Friends,

Today, I offer an accounting of three Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs).  My purpose in focusing in upon these three accounts is unequivocal: I entreat you, plead with you, urge you to set huge goals for yourself and your teams, groups, families, and organizations for 2005!  I say this despite the fact that in 2 of today's stories, the results fell drastically short of the BHAGS.  The third was arguably missed as well.  So, let's get the accounting right up front:

1. 14 days before my marathon I set out to raise $52,000 for Think Detroit.  At last count, we were above $12,000.  Not bad, but less than 25% of the goal.
2. Christopher Reeve, who severed his spinal cord in 1995, set the goal of walking.  He died 3 weeks ago.  Five years after his accident, he and his doctors held a press conference to announce: he had moved his left index finger!  The brutal truth: he came nowhere near walking.
3. I set out to finish the Free Press Marathon in 4 hours.  I did it in 4 hours, 0 minutes, 49 seconds.  With an * next to it, I declare this to be a goal achieved.
   

Why in the world would I urge you to set goals, yet offer by way of example missed goals?  First, I share the facts of failure bluntly, because I believe the fear of failure is the lurking reason most of us are so reticent to set goals in the first place.  We don't set'em, cuz we don't know if we can hit'em.  And nobody likes to fail.  We don't like to talk about this.  Instead, guys like me share the thousand lovely quotes about how when you set a goal, by golly, it's like magic, and next thing you know you've achieved it.  Ironically, one such quote from Christopher Reeve himself:  "So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable."  Every realistic fiber in our body -- and every fearful bone -- knows better.

If goals are big, hairy and audacious, then of course there's a big, hairy, audacious possibility that they won't be reached.  Set them anyway.  Christopher Reeve said it better than I.  He told Oprah recently that he thought it "very likely" that he would walk, and when she asked him what would happen if he wasn't able to, he said, "then I won't walk again."  In other words, we fear failure, but so what?  For what possible reason should we hang our heads if we set a mighty goal, give it our best, but come up short?

One of the most powerful things that has ever been said about big visions or goals comes from Robert Fritz: "It's not what the vision is," he wrote, "but what the vision does."  Thus, the goal of finishing the marathon and hitting 4 hours drove me to train religiously for 4 months.  There were outstanding byproducts: new friends, lost weight, renewed energy, greater focus; and the ability to support a great marathon, superb non-profit, and people who needed a message about health and wellness.  I would have gained those outcomes, whether I finished in 3:59:59 or 4:59:59.  The vision "was" to finish in the 4 hours, but what the vision "did" was nothing less than give me a whole new love of life.  As Marathon director, Pat Ball said at the pre-race pasta dinner: no one who trains for a marathon is the same person at the end as they were at the beginning.  Huge goals generate huge gains.

Again, Reeve's superhuman story drives the point home.  After considering suicide in the days after the accident, he set his goal.  And in the ensuing 10 years, he acted, directed, gave speeches, and wrote two books.  Driven by his dream of walking, he worked hard enough that after eight years he was able to undergo high-risk surgery that freed him from his ventilator so he could breathe on his own.  In time, he was able to move a foot, a wrist, to walk in a pool, and to regain feeling in much of his lower body.  With those personal efforts, he single-handedly changed medical beliefs about the ability of nerves to regenerate long after an accident.  On the wings of his personal goal, he raised nearly $50 million for spinal cord research.  His lobbying was instrumental in securing a 15% increase in NIH funding.  And his legacy continues to fuel the drive for stem cell research.  Of course, his pursuit of his BHAG also gave hope and inspiration to people far and wide.  He never walked, but because he never lost that goal he soared higher than the character beneath the cape.

What Big Hairy Audacious Goals might you start to think about for the year ahead -- with splendid by-products you cannot begin to imagine?

Peace,

Dan

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Daniel Granholm Mulhern
First Gentleman
Office of the Governor
State of Michigan
(517) 241-0534

"Seeing the magnificence in all people -- dedicated to their fullest success."

Copyright 2004 Daniel Mulhern.  I distribute RFL without charge to people with an interest in leadership, and grant permission to these recipients to distribute copies of these works to personal contacts for non-commercial purposes only.  All other rights are reserved, and requests for copying and distribution of these works may be made to FirstGentleman@Michigan.gov.  The views of this and other RFLs reflect my personal beliefs and may or may not reflect the views of my wife, Jennifer Granholm, or any other officials of the State government.