How Determined Should You Be Achieving Goals?

This article references the book What Got You Here Won't Get You There and the podcast Pocket Animals

Yesterday we hiked from Neve Ativ to Birkat Man and from there to the lower parking lot of the Hermon site. The weather was wonderful. The sun was with us all day. There was snow, there were amazing views and an excellent group of hikers.

Bottom line - it was excellent.

But as sometimes happens, the road to the goal – the trip – was full of pitfalls.

Dealing With Authorities Who Don’t Provide Answers

• The goal, or the original plan, was to go down from Brikat Man to Fort Nimrod.
• First obstacle. On the original date we planned, the mountain was closed due to inclement weather – so we postponed by two weeks.
• Second obstacle. We received information that there’s a checkpoint after Majdal Shams and they don’t allow people without an entrance ticket to the Hermon site to pass. It was unclear, all these years the road was open, what happened this year?
• Third obstacle. How to get information - and even more important - how to pass the checkpoint without purchasing an entrance ticket to the site. We didn't plan to get to the site.
  • I started looking for a source of information. With the help of friends, I was able to talk to the person who previously ran the site. He was very nice and eager to help, but he made it clear to us that we had no chance. The checkpoint wasn’t the site's, but the police’s. They are the ones who won’t allow free passage. According to him, the police always wanted to limit the number of people who enter the site and now, thanks to Covid-19, they have a good excuse.
    I didn’t give up and reached the next obstacle.
• Fourth obstacle. The police blocked the way for those who didn’t have a ticket to the site. Is there a way to get permission?
• Fifth obstacle. We tried to contact the site. Anyone who’s ever tried calling there and ask a question knows that there’s no way, it’s impossible to talk to them.
• Sixth obstacle. In the end, we made contact through Facebook Messenger and received an unequivocal message that there’s simply no way to go up to the site's box office and go off on foot without purchasing tickets to the site in advance.
  We were advised to go up from Neve Ativ to Birkat Man instead of going down the opposite route.
• Updating the target. The direction of walking has changed. The climb was a bit steep, but not bad. We even found an advantage in beginning in Neve Ativ and finishing in the snow.
• Seventh obstacle. Now I had to ensure that our return transportation could pass the police checkpoint and drop us off at our cars at Neve Ativ. In retrospect, I realized that younger travelers go up and rely on hitchhiking to get back down. I knew that our group wouldn’t wait for hitchhiking at the end of the route.
• The next challenge was to ensure the passage through the checkpoint for the empty minibus that would come up to take us.
• The days are passing, and the trip is getting closer. We received no answers from any authority and decided to bet on the driver being able to pass the checkpoint.
• On Friday morning, when we were already on our way up on foot, someone from the Hermon website called. She was very nice, asked for the driver's name and said he would be able to pass, both the police checkpoint and the site’s box-office, to get to the parking lot and pick us up. She said that when the driver says his name at the counters, they will allow him to pass.

Happy Ending

We just wanted to travel on Friday. We weren’t planning to start a new business.

You all probably know the feeling of trying to call authorities and getting no answer. Or not even knowing who to call.

Along the way there were quite a few reasons to give up, many attempts to get answers or to obtain sources of information and informal contacts.

Determination was needed.

There were also those who suggested cancelling this trip.

But I knew this might be our last chance this year to hike in the snow and I didn't give up.

A picture of the landscape we got to see:

The Determination and Resilience in Achieving a Goal

The subject of this article is not the frustrating confrontation with the authorities – although this is also an important issue – but the determination.

In the end, we left on a sunny Friday morning for a lovely hike. But along the way, a lot of determination was needed. Dealing with authorities who weren’t very happy to help us, in order to arrive with family and friends to the starting point of the route in Neve Ativ.

The challenge in such situations is that along the way you don’t know if or when you’ll achieve your goal. Nor can you consider cost-benefit balances. For example, should I invest X hours, or Y shekels to achieve my goal? You don’t know what the value of X or Y is, and in addition to the actual values ​​of hours and shekels, there’s also the cost of frustration and a sense of helplessness. There’s no way to quantify this cost.

At best you have some idea of ​​your goal’s value.

This is when your determination is needed to achieve your goal.

Is There Always Justification to Continue the Pursuit of a Goal?

In the example above we achieved the goal: a fun trip that cannot be experienced every day.

But was the effort expended justified in the cost-benefit test?

This is a question that can almost always only be answered in retrospect. And almost always this is also a very subjective and personal question. Different people will analyze the same reality in a different way.

