Yesterday, July 20th, 2019, marked the 50th anniversary of human beings setting foot on the lunar surface for the first time.

If you are even remotely a nerd like me, the last couple of weeks have been filled with countless news stories, podcasts, interviews, videos, Google doodles, and even projections on the Washington Monument reminiscing about what is one of the greatest human achievements of all time. 

But without question, it is unlikely to have happened the way it did without first being launched (pun intended) with what I claim is the most famous SMART goal in human history:

On May 25th, 1961, President Kennedy gave the charge, and about 8 years and 2 months later, the goal was accomplished. 

Let’s go over that again:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

I’m guessing you have never thought about that as a SMART goal before, so consider the following:

Did they know WHAT was to be completed?

Yes – landing a man on the moon AND returning him safely to the Earth were the metrics for success. 

Did they know WHEN it needed to be completed?

Yes – by December 31st, 1969. 

Did they know HOW they would complete it?

Pretty much – JFK laid out very clearly in this speech that it would be the most audacious undertaking the United States had ever attempted. It would require more money and human capital than anything else in human history. They of course discovered some things they didn’t know along the way, but from the start they were aware of all the major steps they would need to take in order to reach their goal.

Did they know their motivation?

You betcha – a cold war with the Soviet Union sure got our butts in gear. 

Quick side note: Credit must be given where credit is due. While the United States may have won this war, the Soviets won virtually every battle along the way. They put the first satellite, animal, and human into space. They put the first human into orbit around the Earth and completed the first space walk. They also put the first black person and woman into space – something the United States wouldn’t do for another 20 years. Just sayin’. 

I absolutely adore this goal. The 31 words spoken in 1961 show that a goal, even a SMART goal, can be elegant, simple, and powerful, all at once. In fact, one could argue that the more simple it is, the more power it has.

So there you have it. A simple blog post about a simple goal. 

Well…the words were simple anyway. I’m guessing the over 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo program would call their work anything but simple.

So on that note, I encourage you to make your goals simultaneously as simple and audacious as possible…if each of us did that, who knows what we could accomplish?