what they dislike rather than what they love.

Later that same year, the American physicist and author Leonard Mlodinow wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal reporting on Hodgson's findings, "A hint of hype, a taste of illusion" (I've posted about Mlodinow in the past, see "Drunkard's Walk").  Mlodinow references a number of other studies that shed further light on this issue.  Apparently, as far back as 1963, a team of investigators from the University of California, Davis added flavorless food coloring to a dry white wine to simulate several different varieties of red wine.  The professional tasters description of each wine reflected the type of wine that they thought they were tasting (e.g. sherry, rosé, Bordeaux, burgundy, etc) as opposed to what the wine actually was - a dry white wine.  

Several years later, a French neurophysiologist named Frédéric Brochet served 57 French sommelier students the same Bordeaux wine served in two different bottles.  One wine was served in an expensive Grand Cru bottle, while the other was served in the bottle of a cheap table wine.  The sommelier students greatly preferred the Grand Cru wine to the cheap table wine, rating the Grand Cru as "excellent" and the table wine as "flat" or "unbalanced" (note that Brochet also published a study as the 1963 study in which food coloring was added to "turn" white wine into red wine, with similar results).

Several studies have replicated Brochet's method of presenting a cheap table wine as an expensive wine (through packaging and pricing information) and vice versa (see, for example, Robin Goldstein's working paper, "Do more expensive wines taste better? Evidence from a large sample of blind tasting").  One study even used functional MRI (which looks at brain activity) and showed that increasing the price of a wine increases subjective reports of wine quality as well as brain activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (one of the area's of the brain responsible for pleasantness).  I guess that's nature's way of telling us that we can't tell a cheap wine from an expensive wine when it comes to flavor, but instead, we just need to look at the price on the bottle!

As you can imagine, Hodgson's results were fairly controversial when they were first released to the public.  What's compelling is that the test subjects in his study were professional wine judges.  The Goldstein study referenced in the paragraph above included both professionals and non-professionals.  Non-professionals slightly preferred the cheaper table wines to the expensive wines in blind taste tests, while professionals did slightly better picking the more expensive wines correctly, though still leaving a lot to be desired.  Similarly, Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire conducted a study in which over 400 members of the general public correctly classified their wines as expensive versus cheap about 50% of the time, which is about what would be predicted based on chance alone.  So, the question is whether someone can be trained to taste wine accurately.  Hodgson's studies suggest not.

While reporting on Hodgson's results, Leonard Mlodinow contacted the American wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr.  According to an article published in December 200 in The Atlantic magazine, "The Million-Dollar Nose" (the title of the article comes from the fact that Parker has a million dollar insurance policy for his ability to smell and taste fine wine), Parker tastes approximately 10,000 wines every year and claims that he can remember every wine he has tasted over the past 32 years and every score he has given, within a few points.  Parker told Mlodinow that he didn't find Hodgson's results too surprising, and he further confessed that he had participated in a blind wine tasting of fifteen top wines from Bordeaux in 2005 (which he labeled, "the greatest vintage of my lifetime").  Parker apparently failed to correctly identify any of the wines, and confused so-called "left bank" wines and "right bank" wines several times during the tasting (note, in general "left bank" wines are grown in regions west of the Gironde Estuary, and "right bank" in the regions east).  Parker had previously tasted and rated each wine, which was why these 15 wines were specifically selected.  He told Mlodinow that his second rating (during the blind taste test) was always within 2-3 points of the first, unblinded tasting (which all ranged from 95-100).

While Parker did not do too bad, he is, after all, the world's expert at wine tasting.  For all of us mere mortals, there appears to be no hope.  Getting back to Albert Laszlo-Barabasi's argument in The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success, there are all kinds of reasons to explain why professional wine tasters fail to perform consistently or, at least in blind taste tests, accurately.  He states, "Wine competition judges don't fail because they lack expertise, preparation, or thoroughness.  They fail mainly because the wines they're judging are all excellent...And they have no 'stopwatch', no simple tool to determine which anonymous glass of Malbec, raised to the nose and swished in the mouth, is, definitively, a winner."  More generally, "even though performance does drive success, the problem is that the differences among top contenders are so tiny that they're often nearly immeasurable."  

"Per aspera ad astra"

I recently finished reading two books written by two U.S. Navy SEALs, Andy Stumpf (Drownproof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water) and Rorke Denver (Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior).  While the two books were very different in terms of the writing and major themes, they did provide me with another reminder that the U.S. Navy SEALs are another prototypical example of a High Reliability Organization (HRO).  There is no doubt that Navy SEALs are highly trained - Denver perhaps said it best when he said, "Constant improvement is one of the hallmarks of being a SEAL."  However, both Stumpf and Denver wrote at length about the SEAL selection process, known as Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL or BUD/S, one of the most grueling and demanding training programs in the U.S. military, designed to prepare candidates for the rigors of Navy SEAL operations.  BUD/S is a six-month program that tests the physical, mental, and emotional fortitude of all the trainees.  Depending on the year, only about 15-30 percent of all trainees complete all three phases of the program to eventually become a U.S. Navy SEAL.  

The ancient Greek historian and general Thucydides said, "We should remember that one man is much the same as another and that he is best who is trained in the severest school."  To say that the process of becoming a U.S. Navy SEAL is the "severest school" is a vast understatement.  But I couldn't agree with Thucydides more - true excellence is often forged through extreme hardship and adversity.    They are what we call "Crucible Moments".  

Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas summarized the findings of a study they performed in a 2002 article in Harvard Business Review, entitled "Crucibles of Leadership" (see also their book, Geeks & Geezers: How Era, Values & Defining Moments Shape Leaders).  They interviewed more than 40 top executives from a variety of organizations from several different industries.  To their surprise, each and every leader was "able to point to intense, often traumatic, always unplanned experiences that transformed them and became the source of their distinctive leadership abilities."  They called these moments "the crucibles of leadership" and generalized further, "Everyone is tested by life, but only a few extract strength and wisdom from the most trying experiences.  They're the ones we call leaders."

A "crucible moment" is any severe test or transformative experience that challenges an individual's character and resilience.  The figurative meaning of a "crucible moment" is derived from the literal sense of a crucible as a place of intense heat, where impurities are burned away and the substance is refined.  Elite organizations, such as the U.S. Navy SEALs or the U.S. Marine Corp have even gone as far as designing their selection and training processes around "crucible moments" (see again, Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL or BUD/S).  For example (see also my post, "The Few and the Proud"), the Marine Corps Crucible is a 54-hour, grueling test that all recruits undergo before officially becoming Marines. It's designed to simulate the harsh conditions of combat, testing physical and mental endurance, and fostering teamwork and camaraderie. The Crucible includes physical challenges like hiking, obstacle courses, and simulated combat scenarios, as well as challenges that test moral development and leadership skills.

The health care leadership consultant Carson Dye wrote about "crucible moments" in an online post.  Dye admitted, "While I am a very active leadership teacher, lecturer, and author, I strongly believe in the power of experience in shaping the behavior of leaders."  He too called these experiences "crucible moments."  He wrote, "A crucible experience is one in which one is tested, stretched, challenged by something that is real...Crucible experiences can take place when leaders are put into very novel situations they have not confronted before."

There are a lot of famous quotes about "crucible moments," but here are two of my favorites:

In school, you get the lesson and then you take the test.  In life, you take the test and then you get the lesson.

Life will always test you.  Don't worry about passing the test.  Just learn the lesson.

I have always believed that leaders are made and not born.  And it is through these so-called "crucible moments" that leaders are truly made.  Very few leaders will ever graduate from BUD/S or the Marine Corps Crucible, but chances are that all of us have been through some "crucible moment" in either our personal or professional lives that helped shape us and define us and made us better leaders.  There is a Latin phrase, Per aspera ad astra, which translates to Through hardships to the stars.  By enduring and overcoming adversity, we often find that we achieve our highest goals.  It is through these crucible moments - our adversity - that we become leaders.