Why Your Goals Keep Not Happening …

… and What Actually Needs to Change

The notebook sits open on her desk. Three pages of carefully articulated goals, each one SMART and specific. Increase market share by 15%. Build a high-performing leadership team. Develop strategic partnerships in Southeast Asia. She's written variations of these same goals for the past three years.  

This time, Sara tells herself, will be different. 

But here's what she hasn't written: the quiet recognition that lands somewhere between her third cup of coffee and the moment she closes the notebook. These goals aren't failing because they're poorly constructed. They're failing because achieving them requires becoming someone she hasn't yet learned to be. 

The Gap Between Knowing and Becoming 

Marcus knew exactly what he needed to do. Delegate more. Develop his team. Focus on strategy instead of execution. He'd read the books, taken the courses, understood the principles. The goal he'd written in last year's planning document was clear: Transition from doing the work to leading the work. 

Yet here he was, still doing everything himself. 

He could list all the usual obstacles - not enough time, inadequate systems, a team that wasn't quite ready. But when pressed to imagine having all of those constraints removed, the truth emerged with uncomfortable clarity: "I'd still find a way to jump back in. Because that's who I am. That's how I've always succeeded. I'm the person who gets it done." 

There it was. The real obstacle wasn't time or systems or team capability. It was identity. 

Marcus had built his entire professional self-concept around being the best executor in the room. Every promotion, every success, every piece of positive feedback had reinforced this identity: You are valuable because you deliver results no one else can deliver. His goal required him to stop being that person. And no amount of planning or willpower could bridge that gap until he was willing to undergo the uncomfortable work of identity transformation.  

This is the knowing-being gap. The space between understanding what you should do and becoming who you need to be to actually do it. It's why your goals keep appearing on your list, year after year, despite your best intentions. You know what needs to happen. You just haven't yet become the person who can make it happen. 

Three Identity Shifts That Make Goals Possible

From Executor to Orchestrator 

Sarah's goal had been simple: develop two direct reports to be promotion-ready within the year. Six months in, both were still operating at their current level while Sarah worked until 9 PM most nights.

A typical day revealed the pattern. The Q3 forecast needed fixing, so she rebuilt the model. Her team had questions about the new client presentation, so she rewrote the deck. Finance needed data for the board meeting, so she pulled it together. Her team members spent their days waiting for her to finish so they could move forward. 

The cost of maintaining quality control was obvious: time, energy, late nights. The hidden cost ran deeper - her identity as the person who does things right. Every time she stepped in to fix something, she reinforced the same narrative: My value comes from being the best executor in the room. 

Here's what orchestrators understand that executors don't: your value doesn't come from doing the best work. It comes from creating the conditions where excellent work becomes possible. But that shift requires releasing the identity that got you here - the one that says your worth is measured by your personal output. 

The leader who successfully makes this shift stops asking "How quickly can I do this?" and starts asking "Who on my team could learn from doing this?" They measure their success not by what they accomplished, but by what their team accomplished without them. 

Sarah's breakthrough came three months later when she let her analyst build the forecast model. It wasn't as elegant as hers would have been. But watching him work through the logic, seeing him gain confidence with each iteration - "that felt more valuable than having the perfect model on day one." 

She had stopped being the best executor in the room. She had become an orchestrator. And her goal finally became achievable.

From Functional Expert to Enterprise Leader 

James wasn't getting a seat at the table. As the head of operations for a regional manufacturing company, he was technically qualified, operationally excellent, and strategically invisible. His goal: influence strategic decisions at the executive level. 

In leadership meetings, he talked about what he knew - efficiency metrics, production schedules, quality improvements. The other executives discussed market dynamics, competitive positioning, how capabilities connected to customer needs. James didn't track these things. He was the operations guy. That was his domain. 

And that expertise had made him indispensable - but also limited. To achieve his goal, he needed to stop being the operations expert and become an enterprise leader who happened to have deep operational knowledge. 

