Three Pitfalls of Long-Term Goals
Setting long-term goals is a must in the business and personal efficiency world. But they rarely work as expected.
Strategy — map it out yourself
Setting long-term goals is a must in the business and personal efficiency world. But they rarely work as expected.
67%, or even up to 90%, strategies fail. Experts have written tons of books and articles on fixing the problem. But I know from my twenty-five years’ experience that strategic planning contains inner imperfections. And they make long-term goals hard to achieve. The good news is that you can improve your approach to planning.

Unachievable goals
Many years ago, I was a CEO. We had a strategy that I was proud of — with goals, objectives, action plans, KPIs, et cetera. It had only one flaw — it didn’t work. Our business outcomes were further from our goals than the North Pole is from the equator.
Then I tried to devise my life strategy, which turned out just as bad. I rigorously broke down my long-term goals into objectives and short-term projects, but it didn’t help much. And it happened not only because of unexpec…