Setting your first Goal · Clearahead docs

Your Goal is the direction everything else hangs from. It should be clear enough that anyone in the company could repeat it, and bold enough that it would materially change the business if you achieved it.

Start the session

Use the Define our Goal button in the launcher. This only appears when you do not already have an active Goal.

Start by telling AJ what future you want the company to commit to and why it matters now. You do not need to arrive with perfect wording. AJ will help you tighten the sentence once the direction is clear.

What makes a good Clearahead Goal

A Clearahead Goal is not a SMART template with a metric bolted on. It is a bold direction the company can organise around.

A strong Goal usually has three qualities:

It is ambitious. Reaching it would materially change the company.
It is easy to repeat. Anyone in the company could say it back in roughly the same words.
It is directional. It tells people where you are going, not just what number to hit next.

You can include a number or date if that is genuinely part of how you think about it. AJ will not force one if it is missing. The important thing is that the sentence describes a direction worth committing to.

See The model for how the Goal, Constraints and Moves connect.

AJ’s ambition check

Before AJ helps confirm the wording, AJ will test the ambition behind it.

The question is simple: would achieving this materially change the company, or is it reachable just by doing the same work a little better?

AJ will challenge Goals that read as incremental, for example:

a flat percentage increase
“a bit more than last year”
holding steady with a slightly improved result
a precise SMART target that is still modest in substance

That challenge happens even if you arrive with a fully written goal already. AJ checks the ambition first, then the wording.

If you want to keep a modest Goal

AJ will push once if the direction looks too conservative. If you still want to keep it, AJ will respect that choice and move on.

You may still hear one short note that Clearahead Goals usually work best as a clear direction rather than a rigid target. After that, AJ will not keep relitigating it.

What happens next

When you land on the wording, AJ does not change the model directly. AJ stages a Proposal showing what would change and why. Nothing becomes real until someone accepts that Proposal in the same AJ Conversation.

Ask AJ

“Help me define our Goal from scratch.”

“This is the goal I came in with. Is it ambitious enough?”

“Can you challenge this goal if it sounds incremental?”

Read next: Working with Constraints