I personally do not give up easily, nor do I analyze, in retrospect, whether my investment was justified.

Other people evaluate differently the feasibility of achieving the goal, and give it up.

Which course of action is better?

Maybe it’s better to ask, when we should stick to achieving the goal "at all costs" and when to give it up?

With what tools will we analyze the feasibility of following the path before we walked it?

Obsessive Adherence to a Goal

In the book What Got You Here Won't Get You There, Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter write that obsessive adherence to a goal is one of those paradoxical traits to which we attribute our success. It is the force that motivates us to finish the task - and finish it perfectly - despite all the obstacles.

This is usually a valuable feature. It's hard to criticize people for wanting to get things done perfectly. But if overdone, it can become a prominent cause of failure. In its broadest form, it is the force that manifests itself when we are so engrossed in achieving our goal that we do so at the expense of the larger mission.

They add that the compulsive attachment to a goal can cloud our perception of good and bad.

As a result, in our persistent pursuit of our goals, we completely forget about politeness. We’re nice to people if they can help us and we get them out of the way if they don’t bring us any benefit. without intending to, we may become self-centered schemers.

How Can We Distinguish When Perseverance is Positive and When it Isn’t?

Every manager would like people around them who have a compulsive adherence to achieving the goal or carrying out tasks they have undertaken.

But when might this adherence cause more harm than good?

I think that the answer to this question lies in the authors' statement that, in its broadest form, compulsive adherence to a goal is the force that manifests itself when we are so engrossed in achieving our goal that we do so at the expense of the larger mission.

Suppose the organization's goal is to make money and one of the managers has taken on the execution of a large project. But the project isn’t successful, requires more and more resources and causes a large financial loss without compensation in the future.

The compulsive adherence to the completion of the project can cause great financial damage to the organization.

Another Example: Why Are There So Few Food Trucks in Israel?

Episode 227 of the "Pocket Animals" podcast by Kaan, deals with this question. Alon, one of the presenters, says that his dream was to operate a food truck in Tel Aviv.

He described the difficulties that the Tel Aviv Municipality piled up so that there are no food trucks in its area. Most of the applicants threw up their hands, but there were two who didn’t give up. They waged a legal battle for four years until the High Court ruled in their favor.

Or so they thought.

The municipality thought otherwise, and the developers eventually gave up.

At the end of the episode, Alon introduced Orian Rise's food truck, called Mrs. Shakshuka, in the Golan Heights.

She succeeded where many have failed.

In the conversation between them, Alon joked that Mrs. Shakshuka is more courageous than him.

Orian recounted the guts she needed to have to stand on the road and demand to be given the chance to get people to know her, and how the authorities let her.

Orion Rise Wins. Did Her Adherence to the Goal Pay Off?

Mrs. Shakshuka won and has a food truck.

In conclusion, Alon says that in his opinion Mrs. Shakshuka is a winner, she made her dream come true, despite the bureaucracy and regulations.

But did she think it was worth it?

Looking back, Orian Rise isn’t sure that her determination and adherence to this goal was the right course of action.

According to her, food trucks aren’t profitable, and today, after much persistence, she earns about minimum wage. According to her, it’s possible that if she had understood at the time the economic significance of what this means, she’s not certain that she would have gone to this direction.

In Retrospect, What Could Have Been Done?

Retrospect analysis is only good for learning ahead.

If Orian Rise had consulted with me at the beginning, we would have used Lean Canvas, and if after the analysis, there was justification to continue, I would have built a business plan with her, using the Sensitivity Analysis Model.

Perhaps her profitability can be improved even today, although I appreciate that in a small business like hers, she knows what she’s doing.

Summary and Recommendation

Every manager would like to see around them people who stick to their goals, objectives and tasks.

Is this always advisable?

Maybe not.

I’m one of those who don’t give up until they achieve their goal.

But as written in the book What Got You Here Won't Get You There, this compulsive adherence isn’t always beneficial. Sometimes, in terms of cost-benefit, or when seeing the bigger picture, it’s better to leave and not fight to achieve your narrow goal.

By the way, determination is a positive quality, but on the same spectrum, on the other end, there’s a different one: stubbornness. And there’s no need to convince you that stubbornness is a negative trait.

The appropriate test between positive determination and negative stubbornness will be seen at the micro level, in a kind of zoom-out.

Usually, to zoom-out we need someone to help us, who’s less emotionally involved in the process.