Success Quote by Arnold H. Glasow

Glasow smuggles a management lecture into a locker-room metaphor, and it lands because it flatters the reader with its obviousness while quietly accusing them of fuzzy thinking. “In life, as in football” borrows the credibility of a game whose rules are visible, enforced, and collectively agreed upon. The punch comes with “goalposts”: not just goals, but the physical markers that make a goal legible. In other words, ambition isn’t enough; you need a definition of success that can’t be misread.

The intent is classic mid-century business pragmatism: clarity beats hustle. It’s a line aimed at the energetic but directionless striver, the employee chasing “growth,” the executive demanding “innovation,” the team working hard without a shared target. The subtext is a warning about self-deception: without explicit criteria, you’ll confuse motion for progress and call effort a victory. It also nods to accountability. If you “know where the goalposts are,” you can’t blame the field, the weather, or the referees when you miss.

There’s a sly secondary reading, too, especially in a culture that complains about “moving the goalposts.” Glasow’s phrasing implies that failure often comes from not bothering to locate the standards in the first place, not from a conspiracy to change them. It’s a businessman’s morality tale: negotiate the terms, define the metric, then play. If life feels unfair, start by checking whether you ever agreed on what winning meant.