About Stéfan

That is how I remember meeting Stéfan.

When we first met, he was pleading for his wife to issue him a “hall pass” to join in on a heli-ski trip. Stef was pulling out all the stops: “A once in a lifetime opportunity,” he emphasized. Who could deny a spouse that opportunity? I laughed at his boldness.

This is Stéfan’s fourth book about goal setting. He calls Gobi BOLD a “playbook” that we can all use in emerging from a crisis. It is timely as we struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the many ways the lessons of these past months will change our economic future, our lives and our outlooks. Yes, we all need a playbook!

I wish I had it three years ago as I wallowed through the muddiness of a break-up. At the time, The Second Mountain by David Brooks was my reference point and is a worthy companion to this playbook. Where Stef offers a disciplined program, Brooks demands that our goals be lofty and worthy of our humanity.

I eventually found solid footing and applied these lessons in my work and home life. Stef will ask anyone he meets, “What’s your Gobi?” I think what he’s really asking is “What stands in the way of you doing what you’re on earth to do?”

Stef made the cat skiing trip because he had “a once in a lifetime” goal and he would stop at nothing to reach it. Lots of people talk about goals but fewer people are relentless about achieving them. This book offers a simple model — simple, but hard: set a goal, pledge to achieve it, make a plan and stick to it.

As the CEO of Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation (CMHC), I anchored a note to my colleagues about our transformation with the following quote from George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world:
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Stef made the cat skiing trip because he had “a once in a lifetime” goal and he would stop at nothing to reach it. Lots of people talk about goals but fewer people are relentless about achieving them. This book offers a simple model — simple, but hard: set a goal, pledge to achieve it, make a plan and stick to it.

As the CEO of Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation (CMHC), I anchored a note to my colleagues about our transformation with the following quote from George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman:

Stéfan is unreasonable. And so am I. Neither of us will be told “it can’t be done” without adding the word “Yet!” Carol Dweck calls this a “growth mentality” and it echoes a wonderful poem from my childhood. As you read this book, and later when someone advances all of the many reasons why you won’t reach your lofty goals, remember Edgar Guest’s poem, “It Couldn’t Be Done.” It ends with the following verse:

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing,
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

Set a goal. Pledge to achieve it. Make a plan and stick to it. Carpe diem!

– Evan Siddall, CEO of Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation