The man on the moon principle

In one paragraph

Commit publicly to a specific outcome and a specific date, before you know how you will do it. The commitment is what forces the how to be worked out.

In 1961 Kennedy committed the United States to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely before the decade was out. Nobody knew how. The commitment came first, and the method was invented to meet it.

The principle for a business: a goal that is specific, public and dated changes behaviour in a way that an aspiration does not. 'Grow the business' commits you to nothing. 'Two hundred clients by December, and I have told the team' does.

Why the date and the audience both matter

The date removes the option of indefinite postponement. The audience removes the option of quietly dropping it. Together they convert intention into constraint, and constraint is what produces invention.

The uncomfortable half: a public dated goal can also be publicly missed. That is the price, and it is the reason the technique works at all.

How to actually use it

• Pick one thing, put a date on it, and tell somebody who will ask. All three parts are needed; two out of three does nothing.
• Choose something where missing would be survivable. This is a forcing device, not a way to bet the business.

Where it breaks down

• It works for goals where effort and ingenuity are the constraint. Applied to something genuinely outside your control it produces pressure and no result.
• Apollo also had a national budget behind it. Commitment without resource is just a louder wish.

If you are being examined on it

Useful as a contrast with SMART goals — this is deliberately not 'achievable' in the SMART sense.

More on planning & goals