Why You Keep Failing Your Goals and How to Achieve Them
By Faith Mokwenye, ExpertEase Contributor
The insights shared in this post are drawn from a recent webinar led by Ron Siahpoosh, founder of Jovitude. Watch the live session here.
You've probably set a goal this year that you haven't hit. And if you're honest, the effort was there — the result just didn't follow. That's not a discipline problem. It's a design problem.
Most goals are built around outcomes you don't fully control. Here's how to fix that.
The problem with how goals are set is that they're built around results — and the result is the part you don't control. A revenue target depends on the economy, the buyer's budget, the competition, and dozens of other variables that have nothing to do with how hard the work was.
When the only measure of success is the result, even the best effort can look like failure. Over time, that breaks the habit of pursuing the effort at all.
"We don't control every aspect of our results... But we can always pursue being A+ in the standards that we control." — Ron Siahpoosh
Ron Siahpoosh has spent nearly 35 years working with large organisations across more than 25 industries and 40 countries, studying what separates the top 2% of performers from everyone else. His research drew on 6,000 studies of performance — and the pattern is clear: people who consistently hit their goals don't set them the way everyone else does.
Why your goals keep failing
A goal built around a result has a built-in problem: the result isn't yours to control. The economy can shift, the buyer can change their mind, the budget can be pulled — none of which has anything to do with how hard the work was.
And when the only measure of success is the outcome, strong work looks the same as poor work, which slowly erodes the discipline of doing it.
Result-only goals have a second problem: they only tell you whether you've succeeded after the chance to do anything about it has passed. By the time the quarter ends and the number is missed, the lesson arrives too late to be useful. Course-correction can't happen because the data only shows up at the end.
That's why these goals keep failing. They measure the wrong thing, at the wrong time.
How to set goals that work
The fix is to move the goal one step earlier — to the things you fully control, that drive the result. A standard is what happens on the way to the result. The result is the outcome; the standard is the input, which means it's fully yours.
Here's how to set goals around standards.
1. Pick the result you want
Start with the destination. Name the outcome for the next quarter — the revenue target, the new clients, the project shipped, the milestone reached. The result still matters. It's just no longer where the goal lives.
2. Identify two or three standards that drive it
Pick the two or three things, fully within your control, that if done consistently would move the result. For a consultant chasing referrals, it might be the number of weekly client check-in calls and the number of referral requests. For a coach, it might be the number of discovery calls held and the speed of email response.
The specific standards aren't the point — the discipline of picking them is. Two or three forces focus. Twenty turns into another to-do list, and the to-do list becomes its own form of failure.
3. Set the standards to A+
Not average. Not the current baseline. Set the standard to the level the best operators in the field are hitting. Standards are things fully within your control, which means everyone can hit them — the question is whether they will.
"If I can control it, I'm giving my best." — Ron Siahpoosh
That's the whole standard. The pursuit of your best in the things fully within your control — not flawlessness, not unlimited output.
4. Review weekly, not quarterly
This is where the system actually works. Standards can be measured every week and activities counted. The result still ends at the quarter, but the work driving it can be reviewed now.
The weekly review is what turns a goal from a once-a-quarter event into a continuous process. Each week, you can see whether the standards are being hit, what worked, what didn't, and what to adjust before the gap gets too big to close.
When you miss a standard
No one hits every standard every week. That's not a flaw in the system — it's the system working.
"Don't beat yourself up. Learn from it and move on to the next day." — Ron Siahpoosh
A missed standard is a piece of data, not a verdict. The point is a clear measure of effort within your control, week after week, with room to adjust.
"If you elevate the left hand side of this formula, you will elevate the right hand side." — Ron Siahpoosh
The left side is the standards. The right side is the results. Goals that only measure the right side keep failing. Goals built on the left side are the ones that work.
ABOUT RON SIAHPOOSH
Ron Siahpoosh is the founder of Jovitude and has spent nearly 35 years helping large organisations across more than 25 industries drive transformation and high performance. Watch Ron's full workshop on the ExpertEase YouTube channel for the rest of his system — including the four-question weekly review and the role-play that changes how salespeople handle rejection.
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