The transformation took six months. He started reading market reports. Attending customer meetings. Asking questions in leadership discussions that had nothing to do with operations: What's the competitive response if we do this? How does this position us in the market?  

At first, he felt like an imposter. He wasn't the expert in these domains. But slowly, something shifted. He began to see how operational capabilities could enable strategic moves. His operational expertise became more valuable precisely because he could connect it to enterprise outcomes. 

"I realized I'd been waiting for someone to invite me to think strategically. But no one was going to do that. I had to give myself permission to become an enterprise thinker, even though it meant letting go of being just the operations expert." 

His goal required him to expand his identity from depth to breadth. From being the best in one domain to being valuable across multiple domains. And once he made that shift, the seat at the table wasn't something he had to fight for. It became inevitable.

From Problem Solver to Future Architect 

Chen was exhausted three months into her role as division head. Every day was firefighting. She was constantly solving problems, and there were always more. Her goal: create a three-year strategic vision for her division.  

She'd spent maybe an hour on strategy that week. The rest was all urgent issues. When asked what would happen if she didn't solve those urgent issues, the answer was obvious: things would fall apart. Quality would slip. Clients would complain. 

But if she didn't create that strategic vision? "Things will slowly fall apart anyway," she realized quietly. "Just over three years instead of three days." 

Here's the trap high-performers face: problem-solving is addictive. Every problem solved provides immediate feedback. You feel capable, needed, valuable. Strategic thinking offers none of those dopamine hits. It's uncertain, long-term, and often questioned by people dealing with today's fires. 

But Chen's goal required her to stop being the person who solved every problem and become the person who architected a future where fewer problems existed in the first place. 

The shift began when she blocked off Monday mornings for strategic thinking - no meetings, no email, no exceptions. The first few weeks felt wasteful. Her inbox filled up. Small crises escalated. People complained about her being unavailable. 

Then something changed. Her team started solving problems without her. Not perfectly, but adequately. And she realized she'd been teaching them that every problem needed her solution, which meant they'd never learned to solve problems themselves. 

Six months later, the transformation was clear: "I had to stop being the hero. Being the problem-solver made me feel important. But being the future architect - that's what actually creates value. I just had to become comfortable with the discomfort of not solving every immediate crisis." 

Her strategic vision emerged not because she found more time, but because she became a different kind of leader. One who was willing to let some problems go unsolved in service of creating a better future.

What You Need to Release Before You Can Transform 

Goals fail not because of what you need to add to your life, but because of what you need to release from your identity. 

Jen discovered this the hard way. Her goal was to develop executive presence - to show up in rooms with more confidence, more gravitas, more leadership weight. She read books on body language. Practiced speaking more slowly. Worked with an executive coach on presence. 

Nothing changed. 

The breakthrough came when she confronted an uncomfortable question: what was she protecting by staying small? The answer emerged slowly, painfully. If she showed up bigger, she might fail bigger. Right now, she could tell herself she was capable of more. But if she actually tried and it didn't work, then what? 

She had built her identity around being the person with potential. The one who could do more if circumstances were different. If she actually stepped up and still didn't succeed, she would have to face her actual limits rather than hiding behind imagined ones. 

What Jen needed to release wasn't lack of confidence. It was the safety of unrealized potential. The comfortable identity of being capable-but-not-yet-proven. Her goal required her to risk discovering her actual limits rather than protecting herself with the armor of "I could if I wanted to." 

This is the work that goal-setting rarely acknowledges. Before you can become who your goals need you to be, you have to grieve who you've been. The identities that served you, that made you successful, that feel like core parts of yourself - many of them will need to evolve or even die. 

The question isn't whether you can achieve your goals. It's whether you're willing to become someone different in order to achieve them.

The Real Work of Transformation 

Most goal-setting focuses on the wrong question. We ask: What do I need to do? 

The better question: Who do I need to become? 

