“Fat Pants” & the Plateau Myth
When I work with executives on company goal-setting and execution, they sometimes get bogged down distinguishing between goals that are critical to run the business as it exists now and goals aimed at transforming the business for an anticipated future state (“run the business” vs. “change the business”).
This distinction is similar to another familiar goal-setting rabbit hole, the eternal question of whether one should separate “must-have” goals from “aspirational” goals. In the daily firefight of regular business, it’s easy to label those transformational goals as “aspirational” — and never get around to them.
When I’m in these discussions, I think about the “fat pants” my friend and F3 Nation co-founder Dave used to keep in the back of his closet. For years before we started working out together in 2009, Dave had yo-yo-ed in and out of fitness. He would go on an insane diet-and-workout binge and lose a bunch of weight in a very short period (of all the people I’ve known in my life, he’s in the top percentile for discipline and determination).
As soon as he reached whatever weight target he had set for himself, Dave would take his foot off the gas, backslide into complacency and regain the weight – and the fat pants would come out again.
F3, the men’s workout movement we started together, solved that problem for Dave, for me (before F3, lacking Dave’s monomaniacal focus, I was less of a yo-yo-er and more a steady, "pack on another five pounds every six months" guy) and a bunch of other men.
A network of free, peer-led workouts, F3 Nation weaves participants into a tapestry of friends and workout partners who provide accountability, brotherhood and a “glue” that keeps guys showing up day after day.
And F3 abolishes the Myth of the Plateau, the one that kept Dave climbing through all those workout-and-diet binges over the years – a belief that this time he was going to get to the top of the mountain, reach his goal weight and there would be a nice, easy place to rest and not worry about working out and eating right.
F3 recognizes that there is no plateau -- and if you’re going to have to put in the hard work every day, you might as well have some other guys to keep you company.
The same rule holds true in business: there is no plateau. Never in our lifetimes have we seen a more vivid illustration of that than in 2020.
There is no Zen state where you finally reach level ground and the business runs itself like a perpetual motion machine. The leader’s challenge is to run the business and change the business at the same time.
If you can’t do that, outside forces are liable to intrude. In the blink of an eye “must-have” goals can become aspirational and those goals you thought you could put on a back burner – those are suddenly must-haves.
Goal-setting and execution frameworks (particularly those with a technological component) often are sold to leaders with a “set it and forget it” sales pitch. Just put this system in place and all your problems will be solved. You won’t have to worry about this anymore.
My experience is the opposite. Goal-setting and execution frameworks that truly work are ones that you set … and then reset … and reset again.
They’re the business equivalent of regularly getting out of bed to go to an early morning workout -- a weekly, monthly or quarterly discipline that keeps everyone climbing together and in cadence, always up the mountain, always making progress.
