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As planning season ramps up, most organizations double down on the details. But plans are often limited by today’s assumptions. The most impactful leaders\u2014from John F. Kennedy to Satya Nadella\u2014set the destination, not the roadmap.<\/p>\n
Jump Associates on Midjourney<\/p>\n
Every year around this time, something familiar starts to happen inside most companies. The days get shorter, the inbox gets heavier, and the planning cycle starts. Teams start dusting off templates and updating numbers. Finance sends out guidance for budgeting. Product teams assemble roadmaps. Before long, every conference room holds the same air of fluorescent determination. <\/p>\n
Most of us who\u2019ve spent time in large companies have experienced some version of this scene. Planning has become the default language of management. It\u2019s competent, earnest, and entirely understandable. Plans make us feel responsible. They create the illusion of control. <\/p>\n
Too often, though, that feeling is an illusion. That\u2019s because annual planning is an inherently present-focused activity. It takes the current year and extrapolates it forward, imagining the future as an extension of today. A plan is, fundamentally, a promise that the world will behave itself. And as anyone paying attention can attest, the world has stopped behaving. Future-focused leaders recognize this. They need to unleash their organizations to figure out what\u2019s next. And so, in addition to their plans, they do something the rest of us don\u2019t. They set focused challenges. <\/p>\n
The Power of a Focused Challenge <\/p>\n
The greatest focused challenge of the modern era was issued on a humid September day in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy stood before a crowd at Rice University and said the words that would define a decade. He declared that we would go to the Moon. <\/p>\n
That was a pretty ambitious challenge. No human being had even left near-Earth orbit. And if anyone was going to do it first, it probably wouldn\u2019t be the United States. After all, the first satellite in orbit was Sputnik<\/a>, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. The first animal to orbit Earth<\/a> was a small dog named Laika, also launched by the Soviets. And Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin<\/a> was the first man to get into space. <\/p>\n Americans greeted each achievement with awe, dismay, and the uncomfortable realization that a rival nation had taken a profound technological lead. In the span of a few years, the U.S. found itself down, zero for three. <\/p>\n That was the backdrop when Kennedy took the stage at Rice Stadium<\/a>. The heat rose off the concrete. The crowd fanned themselves with programs. The world beyond the bleachers felt tense, unpredictable, and sharply divided. <\/p>\n \u201cWe choose to go to the Moon,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cWe choose to go to the Moon in this decade\u2026not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.\u201d <\/p>\n The goal was wildly beyond our country\u2019s abilities. And Kennedy\u2019s vision was scant on details. He didn\u2019t offer a plan. He didn\u2019t present a roadmap or a checklist. No one had yet mapped out the myriad aeronautic, medical, or engineering problems that needed to be solved. Kennedy himself didn\u2019t know how it could be done. After all, he was a liberal arts major, not a rocket scientist. <\/p>\n But what Kennedy offered was clarity. We needed to go to the Moon. Not Mars. Not Venus. Not to a space station. And we needed to get it done in the next eight years. What the country needed was a destination, a timeline, and a goal it could achieve. <\/p>\n That challenge focused a nation. It gave scientists, engineers, and administrators a common purpose. And it unleashed creativity, because no one knew the answer to that challenge. The uncertainty didn\u2019t weaken the challenge. It strengthened it. And the timeline was perfect. Eight years was long enough to be audacious and short enough to be real. <\/p>\n Leaders unlock the creativity of their organization when they set focused challenges. They don\u2019t have to have all the answers in place for how to achieve the goal\u2014they just need to get everyone focused on the right question. <\/p>\n When Satya Nadella reframed the company\u2019s mission around democratizing AI<\/a>, he wasn\u2019t issuing a set of instructions. He posed a challenge that asked every team to rethink the assumptions behind their products. It wasn\u2019t clear how things would play out. It wasn\u2019t clear which technologies would win. But the challenge itself unlocked partnerships, business model shifts, and new ways of working\u2014moves that no plan could have predicted. <\/p>\n Tesla didn\u2019t become Tesla because it built a better plan. It became Tesla because it set a challenge that forced the company to behave differently: build the safest cars on the road<\/a>, even if the industry believed electric vehicles were fragile, unproven, or niche. That challenge reshaped materials, software, manufacturing, and even the way the company handled accidents. The plan changed every year. The challenge remained constant. <\/p>\n Setting Focused Challenges <\/p>\n The ability to set a focused challenge can galvanize a team. And yet, most leaders in large companies never have to develop this skill. Their careers reward execution. Their organizations reward predictability. Their culture rewards getting things done on time and on budget. These are admirable traits, but a company that excels at execution can easily become a company where people wait for someone else to define the goal. <\/p>\n And if you\u2019re not setting your own focused challenges, it can mean your challenges are getting set by your competitors. <\/p>\n Shortly after the iPad was launched, I spent time with the CEO of a large consumer electronics company. He was proud to tell me that his team would have their own \u201ciPad beater\u201d coming out later that year. He said this with real excitement, as if the mere act of responding meant they were still in the game. But it also meant that his company was now responding to challenges set by someone else, on terms that played to someone else\u2019s strengths. Trying to out-Apple Apple is not a winning strategy. <\/p>\n The good news is that you can get good at setting focused challenges. It begins with understanding the difference between defining the \u201cwhat\u201d and dictating the \u201chow.