How to Make DUMB Goals Work & Why They Outperform SMART Goals

Nick Leach
Nov 21
4 min read

If you’ve spent years working with SMART goals, the idea of “DUMB goals” may sound… well, a bit ridiculous. But in Leading on Purpose, DUMB goals are deliberately designed to break the limitations of traditional goal-setting. They unleash ambition, spark innovation, and shift a team’s mindset from incremental thinking to transformational outcomes.

Most organisations suffocate their own potential by forcing everything to be measurable, realistic and time-bound before ideas have had the chance to breathe. DUMB goals flip this on its head — and this is exactly why they work.

Below is a guide to using DUMB goals effectively, based entirely on the practical approach you outline in the book.

What Is a DUMB Goal?

DUMB stands for:

D for Dream-Driven
U for Uplifting
M for Method
B for Bold

Unlike SMART goals, DUMB goals aren’t about immediate feasibility. They are about possibility, ambition and purpose, the ingredients of innovation. When teams shift into this mindset, they generate ideas that competitors cannot replicate.

The Four Elements of a DUMB Goal (and How to Make Them Work)

1. Dream-Driven: Start with the Future, Not the Forecast

A DUMB goal begins with a dream, a big, exciting, “Time magazine cover” future state. In your workshops, teams literally imagine the cover story of their success:

What’s the picture?
What would stakeholders be saying?
What has changed for customers?
What has changed about the industry?

This pushes people out of incremental thinking and into possibility thinking, which you describe as the foundation of ambition and innovation.

This exercise anchors the team emotionally, which is critical because emotion drives action. It also creates alignment: everyone is imagining the same destination.

2. Uplifting: The Goal Must Inspire and Pull People Forward

A DUMB goal must be uplifting, something that energises people, connects to customer ambition, and lights a fire internally. You emphasise that the goal should always have:

a strong external focus (what success means for customers),
clear alignment to the organisation’s purpose, and
a positive, inspiring tone. LeadingonPurpose

When goals are uplifting, teams lean into the work because they want to, not because they have to.

3. Method: Understanding the Gap Before Solving It

This is the most misunderstood and most important part of DUMB goals.

Teams do not need to know how to achieve the big goal immediately.

Instead, they begin by mapping stakeholders:

List the stakeholders
Define the current state
Define the future state required for success

This exposes the gap, which often looks impossibly large. And that is exactly the point.

Instead of panicking, teams are taught to:

Sit with the gap
Accept the uncertainty
Get comfortable with ambiguity
Start exploring possibilities over time
Talk to stakeholders to gather ideas and support

You explain that SMART conditioning makes people think they must solve everything instantly, and if they can’t, the goal must be unrealistic. But DUMB goals retrain teams to accept not knowing the answer yet, which is where innovation begins.

4. Bold: The Goal Must Stretch the Team Beyond Comfort

Boldness separates ordinary ambition from extraordinary performance. You state clearly that high-performing teams are driven by big, bold goals, not modest ones. These are goals that:

Feel uncomfortable
Feel scary
Require people to grow
Cannot be achieved by doing what has always been done
Inspire innovation because the old path won’t work

Teams often feel fear or stress after setting a bold DUMB goal, and this is normal. You emphasise that leaders must support their teams through this discomfort by maintaining focus, trust and belief.

Why DUMB Goals Outperform SMART Goals

From the book, we learn that SMART goals are often:

too conservative,
too logical,
too predictable, and
too safe.

This leads to:

incremental improvements
low ambition
lack of innovation
“busy work” that isn’t aligned to purpose

DUMB goals, on the other hand:

unlock creativity and innovation
align teams to purpose
generate stakeholder support
create genuine excitement
produce unique strategies competitors can’t copy
make teams high-performing by default

They also build a culture of energy and momentum, which is hard for competitors to replicate.

How to Implement DUMB Goals in Your Organisation

Here is a practical sequence drawn directly from your workshop model:

1. Build trust first

You note that trust enhances team performance and allows honest, constructive challenge, essential when aiming for something bold. LeadingonPurpose

2. Align the team on purpose

DUMB goals must link directly to the team and organisational purpose.

3. Run the DUMB goal session

Use the Time magazine exercise, draft the Dream, check it’s Uplifting, outline the Method, and ensure it is Bold.

4. Create commitment through resources and time

Teams must receive authority and support, or the goal collapses.

5. Leaders must stay close

As I repeatedly highlighted in the book, the early months are critical. Teams must feel supported through ambiguity.

6. Reconfirm and reinforce the goal constantly

Teams lose performance when the goal becomes irrelevant or is not renewed.

Final Thought: DUMB Goals Work Because They Change People

Your core message is that DUMB goals fundamentally shift the inner thinking of a team:

from fear to possibility
from incrementalism to ambition
from caution to courage
from functional silos to unified purpose
from “what is” to “what could be”

Once a team experiences the power of a DUMB goal, they will never want to return to SMART goals again — because they’ve felt the energy of working on something meaningful, exciting and transformative.

And that energy becomes the engine of a purpose-driven culture.