Trust Your Cape, Part 3: Know What Your Cape is Made of

I have a theory about big goals… we need them.

The audacious ones. The ones that make us sit back for a moment and think, Can I really do that?

Jim Collins and Jerry Porras famously called these Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs). The idea is that organizations can benefit from having a compelling vision that stretches beyond incremental improvement.

I think the same can be true for our lives and careers.

But there’s a catch. A big goal doesn’t become achievable simply because we want it badly enough.

This is where I come back to The Cape by Guy Clark. The cape represents possibility. But trusting your cape doesn’t mean believing you can fly without understanding how gravity works.

It means knowing yourself well enough to take a meaningful leap… Know your resources. Know your people. Know your capabilities. Know your capacity.

That last one really matters. We can be capable of something and still not have the capacity to do it right now. Capacity changes with seasons of life, competing priorities, energy, responsibilities, and the demands already on our plate.

Strategic ambition lives somewhere between “I can’t” and “I can do anything.” It sounds more like,

“I may not know exactly how to get there yet, but I know enough about myself, my resources, and what I need to learn to figure out whether I can.”

That’s where a BHAG becomes useful…

Not as a dare. Not as a test of your worth. But as an invitation to grow.

So before you decide whether your goal is too big, take a breath… and take a closer look.

Maybe you need a different tool. Maybe you need different people around you. Maybe you need a better plan. Maybe you need to build some capacity first.

Or… maybe you’re ready.

Know your cape. Know your limits. Know your possibilities. And then decide how far you’re willing to fly.