\u201d A great focused challenge tells people what the goal is and why it matters. It\u2019s specific enough to direct effort and broad enough to allow people to surprise you. It doesn\u2019t tell teams which levers to pull. It unlocks their judgment rather than replacing it. <\/p>\n Kennedy articulated the destination and the reason. He didn\u2019t prescribe the path. He didn\u2019t tell NASA which engines to build or which materials to choose. He simply said the Moon, before the decade ends, because if we don\u2019t rise to this challenge, we risk falling behind as a nation. <\/p>\n Focused challenges work when they\u2019re memorable. And that means more than just setting a revenue or profitability target. Human beings don\u2019t rally around spreadsheets. They rally around metaphors. When Steve Jobs was envisioning the second-generation iMac, he told his team to make it like a sunflower. He didn\u2019t mean that it should have big yellow petals. He meant that it should be friendly and it should turn to face you. Apple\u2019s design team translated that intent into shape, color, and a dozen other decisions. The metaphor didn\u2019t constrain them. It freed them. <\/p>\n One of the most common questions leaders ask is how many challenges an organization should take on. A startup can only solve one focused challenge at a time. If it tries to solve two, the company won\u2019t survive long enough to debate the results. A larger operating business can sustain three to five focused challenges without losing coherence. Any fewer, and it\u2019s not stretching itself. Any more, and it\u2019s back in the world of planning: issuing long lists that dissipate attention instead of focusing it. A multi-business enterprise can have three to five challenges for each business. The point is to set challenges that are big enough to matter and few enough to remember. <\/p>\n Set the Right Challenge <\/p>\n Of course, you have to make sure you\u2019re focused on the right challenge. In 2003, Indian industrialist Ratan Tata was driving behind a family who were all riding on a scooter together: a father, a mother, and two small children. It was raining. The scooter slipped and nearly crashed in front of him. The experience left Tata shaken. He knew there had to be a safer way to travel. Unfortunately, automobiles were far beyond what most Indian families could afford. So, as the head of a large automobile company, Tata decided to take up the challenge. He announced that Tata Motors would build a car for the common man<\/a>: one that cost 1 lakh rupees. <\/p>\n At the time, 1 lakh rupees was the equivalent of $2,000, far less than any automobile in the world. To ensure that the company was committed, Tata announced his moonshot goal to a skeptical public. The challenge forced everyone to innovate. Engineers redesigned manufacturing processes. They rethought supply chains. The next several years were a rocky road of breakthroughs and setbacks. At one point, his leadership team tried to convince him that a car costing 2 lakhs would be good enough. But Tata shook his head. \u201cA promise is a promise.\u201d <\/p>\n When the Tata Nano was launched four years later, it proved that you could build and sell a car for $2,000<\/a>. The company met the challenge by designing a car from scooter and motorcycle parts, rather than trying to economize traditional automobile systems. <\/p>\n And yet, the Nano was a market failure. It turns out that Indians are highly status-conscious, and no one wanted to be seen driving a car designed for poor people. Ratan Tata proved that he could spark a company-wide explosion of creativity with a clear and focused challenge. But the Nano\u2019s failure highlights the importance of setting the right challenge. <\/p>\n But here\u2019s the good news: if you\u2019re a leader of a large business, you don\u2019t have to do this alone. While Ratan Tata\u2019s personal experience was no doubt compelling, it could have been augmented with some good consumer insight work. He just needed to ask. Too often, leaders turn to their strategy team to validate a direction they\u2019ve already decided to go in. <\/p>\n That is\u2026deeply unwise. <\/p>\n Kennedy didn\u2019t wake up that morning in Texas and think, \u2018Huh\u2026maybe the Moon?\u2019 His speech was the culmination of months and months of solid strategic work. NASA had already demonstrated its capabilities by making Alan Shepard the first American in space in 1961. John Glenn had orbited the Earth a few months before Kennedy\u2019s speech. <\/p>\n Create Multiple Missions <\/p>\n It\u2019s also important to recognize that teams don\u2019t typically solve a big challenge in their first go. The United States did get to the Moon. But we did it with Apollo 11<\/a>, not Mercury 1. There were many mishaps along the way, including the horrific incident of Apollo 1, when Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were burned alive on the launchpad. Still, NASA pressed on, learning more with every successive mission. <\/p>\n