Great Leaders Don’t Do “Realistic” We’ve all been told it. Set “realistic” targets. Keep your goals “achievable.” Be “SMART” about it. And that, my friends, is the quickest route to an entirely forgettable life. Beige… Vanilla…. “whatever” ! The “SMART” goal brigade mean well ‘bless ’em’. But when you follow that thinking, you end up hitting benchmarks so low that you could trip over them. Which means you’ll never stretch far enough to surprise yourself… or anyone else. Meanwhile, “truly great” leaders and history-makers have been quietly ignoring this nonsense for centuries. They set massive, outrageous goals. Goals that make people shudder! And then (here’s the key) they break them down into clear, actionable, realistic steps. Notice the difference: the goal is huge. The steps are realistic. Big Goal, Small Steps = The Winning Formula Let’s take a look at a few of these “unrealistic” goal-setters. Sir Edmund Hillary – First man to summit Mount Everest in 1953. If Hillary had set a “realistic” goal, he’d have stuck to climbing Ben Nevis on weekends and telling himself that was enough. Instead, he set his sights on the tallest mountain in the world, in an age before Gore-Tex, GPS, or Instagram bragging rights. The mountain was big. The risk was massive. The steps? Months of training, team selection, route planning, acclimatisation, and meticulous preparation. 2. Elon Musk – Love him or loathe him, this guy Is not aiming for the moon…. NO!... he’s aiming for Mars. Not “build a slightly better car.” Not “get a few satellites up there.” Nope… colonise another planet! How? By breaking it down: reusable rockets, Starship prototypes, life-support testing. Crazy goal, reasonable steps. 3. Rosa Parks – One seat on one bus. Her ultimate goal? Dismantle systemic segregation in the United States. That’s as “massive” as it gets. But she took one specific, achievable action by refusing to give up her seat. That single act triggered a chain reaction, proving that small, deliberate steps can topple enormous systems.