Building a Long-Term Goal That Works
“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want."
– Ben Stein
Most leadership teams do not have a long-term goal. When they do, it is often little more than a vague aspiration revisited once a year.
It lives in a slide deck. It sounds ambitious in the annual meeting. It gets nodded at, maybe even applauded. And then everyone goes back to the quarter in front of them, making decisions that have little connection to whatever was declared from the stage.
I have sat in those rooms. I have watched teams speak boldly about a future they never truly committed to.
Long-term goals have accumulated a lot of names over the years: BHAG, Core Target, North Star, Long-Range Objective. The most famous example may be in 1961, when John F. Kennedy stood before Congress and declared that the United States would put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade.
That statement did not describe a strategy. It did not lay out financing or engineering plans. It named a destination. And once it was named, daily decisions changed.
That is the difference.
The ambition level is yours to decide. What is not optional is clarity.
If you are going to declare a destination, it must be specific enough to change how you behave tomorrow. Otherwise, it is not a goal. It is a slogan.
Choosing the Destination
When most leaders hear “long-term goal,” they assume it has to be audacious. Massive growth. Industry dominance. Category disruption.
It doesn’t.
In practice, most long-term goals fall into one of three categories: scale or impact, profitability, or independence.
Scale or impact means more revenue, greater reach, or inventing a category.
Profitability means stronger margins, greater efficiency, and more wealth per dollar earned.
Independence means building a business that functions without daily founder involvement, with leadership depth and operational resilience.
All three are legitimate.
There is no moral hierarchy among them.
It is your business. You get to choose the destination.
What matters is not the size of the ambition, but whether the destination is clear enough to change how you behave.
What a Long-Term Goal Must Do
A destination that does not change behavior is decoration.
A real destination creates momentum.
It Filters
A real long-term goal filters. It eliminates distractions, clarifies tradeoffs, and forces decisions that would otherwise remain comfortably postponed.
If it does not eliminate opportunities, it is not a goal. It is a slogan.
The moment a destination is fixed, choices become clearer. Hiring decisions. Capital allocation. Product focus. Expansion plans. Each one runs through a simple question: Does this move us closer?
One client runs an agricultural company with a clear objective: put their product within reach of every human being on the planet within seven years. For them, that translates into distribution in every country where the product can legally and operationally be sold.
That clarity changes everything. New facilities, geographic expansion, capital raises, and leadership hires all pass through the same filter. If an initiative does not move them closer to global distribution, it does not get done.
The goal narrows focus. It simplifies decisions. It removes ambiguity.
It Rallies
For those who believe in it and buy in, a long-term goal becomes more than a statement. It becomes a rally cry, a shared mission, and a challenge that defines success.
Teams move faster. People understand what they are building toward and how their role contributes. Momentum builds.
But a real goal also does something less comfortable.
It reveals who is not in.
I have watched this happen in leadership teams more times than I can count. A destination gets declared. Some people lean forward. Others go quiet. Someone says, “That sounds great,” and immediately changes the subject. Occasionally, a leader will say, “I’m not sure I agree with that, but let’s move on.”
“Let’s move on” is not alignment. It is avoidance.
A goal that everyone politely accepts is not a rallying cry. It is a compromise. And a compromised destination will not pull anyone forward when things get hard.
Not everyone will believe the destination is possible. Some will resist it. Not everyone will want the cost that comes with it. Some will opt out. Some will not be the right fit for the next chapter.
That, too, is clarity.
A long-term goal does not just shape strategy. It shapes the team required to achieve it.
Definition of Done
A long-term goal must have a definition of done. Without it, you cannot measure progress, celebrate arrival, or hold anyone accountable.
You have a wish with a deadline.
This is where many leadership teams quietly deceive themselves. The words sound impressive. The timeline feels ambitious. But no one can clearly describe what arrival actually means.
A serious destination requires two things: a clear definition of arrival and a clear date. Both matter. The definition tells you what winning looks like. The date determines the pace.
Quantitative
Quantitative goals are the simplest form of definition.
10,000 clients served by 2030.
1 million units sold during 2032.
30 million in revenue by December 31, 2037.
There is no ambiguity. You either arrive or you do not.
If your team is struggling to align around a long-term destination, start with revenue or profit. Every business understands these. Pick a number. Pick a date. Then work backward.
How many units must be sold? At what average price? Over how many years?
Choose a metric that is measurable and meaningful. It should be simple enough for the entire organization to understand and concrete enough for each team to see how they contribute.
Do not overcomplicate the math. One clean metric, tracked consistently, is more powerful than a sophisticated system nobody uses.
Qualitative With Criteria
Not every destination is purely numerical. Some goals are about position, reputation, or recognition. But qualitative does not mean vague.
One architecture firm declared a goal to become Los Angeles’s next leading design studio within eight years. Left alone, that would have been decorative.
Instead, they defined what “leading” meant through four specific criteria:
The quantity and quality of clients they would serve.
Industry recognition and awards.
A published monograph of their work.
A minimum average engagement size.
Now “leading” was measurable. Not by a single number, but by agreed-upon criteria.
If you cannot clearly describe what arrival looks like, you have not defined the goal. And if you have not defined the goal, you cannot expect the organization to move toward it with confidence.
Commitment Precedes Clarity
This is where many leaders hesitate. They believe they must fully understand how the goal will be achieved before they commit to it. They want the financing mapped, the org chart redesigned, the risks modeled, and every contingency explored. Only then, they assume, will they feel confident enough to declare the destination.
That certainty rarely arrives. And the work required to simulate it rarely changes the outcome. Markets shift. Assumptions break. Roadmaps drafted years in advance often need to be rebuilt anyway.
Progress does not come from predicting every turn. It comes from committing to the destination and refining the route as you move.
A ten-year horizon, for example, is not abstract. It is forty quarters. As I explored in The Planning Paradox, the tension between long-term vision and short-term execution is one of the most important challenges for leadership. Forty disciplined quarters is how that tension gets resolved.
Imagine deciding that your team will row from Los Angeles to Japan in eight years. On day one, you do not need to know every ocean current, storm pattern, or supply calculation. You need to decide that Japan is the destination.
In the first quarter, you learn to row. Over time, you build strength and coordination. By the end of the first year, perhaps you can reach Catalina, a small island about 25 miles off the California coast. In three years, maybe Hawaii. Each milestone builds confidence. Each iteration builds capability. The route evolves. The team strengthens. The plan improves.
The destination remains fixed.
Long-term clarity does not replace near-term planning. It informs it. The destination shapes your medium-term priorities. Those priorities shape your annual focus. The annual focus determines what matters this quarter. Each layer becomes more concrete, but each remains anchored to the same destination.
Long-term goals are not achieved through perfect foresight. They are achieved through sustained commitment and disciplined iteration.
Leaders who hesitate are rarely confused. They are reluctant to commit.
Fix the destination. Apply disciplined focus and iteration. Close the distance.
The Choice Is Yours
You do not need to go to the moon. You do not need to row to Japan. You do not need a goal that impresses anyone else.
But you do need to decide where you are headed.
Scale. Profitability. Independence. Something else entirely. The destination is yours to choose.
What is not optional is clarity.
If you are going to declare a destination, define it. Attach a date. Make it specific enough that it changes how you behave tomorrow.
Then commit.
Time will pass either way. Five years. Eight years. Ten.
The only question is whether you arrive somewhere on purpose.
The real work is not in drafting the perfect plan. It is in choosing a destination and having the resolve to pursue it long after the excitement fades.
Markets will shift. Plans will evolve. Doubt will surface. Progress will stall and restart.
The destination must remain fixed.
Decide where you are going.
Then pursue it with enough courage and discipline that it changes what you do tomorrow.
Related Essays
The Planning Paradox – On resolving the tension between long-term vision and short-term execution.
Mastering the Quarterly Cadence – How disciplined short-term execution compounds over time.
Getting Your Vision Shared by All – Why clarity must be shared across the organization to scale.
Footnotes & Sources
Ben Stein quote: “The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.” Widely attributed to Ben Stein; original source uncertain.
John F. Kennedy, Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Urgent National Needs, May 25, 1961. In this speech, President Kennedy declared the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. Transcript available via the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is a term popularized by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras in Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (1994).
