A Goal Is Not A Goal Is Not A Goal: Three Lessons And Gifts From Joe

Introductio

My friend and colleague Joe passed away suddenly from a heart attack last November. He had refused a procedure recommended by his doctor and had not told either his wife or me that he had heart problems.

All I knew was that he had high cholesterol. She and I talked later and knew that he had not told us because he knew we would insist on his doing this procedure. He was a very positive person and would not have said no if he knew the full risk of saying no, but he never said yes to things the first time when there was any perceived risk. He had to be persuaded over months.

This time he did not have months.

The shock and pain of the loss were horrendous for all of us. His wife and sons and grandkids were traumatized. I was depressed for months. What a waste!

But here’s the thing: Joe was a quintessential learner and totally goal-oriented. What would he want us to do? I want to honor that and honor his memory.

Lessons from Joe

Easy question to answer: Pass on his learning and wisdoms. This article about lessons from Joe is dedicated to the memory of my friend and leadership consultant colleague Joe Farcht.

Lesson One: For Health, Communicate!

Stubbornness can be a good thing, but not when it comes to your health. Don’t do the male thing of keeping quiet. Let your spouse and close friends know what is going on so you can get more perspectives and they can help you do the best thing.

Had Joe done this, he would still be alive today, radiating his positive wisdoms on us and on his clients. He was only 60 and was a beacon of positive energy and leadership strategy for all of his clients.
Lesson Two: Listen to Your Doctor!

Doctors are not always right, but this one was really a no-brainer. The risk of death was much higher than the risk of the procedure. Had he had the procedure, his risk of heart attack would have been minimized greatly. He would still be here. All of us would not have gone through the loss and pain and trauma. And Joe’s new internet business, books and articles he was excited about would have helped many more people. Joe was not finished here.

Lesson Three: A Goal Is Not a Goal Is Not A Goal.

Joe was the only other consultant I knew in this city who was as deeply committed to the positive approach to leadership as I am. Having started my work on positive transformational leadership in the 70s, my own journey had become so positive that few colleagues were on the same page as I am. Joe was a real find.

We decided to do a goals telephone meeting every Monday morning, recounting what we accomplished during the previous week and establishing goals for the coming week. For three years we spoke every Monday morning, and occasionally met over lunch.

On our birthdays we went to lunch and listed our accomplishments for the year and goals for the next year. What I learned from Joe was amazing to me, and what he learned from me was amazing to him.

Now, I am no stranger to the power of goals and have my ongoing list of goals as always. However, I was to learn that Joe and I had very different ideas of what goals were and how to use them.

I am a creative right-brained type for whom all is possible, a future visionary, a corporate leadership futurist. I am usually 20 or more years ahead of what everyone else is doing in business. I started positive strengths-based appreciative leadership systems in the 1970s and my teachable, learnable, replicable Master Intuition System for Leaders in the early 1980s.
I predicted the fall of communism in Russia as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago studying Economics. I insisted that the Accountants and Economists there consider psychological and behavioral variables in their decision-making models.

They thought I was nuts or glazed over and said they did not know how to do that. Decades later we have social accounting and behavioral finance and behavioral economics.

Seeing ahead is as natural to me as breathing, and of course very lucrative for corporate clients.

My idea of a goal is to transform leadership on the planet.

Joe was very different. He was far more organized in details, wrote down all of his goals and exactly what he accomplished every week.

He was a former military officer, a fighter pilot in Vietnam who flew 195 missions without a scratch on him. I told him he had some kind of guardian angel watching over him!

He was meticulous about procedure and was the only person I have known who could convince me to go up in a small plane. Joe owned an old Comanche and had just restored it and updated the electronics, and beamed like a proud Papa over it. I went up with him only because I trusted him to be careful and because he had a flawless track record.

It was great fun and I loved flying in it, and then enjoyed taking the controls. “Flying the ball”, keeping the plane level and on course, was easy for me, as I was a JAG fan.

His flying was a testament to his master of the art of small goals and procedures, details that make all the difference.

I only wrote down macro goals and macro accomplishments, and placed little value on really boring details.

Little did I know the power of what I would learn from Joe.

The Power of Little Goals

Over time, with Joe as my example, I learned the power of writing down small goals and everything I did, a new idea for me.

What I learned was amazing to me:

I had no idea how much I actually did until I wrote it all down, the little things as well as the big things. This gave me a much greater sense of accomplishment and forward motion in my business.

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