{"id":759,"date":"2009-11-04T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2009-11-04T10:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/?p=759"},"modified":"2009-11-03T23:37:34","modified_gmt":"2009-11-04T04:37:34","slug":"can-you-keep-a-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/04\/can-you-keep-a-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Keep a Secret?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you have read in previous posts, RMITs are not believers in long-term planning. America\u2019s big successes got where they are by incremental improvement and strong, careful execution, but they didn\u2019t get there by deciding at the outset how they would hit a $2.5\u00a0million profit target or achieve a 72 percent market share. They followed their perfect pitch, always moving forward while remaining flexible enough to adapt to change and to take advantage of opportunities. As Dan Duncan<\/strong>, Houston\u2019s RMIT, told me,<\/a> \u201cDaily incremental improvement is the surest path to great success and a great fortune.\u201d As I found out as I was researching The Richest Man in Town,<\/em> however, for all that they cautioned against too much goal-setting, many RMITs have a secret.<\/p>\n

They may not have a ten-year plan, but RMITs often have a secret objective, a long-term goal that keeps them motivated even as the winds of change take them off the course they initially set. Dr. Thomas Frist<\/strong>, HCA Healthcare<\/strong> founder and Nashville\u2019s RMIT, told me, \u201cI believe everyone should have at least one silent goal. This is a goal that is known only by you. It\u2019s a reach goal, one that is extremely hard to attain, but potentially life altering, even world changing. These kinds of world-changing goals are realized by only very few people. If you don\u2019t reach them, you certainly won\u2019t be judged by others\u2014it\u2019s your well-kept personal secret.\u201d A silent goal\u2014what Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great,<\/em> calls a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)\u2014is your pole star, the guide to your final destination even as you adjust your course.<\/p>\n

Life is in the journey, and strong execution is what keeps the ship moving forward, but every voyage has to have some ultimate destination, even if it\u2019s known only to you. Amway<\/strong> (now Alticor<\/strong>) cofounder Richard DeVos<\/strong> told me that his silent goal was \u201cto own the largest and the best privately-held consumer goods company in the world.\u201d The secret of a secret goal is in combining big dreams\u2014and no one dreams bigger than an RMIT\u2014with the drive and the strong execution to make it happen. The secret is to set a goal that is so revolutionary, so forward in thought and deed that if you achieve it, you go down in history with the likes of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison<\/strong>\u2014or Bill Gates<\/strong>. And even if you fail to meet your secret goal, you might hit that $2.5\u00a0million target and 72 percent share along the way. That\u2019s the kind of failure you can live with (more on failure in my next post).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you have read in previous posts, RMITs are not believers in long-term planning. America\u2019s big successes got where they are by incremental improvement and strong, careful execution, but they didn\u2019t get there by deciding at the outset how they would hit a $2.5 million profit target or achieve a 72 percent market share. They followed their perfect pitch, always moving forward while remaining flexible enough to adapt to change and to take advantage of opportunities. As Dan Duncan<\/strong>, Houston\u2019s RMIT, told me,<\/a> \u201cDaily incremental improvement is the surest path to great success and a great fortune.\u201d As I found out as I was researching The Richest Man in Town,<\/em> however, for all that they cautioned against too much goal-setting, many RMITs have a secret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[301,153],"tags":[307,305,304,10,288,310,309,303,306,90,308,302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}