In 1954, a British medical student named Roger Bannister did something that most people at the time believed was physiologically impossible - a feat people thought the human body was not capable of. He ran a mile in under four minutes.
Newspapers called it a miracle. Scientists studied his breathing and stride. What’s easy to miss in the topline sporting achievement is that Bannister didn’t run a four-minute mile by trying to be faster; he ran it by setting a goal that was just beyond reach.
The record had stood for nine years but once Bannister broke it, it only took months for three more runners to also break the milestone. The goal didn’t just push Bannister it changed the definition of possible for everyone else.
That’s the strange alchemy of goals: they don’t just guide effort, they reshape perception.
We see this in business all the time.
A team that decides it will “beat last year’s sales by 5%” behaves very differently from one told simply to “do your best.” The first group wakes up with a compass; the second just drifts with the wind.
Psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham spent decades studying this and found that 90% of the time, specific and challenging goals lead to higher performance. Not “easy” goals. Not “vague” ones. Challenging ones. The kind that stretch you just enough to make you grow.
So why, then, do so many organisations simply try to run faster, rather than setting goals that are seemingly just beyond reach, making plans to reach them, and making sure they become the everyday focus of their teams.
