Building a more connected, accountable future
Why we’re building elephants
We started Elephants because we believe in the power of goals, and the power of friendships.
We believe that setting and pursuing goals is valuable in every part of your life. Goals act as a forcing function to consider what is important, and when adopted broadly promote a more balanced lifestyle; from fitness and leisure goals, through to relationship, financial and professional goals.
When people share goals with their friends, they are much more likely to achieve them. When groups of friends set goals together, they can hone ideas and improve outcomes by raising the bar of expectations. In the process, they are also building a common understanding about what their friends value, which helps when they’re called on to assist navigating and overcoming life’s greatest challenges.
By opting in to set goals, Elephants improves the parts of your life that really matter, with the help and support of your closest friends.
The history of goal setting
In May of 1968, Edwin Locke, a psychologist and Professor of Business Administration at The University of Maryland published a groundbreaking journal article, titled ‘Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives’. In it, he outlined two key findings: setting goals improves performance in the workplace, and ambitious goals improve performance more than easier goals do. Locke’s theory quickly became the most widely adopted and well understood theory of human motivation and as a result, it changed the way we work forever.
Locke’s goal setting theory would go on to undergird a golden age of capitalism that lasts until this day: ambitious targets, harder work, more hours at the office. But the sun is rapidly setting on that way of living. Today, as a result of a mass shift in where and how we work, humanity is feeling overworked and isolated. Having reached the tipping point, people are re-assessing how they spend their time, and what they focus their mind on. In short, we’re re-assessing what is important to us, and taking a more holistic approach to building an enriched and fulfilling life.
At the beginning of this new age, we believe there is an opportunity to learn from our earlier successes in the workplace, and that goal setting theory (which served us so well in a work context) has the capacity to transform other parts of our lives as well. In fact, we are so convinced by this notion that we have started a company to accelerate the advent of what we are sure will be a new golden age in which people can live a balanced, successful, supported and fulfilling life.
The power of friendships
Friendships have been crucial to our survival since Humans first stood upright (and probably before then as well). Through communication and trust building, we were able to build cooperative partnerships that were imperative to finding food, avoiding danger and meeting potential mates.
Times have certainly changed since our hunter-gatherer beginnings, but friendships are no less important, with a growing body of research now suggesting that friends can have a dramatic impact on our health and can even help us live longer. However, through the power of the internet and the seemingly endless number of social platforms, we are saturated with an information deluge from our friends that has changed the very nature of how we get along.
Because of the ease of connection and the vast number of options available, no one wants to add more noise to their lives, let alone pay for the privilege. But that is the very reason the right kind of connection with friends can be valuable.
Precisely curated updates from your most important friends means less noise, not more. What’s more, by attributing a dollar value to this interaction, it adds weight to the conversation, which better aligns with the intrinsic value of important updates from friends.
A new type of connection
In the year 2000, when Co-Founder Harri Thomas was in middle school, he set his first real goal; to buy a second hand Honda motorbike to ride on his family farm. One year later, Harri had his first set of wheels. Since graduating College, the distance between Harri and his closest group of friends — both geographically and metaphorically — began to increase. Feeling a little adrift, Harri began sharing his goals as a way to connect with friends.
In 2010, when Co-Founder Vito Margiotta was working in Big Tech, he began applying what he had been learning about goal setting in the workplace to other areas of his life. So effective has Vito’s goal setting process been that a review of his goal library shows that he’s used them to achieve everything from launching new businesses in emerging markets, right the way through to even learning how to juggle. Inspired by these successes, Vito began sharing his personal goal setting method with friends.
In 2020, the Co-Founders of Elephants were introduced to an article by Nick Crocker. In the article, Crocker beautifully summarizes the thrust of what Vito and Harri had each been trying to achieve independently for years. Finally, someone had put a name on the thing they were doing.
Our mission
In an era in which there is substantial polarization, ambiguity and external pressures, Elephants feels like a necessary innovation and a natural counterbalance to the pace of modern life, which so rarely makes time for self reflection and intentionality.
At the core of Elephants mission is the belief that by providing tools people need to set goals and share them with friends, we can help you live a more fulfilling, more successful and more supported life.
Almost five decades ago Edwin Lock radically changed the way we work. We believe other parts of our life are ready for a reinvention as well.
Elephants (www.elephants.group) is a private place where small groups of close friends share goals, chat freely and celebrate achievements.
Follow us on Twitter (@Elephants_Group) & Facebook