Because once you become the right person, the doing becomes almost inevitable. Sarah didn't need a better delegation system - she needed to become someone who measured success by her team's growth, not her own output. James didn't need a strategy for getting a seat at the table - he needed to become an enterprise thinker who brought strategic value. Chen didn't need better time management - she needed to become a future architect who could tolerate short-term chaos in service of long-term vision. 

The goals stayed the same. The identity shifted. And suddenly, what had been impossible for years became achievable in months. 

Here's what that transformation actually looks like in practice:  

• Start by examining your current identity. Not the one you wish you had or the one you pretend to have in meetings. The real one. The one revealed by where you spend your time, what makes you feel valuable, what you're protecting by not changing.

• Then look at your goals. Not what you want to achieve, but who you'd need to be to achieve them. What identity would make these goals natural rather than forced? What would you need to believe about yourself, about leadership, about your value? 

The gap between those two versions of yourself - that's where the real work lives.

 Most people try to bridge that gap through willpower and better planning. They create more detailed action steps. They build accountability systems. They try to force the new behaviors while still clinging to the old identity.

It doesn't work. Or rather, it works temporarily until the old identity reasserts itself and you find yourself back where you started, wondering why your goals failed again.  

The transformation requires something different: conscious identity work. Noticing when your old identity shows up and makes decisions that undermine your goals. Catching yourself in the act of being who you've been rather than who you're becoming. And choosing differently, even when that choice feels uncomfortable or inauthentic. 

Because here's the truth about identity transformation: it always feels inauthentic at first. When Sarah first stepped back and let her team struggle, it felt like she was failing them. When James first spoke up about market strategy, he felt like an imposter. When Chen first let problems go unsolved, she felt irresponsible. 

That discomfort isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. It's a sign you're doing it right. You're supposed to feel inauthentic when you're becoming someone new. The old identity is fighting for survival. And it will use every tool it has - guilt, anxiety, the fear of losing what made you valuable - to keep you exactly where you are.  

The transformation happens when you're willing to sit in that discomfort long enough for the new identity to take root. When you stop trying to feel authentic and start choosing to act like the person your goals need you to be, even when it feels foreign. Eventually, the new identity stops feeling like a costume you're wearing and starts feeling like who you actually are. 

That's when your goals stop being aspirations you hope to achieve and become natural expressions of who you've become.

The Question That Changes Everything 

So here's the uncomfortable question to sit with as you plan your next chapter: 

Are you setting goals that require you to do more of what you already do? Or goals that require you to become someone fundamentally different?

 If it's the former, you might achieve them through sheer effort and discipline. But if it's the latter - if your goals keep appearing on your list year after year despite your best efforts - then the problem isn't your planning. It's that you're trying to achieve transformation without transformation.

 Your goals aren't asking you to do more. They're asking you to become more. And that's a fundamentally different kind of work.

 The leader who finally closes the gap between knowing and being isn't the one with the best action plan. It's the one willing to grieve their old identity and step into an uncertain new one. The one who can tolerate feeling inauthentic while the transformation takes hold. The one who recognizes that goals don't fail because of poor planning - they fail because we're not yet the person who can achieve them. 

The question isn't whether you can do what your goals require. It's whether you're willing to become who your goals require.

 That's the real work. That's what makes goals happen. Not another planning session. Not a better system. Not more willpower.

Just the quiet courage to become someone different than who you are today.

About the Author

Karin Wellbrock is a Partner at Kay Group K.K. Japan, where she works as a Leadership and Team Coach and Organizational Consultant specializing in executive development across Asia. She partners with senior leaders navigating complex transitions—from first-time executives stepping into enterprise leadership to seasoned leaders building political savvy and strategic influence. Karin's coaching philosophy centers on a powerful insight: leadership goals repeatedly fail not because leaders don't know what to do, but because they haven't yet become who they need to be to achieve them. Through her work, she helps leaders bridge this knowing-being gap, showing up with intention and leading effectively across cultures. Based in Japan, Karin brings a globally informed perspective to the universal challenges of leadership transformation. Connect with her: karin.wellbrock@kaygroup-asia.com or ww.kaygroup-asia.com