A Smarter Way to Run Fast
Healthy Goal Setting for Christian CEOs
Most leadership teams do not struggle to set goals. They struggle to set goals that actually guide behavior in February, still matter in June, and produce measurable progress by the end of the year.
Sometimes goals are too vague to execute. Other times, they are clear on paper but quietly disconnected from how the organization operates day to day. In both cases, leaders feel the same frustration: we are working hard, but we are not moving with clarity.
A healthy approach to goal setting can be captured in two complementary C12 Frameworks: SMART and FAST.
“SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound) builds the goal. FAST (Frequently discussed, Ambitious, Specific, Transparent) keeps the goal alive through leadership rhythm.”
One helps you build goals with clarity. The other helps you lead those goals with momentum and accountability. SMART is the foundation. It ensures the goal itself is solid. FAST is the multiplier. It ensures the goal becomes part of your leadership rhythm rather than a document that gets revisited once a quarter.
SMART goals give clarity to execution
SMART goals are designed to move a team from intention to action by forcing clarity in five simple questions:
- What exactly are we trying to accomplish, and what will success look like?
- How will we measure progress in a way the team can see and track?
- Is this attainable in the real world, given our resources and constraints, while still requiring growth?
- Is this relevant to our strategy and the season we are in right now?
- By when will we know we accomplished it?
This matters because vague goals create vague effort. Research in goal-setting theory has consistently shown that specific, challenging goals tend to produce higher performance than vague goals like “do your best,” especially when people receive feedback along the way. (med.stanford.edu)
The context you provided includes examples that show what this looks like in real business terms: paying off a defined amount of debt within a year, transitioning a function like IT support within a set quarter, or increasing website traffic by a defined percentage by a specific date.
These are not inspiring slogans. They are executable targets.
But here is what many leaders learn the hard way. A SMART goal can still fail if it only exists on paper. Clarity is essential, but clarity alone does not create follow-through.
FAST goals keep clarity from dying after kickoff
FAST addresses the most common problem in organizations: goals are set, announced, and then slowly starved of attention. FAST is about how leaders leverage goals so they remain visible, owned, and acted on consistently. In this framework, goals are frequently discussed, ambitious, specific, and transparent.
This is where many leadership teams feel a pinch, especially around the word ambitious. SMART says attainable. FAST says ambitious. That is not a contradiction. It is a tension that defines healthy leadership. The best goals are often stretch goals. They are achievable, but they require growth beyond current capability, stronger systems, sharper trade-offs, and better leadership habits.
When leaders embrace FAST, they stop treating goals as annual aspirations and start treating them as shared commitments. MIT Sloan Management Review has argued that FAST goals outperform traditional SMART-only approaches in modern organizations because they are designed for adaptability, accountability, and frequent discussion rather than a once-a-year planning cycle. (shop.sloanreview.mit.edu)
What it looks like when SMART is leveraged by FAST
Here is a simple example that illustrates the difference between having a SMART goal and actually running with it. One sample goal is paying off $120,000 in business debt over 12 months. That goal is clear, measurable, and time-bound.
FAST is what turns it into a leadership rhythm. The executive team commits to reviewing progress monthly, and the broader team gets updates quarterly. The ambition is framed not as pressure, but as purposeful sacrifice that builds capacity for the future. The math is made specific: $120,000 means an average of $10,000 per month. And progress is communicated honestly, not selectively, so trust is strengthened rather than eroded.
That is a healthier way to lead a goal. The goal becomes part of culture through frequency and transparency, not through a slide deck.
A faith-driven lens: goals as stewardship, not identity
Christian leaders face a particular temptation around goals. It is easy to attach our sense of worth to outcomes. When that happens, goals become a source of anxiety, control, or image management. Leaders hide setbacks, overpromise, or push teams beyond healthy limits because the goal has become personal.
Healthy goal-setting keeps identity anchored in Christ and treats goals as a form of stewardship. Leaders can pursue excellence without worshiping results. They can set ambitious targets without sacrificing integrity. They can talk about progress transparently because they are not trying to protect an image, they are trying to steward responsibility.
This is why transparency is not just an operational virtue. It is a spiritual discipline. When leaders tell the truth about progress and obstacles, they build trust. They also model humility, dependence, and honesty.
A simple way to implement this in the next 90 days
If you want a practical approach for your leadership team this quarter, start small and do it well.
Choose one to three goals that truly matter. Write them as SMART goals so execution is clear. Then immediately define what FAST will look like. Decide how often the goals will be discussed, what makes them ambitious, what specific leading indicators you will track, and what transparency looks like inside the leadership team and across the organization.
The difference between organizations that execute and organizations that stall is often not intelligence. It is cadence. Healthy teams build a rhythm of discussion, measurement, and honest communication. When the goal is off-track, they adjust. They do not hide. They do not ignore. They learn and move forward.
Closing
SMART helps leaders build clear goals. FAST helps leaders run with them in a way that creates momentum, accountability, and trust. Used together, they create a healthier goal-setting culture, one that is ambitious without being reckless and transparent without being shaming.
For Christian CEOs, this is a tangible way to practice stewardship. It is one way to lead with excellence as an act of worship, to care well for the people entrusted to you, and to pursue meaningful outcomes without losing what matters most along the way.
Sources & References
- Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation. (PDF) (med.stanford.edu)
- Sull, D., & Sull, C. (2018). With Goals, FAST Beats SMART. MIT Sloan Management Review. (shop.sloanreview.mit.edu)
- Doran, G. T. (1981). There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives. (PDF) (eval.fr)
- C12 internal context document:
The SMART and FAST Frameworks (2024).
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