Most goal-setting produces activity metrics dressed as objectives.
Planning documents typically describe what a team will do, not where a business is going. The difference between a to-do list and a goals document is not format — it is whether achieving the goals would leave the business meaningfully different. This course makes that distinction precise, and gives you a framework for setting goals that actually drive results.
What you'll take away from this course:
A familiar pattern: green ticks at the end of the quarter, the business barely moved. The team was busy. The goals were met. Nothing changed. The problem is not effort — it is what the goals were measuring. Activity dressed as progress produces exactly this result, every time.
This course gives you the framework to set goals that describe where a business is going, not what a team will be doing.
FAST Foundations gives you…
The task-or-outcome test
A simple, precise test for every goal in a planning document: if this were completed and nothing changed in the world, was it a goal? The test surfaces how much of most plans is activity dressed as progress — and gives you a clear starting point for rewriting them.
FAST Foundations gives you…
Stage-appropriate goals
The right goals for a Launch-stage business are different from the right goals for a Scale-stage one. This course shows what appropriate ambition looks like at each FAST stage — and what happens when the wrong goal set is applied to the wrong stage.
FAST Foundations gives you…
A working FAST Action Plan
The FAST AP is the document a business runs on — Objectives and Key Results across all four pillars, cascaded from business level to team level. You will leave with a first draft of the most critical sections, ready to review and update each quarter.
Goals that measure progress, not activity.
A planning document that lists what the team will do is a to-do list. A goals document describes where the business is going — and gives the team a way to know, honestly, whether they are getting there.
The first is what most planning processes produce. This course builds the second.
The FAST goal-setting framework covers three things that standard planning approaches miss: the distinction between objectives and key results, the stage-appropriateness of goals (an Innovate-stage business and a Scale-stage business need fundamentally different goal sets), and the cascade from business-level direction to team-level clarity. Without all three, a planning process produces confidence without foundation — a team that knows what it is doing but not whether what it is doing is working.
You'll learn:
Objectives are not metrics
Key results that cannot be gamed
One objective or five?
The cascade
Who should attend:
Founders, COOs, and operational leaders who run regular planning reviews and suspect the goals they are reviewing are measuring the wrong things — activity, completion, and effort rather than genuine progress toward a business that is meaningfully different.
HR directors and L&D professionals who are supporting leadership teams through planning cycles — who want a framework for coaching leaders toward goals that are honest, specific, and connected to the business’s actual stage of development.
Coaches and consultants who work with clients on goal-setting and OKRs — who want a FAST-aligned approach that connects objectives and key results to the FAST Matrix, the FAST AP, and the stage model, rather than treating goal-setting as a standalone exercise.
Ready to start?
This course is free. Start now and leave with a goal-setting framework, a first-draft FAST Action Plan, and a clear test for every goal in the next planning cycle.
Invite a friend.
Know a leader or team who works hard every quarter and wonders why the business isn’t moving faster? Share this course — it names exactly what is happening, and shows what to do about it.