Set goals like a gold miner
Forget SMART goals, OKRs, BSQs, BHAGs, and all the other goal frameworks with fancy acronyms. Give people reasons to believe in your goal—set goals like a gold miner.
I’ve been fascinated with gold mining ever since I as a child visited the theme park LEGOLAND and tried panning for small pieces of plastic gold hidden in the sand in their gold mine. As an adult, I’ve followed the TV show Gold Rush on Discovery with great enthusiasm. So much so that I named a company Guts & Glory inspired by the motto on the helmet of one of the key characters — Jack Hoffman — who mined gold in the 1970s and on Gold Rush helps his son Todd set up a new gold mining operation.
I dare say I’ve learned more about different leadership styles, motivation, and goal setting from that TV show than from anything else. During the first episode in season 8 when Todd Hoffman was presenting his goal for the season to his crew, it dawned on me that there is one thing missing in all the goal-setting frameworks we use in digital product development. None of them provide people with reasons to believe in your goal.
First things first though. Let me start by setting the scene for those of you who have yet to watch Gold Rush. Gold Rush is a reality TV show that follows a handful of gold mining companies in their efforts to strike it rich in locations like Klondike, Guyana, and Oregon. All of the companies are family-run and the crews are closely knit. Each crew has a different type of leader, there is the religious family man Todd Hoffman, the hot-headed and ambitious youngster Parker Schnabel and the Klondike legend and dutch hardballer Tony Beets. Every season we follow them as they battle permafrost, flooding, and equipment constantly breaking on their quest to achieve their goal measured in ounces of gold. Every week they meet around a bonfire and weigh their gold to track their progress. Their season usually begins with opening new cuts of land and dialing in their wash plants — the machines that separate the gold from the dirt. Towards the end of the season, they are working around the clock to get as much dirt through their plants as possible before winter kicks in.
The inventor of the show and mine boss Todd Hoffman left the family business in Sandy, Oregon due to the economic recession and headed north to mine gold with his family and friends. Every season he sets a new ambitious goal for them. In season 8, this is what Todd said to his crew:
This season, I want 5000 ounces. And you know what? Here is why we are going to get 5000. We’re gonna be running three plants. We got Double Trouble, Rusty Red and then we got Monster fricking Red. We’ve never run three plants before. No one has. Guys, we got a real shot at this, but everybody’s got to believe it, you know?
— Todd Hoffman
I think this is a brilliant goal statement in so many ways, yet it is quite different from the goals you usually see in product management. Let’s take a look at exactly how it measures up against all the usual goal-setting frameworks and how it goes beyond what any of them have to offer.
We’ll start with the SMART goal criteria. Those say a good goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Todd’s goal is certainly specific — he wants a lot of gold, 5000 ounces to be precise! It’s also measurable, you just put the gold on a scale, see the number of ounces and there you go. It’s very clear whether he reached it or not by the end of the season. Also, the goal is highly relevant for him and his crew — they really need the money. And it’s definitely time-bound because when winter kicks in there will be no more mining. It’s only the achievable criterion that’s questionable. Too often Todd and his crew have failed to reach their goal and in season 4 they hit an all-time low when they mined a devastating two ounces of gold. Besides the question of whether Todd’s goal is achievable or not, it does live up to the SMART goal criteria. But it also does a lot more than a SMART goal — it provides people with reasons to believe that Todd is right and that they will get 5000 ounces.
If we take a look at the OKR goal framework, it lays out a number of objectives and key results for those objectives. The brilliant goal statement above doesn’t exactly follow the format, but the content is roughly there. Re-stated as an OKR, Todd’s objective could be to make his crew rich and the measurable key result that will tell Todd whether he succeeded or not would be getting 5000 ounces. One would probably make a set of more specific key results, for instance getting 1000 ounces from Double Trouble, 1000 from Rusty Red, and 3000 ounces from Monster Red, but it’s close enough as it is. But just like the SMART goals, the OKR doesn’t include any reasons to believe that we will achieve the goal.
A third framework — the BSQ framework says you have to think big, act small, and move quick. Todd’s thinking big, given that the maximum amount of gold he has gotten in a season is 3032 ounces. However, he is certainly not acting small with the ambition to run three wash plants at the same time. They do move pretty quickly to get everything set up and ready for sluicing dirt. So while Todd’s goal statement isn’t exactly following BSQ, it’s also not completely far off. Like SMART and OKR, the BSQ goal framework does nothing to convince you that the goal is supported by any kind of reasons — which is what makes Todd’s goal stand out.
Finally, we have the BHAGs — big, hairy, audacious goals. The classic example is Kennedy’s goal of landing people on the moon in the 1960s. While getting 5000 ounces of gold is absolutely life-changing for a small crew it’s probably not a giant leap for mankind, as Neil Armstrong coined it. So Todd’s goal isn’t a BHAG and BHAGs like the rest don’t offer any reasons to believe them.
Another thing to notice about Todd’s goal is, that it’s not set by the crew itself. Locke and Latham’s research on goals shows that one is more likely to secure commitment to a goal from a team if the team is part of setting the goal. But Todd singlehandedly decided on the goal of 5000 ounces. So why do I think this is such a brilliant goal statement? And why does Todd’s crew continue to follow him despite countless bad seasons and lack of team involvement in setting the goal?
Todd’s goal statement is very close to a SMART goal and it could be re-phrased as an OKR, it’s even close to being a BSQ. All these frameworks strive to make sure that the goals you set for yourself or a team are clear and measurable. Those are qualities that are necessary in order to understand whether a goal has been achieved and ultimately they are communication tools to aid in securing support and buy-in for a goal to increase the chances of achieving it. While those are noble ambitions, it is not enough.
Todd’s goal statement is brilliant because Todd goes beyond what any of the goal-setting frameworks above strive to do — he gives reasons for people to believe in the goal. Why are they going to get 5000 ounces? Because they are going to do something no one has ever done before: run three wash plants at the same time. For those less familiar with gold mining this will enable them to run three times as much dirt and in theory enable them to get three times the amount of gold.
SMART, OKR, or BSQ — pick your poison. These frameworks simply fail to provide any reasons for people to believe in a goal. So catching Todds drift, I’d like to propose a structure for goal statements that includes reasons for people to believe in the goal:
By the end of _____ , I want ________. And here is why, we are going to get it: ___________________________.
I believe this will help product managers, leaders, and the like tremendously in communicating goals to teams, stakeholders, and whole organizations and secure commitment and buy-in.
This story would have been a lot better if Todd and his crew went home with their pockets lined with gold. Unfortunately, they only mined 1644 ounces of gold in season 8. My takeaway here is that a goal doesn’t have to be achievable to be believable and giving reasons to believe will go a long way. Of course, installing a bit of gold fever in your team won’t hurt either.
