Set Goals You Can Fail At
Or: “Get better” is not a goal
We’ve all said things like:
“We need to improve sales.”
“I want to communicate more clearly.”
“We should improve morale.”
They sound fine. But they’re not real goals. They’re vague intentions. Hopes, really. Which means they’re hard to rally around, hard to measure, and even harder to achieve.
My son Henry, wrote something recently that nailed it. It was part of a college advice post he shared, and this line jumped out:
“Set goals you can fail at. If a goal isn’t falsifiable, it isn’t actionable.”
That’s it. That’s the test. If you can’t fail, you haven’t really committed. You’ve just said something that sounds good. And when a goal is that soft, no one knows what success looks like — including you.
I’ve always liked SMART goals. I know, they sound like they came out of a corporate handbook, but they’ve stuck around for a reason. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. It’s not complicated. It’s just clear. And that clarity forces decisions. That’s what real goals do.
“Get better at writing” is not a goal.
“Publish two blog posts a week for a month” is.
You either did it or you didn’t. That’s the power of a falsifiable goal — it holds you to something. And if you miss? Great. Now you’ve got a data point. You can adjust. You can try again.
Same thing at the company level.
“We need to improve culture” doesn’t mean anything.
But “Hold ten RealTalk™ check-ins with team leads this month and summarize what we hear” — now we’re getting somewhere.
“Ship better product” is vague.
“Release the new onboarding flow by May 1 and increase conversion by 10%” is concrete.
“We should publish more content” — maybe, but what does that mean?
“Ship one customer story per week for the next four weeks, each with a call-to-action and a click-through rate above our baseline” — now we’re talking.
The more specific and falsifiable your goals are, the more useful they become. Because now you’re accountable. Your team’s aligned. You know what to do, how to measure it, and whether you got there. If you missed it, you can have an honest conversation. If you hit it, you can celebrate.
And no, not everything has to be this crisp. Vision can be soft. Strategy can be fluid. But execution? Execution needs edges. Otherwise, you’re just wandering and calling it progress.
So next time you set a goal — for yourself or your team — ask the question my number one son, Henry posed:
Can I fail at this?
If the answer’s no, keep going. You’re not done yet.
Hat tip and #prouddad to H.
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