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Goals Are for Losers. Systems Are for Winners · Uphoff on Media Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's Tony.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I read James Clear's Atomic Habits in 2018,
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: and it gave me a narrative and a framework for something I've been practicing
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: but had not named.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Goals are great.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a goal, though.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And goals without the systems to achieve them are a fool's mission.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Goals and systems need to work like a flywheel.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: As many colleagues and friends can attest,
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I became a bit of a zealot for defining goals and aligning them with the systems
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: to achieve them.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I also became a zealot,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: some might suggest too much so at times,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: of challenging managers as to whether they simply had a goal but no system or
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: an elegant articulated system without a goal.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Flywheel, flywheel, flywheel people.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Agentic AI is highlighting the need to get your flywheel right as your systems
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: or lack thereof will increasingly become automated.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode titled Goals are for Losers,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Systems are for Winners,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I break down how to align the right goals and systems to create and manage
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: the flywheel in your business.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: The post on Uphoff on Media on Substack includes a framework you can download
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: and use in your business.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get to work.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Goals are for losers, systems are for winners.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: You need both.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Agentic AI is about to expose the goal setters who never built the system and reward
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: the operators who did.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: That line has been a founder gospel for a decade.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Scott Adams actually coined it and James Clear's Atomic Habits turned the idea into a movement.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's also about half right, though.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: A goal without a system is hope without a deadline.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know where you're headed and nothing on the ground tells you when you're drifting.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: A system without a goal fails more quietly,
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: consistent activity that feels like progress and runs straight past the point
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: where it stopped mattering.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: The two aren't rivals, they're a flywheel.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: The goal sets the direction, the system checks your position against it.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: The correction closes the gap and every correction teaches you something that makes
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: the next one faster.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Remove any piece and the wheel stops.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the operating rhythms I've inherited as an incoming CEO were missing the correction.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: OKRs got relabeled the system.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: So did the weekly cadence on the dashboard.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: None of it changed.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: It just got a better name.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: A real system and a goal with a calendar invite look identical in the board deck.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: They only diverge when the numbers come in wrong.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: The test is what happens when the number comes in wrong.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: One question separates them.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: When reality diverges from the plan,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: does someone with the authority to act change course before
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: the next scheduled review?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or does everyone wait for the meeting?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is, we flagged it and we'll revisit it at the QBR, you don't have a system.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have a goal with a calendar invite.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: The rhythm is decorative.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling of discipline without the function of it.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Does your operating rhythm generate decisions or reports?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: On the post on Uphoff on Media,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: here's a framework you can download and use as a diagnostic tool in your business.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I learned this at Information Week before I had words for it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was recruited from Ziff Davis to CMP Media to take over Information Week.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was a struggling $15 million brand losing money dead last in a field
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: of seven IT titles on both ad pages and readership.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: The goal came first and we made it impossible to miss.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: TTL, take the lead on the sign off of every email, voicemail and meeting.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: The system came next,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: four pillars, people,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: product,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: process and performance applied to every function from sales to editorial
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: to audience development.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not a scoreboard,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: a diagnostic each team used to find what was holding it back
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: and change what it did next.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Three years later,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Information Week was a $175 million business running at 50% margins and number one
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: in readership.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: The goal never got smaller to make the system easier to run.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The system existed to serve the goal.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Look, losers have goals too.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Two companies that had everything except the correction, Friendster.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: The goal grow faster than anyone.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: It had the social network idea years before Facebook.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: The missing system,
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: engineers wanted to fix buckling infrastructure,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: but leadership kept shipping features because grow faster won every argument.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: The cost, ad pages took 40 seconds to load and MySpace took the market.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: WeWork, the goal, become the biggest workspace company on earth.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: The missing system,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: nothing could force a correction when the unit economics broke
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: and governance kept one person's desk out of reach.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: The cost,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: by the 2019 IPO filing,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: $47 billion in lease obligations sat against $4 billion in committed revenue.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: The pattern,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: both had a goal you could say out loud,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: neither built the systems that would force them to notice and act
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: when reality stopped agreeing with the plan.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Agents will run the system.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Someone still has to design it.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Agentic AI collapses two costs that used to hide a weak operating rhythm,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: the cost of execution and the time it takes, a signal to reach a decision.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: When agents do the work continuously, the quarterly check-in becomes an hourly one.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: The flywheel spins at machine speed whether or not you built a correction into it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Hand an agent a goal without a system and it will hit the goal.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Give a demand generation agent an MQL target and it will deliver the MQLs.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: It will also fill your sales team's calendar with people who are never going to buy
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: and do it faster than any human team could.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's Friendster's mistake automated.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: The system version gives the same agent a target and a loop.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Watch MQL to opportunity conversion by source.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Throttle the sources that decay,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: escalate to a human when conversion drops below a set threshold.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: The goal stays human.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: The correction runs around the clock.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's the loop I described in the post-loop engineering applied to the operating model itself.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: The market is already sorting this out.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Gardner predicts more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: of 2027,
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: citing escalating costs, unclear business value, and inadequate risk controls.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Read that list again.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: It describes goals without systems.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: When execution gets cheap,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: the scarce skill is designing the loop,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: what the agent measures,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: what it can correct on its own,
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: what threshold pulls in a human and what pulls the plug.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's systems level thinking, and it's a different muscle than setting ambitious targets.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: The goal setters who never built a correction mechanism are about to get exposed
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: at machine speed.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: The operators who did are about to compound faster than anyone in their market.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hire and promote the loop designers.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You find them in the interview.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Ask, walk me through a time when a plan you were running turned out to be wrong.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Goal-driven candidates describe how hard they pushed to hit the number anyway.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Systems thinkers describe what they changed and how fast.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: You keep them by what you reward.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Praise someone for hitting a number while ignoring three warning signs,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: and your best people learn to bury the signal.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Reward the one who flagged the problem early and changed course,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: even when the quarter came in softer.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you give loop design real weight.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever designs correction into your organic workflow should report to whoever owns
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: the outcome, not sit buried in IT.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're building it, running it, or funding it.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Building it,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: if your last three systems reviews ended with,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: let's keep an eye on it, you have goals with better branding.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you're running it,
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: give the correction mechanism teeth before you hand the workflow to an agent.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Automating a rhythm nobody acts on just multiplies the theater.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're funding it, an operating cadence tells you a founder shows up.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Ask what changed the last time the number came in wrong.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Call them goals, systems, OKRs, Or TTL.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: None of it works unless something notices when the number comes in wrong
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: and pushes back, whether that's a person in a QBR or an agent at two in the morning.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: The goal gives the flywheel direction.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: The correction gives it speed.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Build only one and you don't have a flywheel.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: You have a story you tell your board about one.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the episode.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you found this useful, please do one thing.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Follow the Uphoff on Media podcast on Apple or Spotify and leave a rating.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's the single best way to help another operator find this one.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Tony Uphoff, back at it next week.