Are 10x Stretch Goals Right For You?

Google is the most audacious company in the world. Their new projects are often so ahead-of-the-times that it can be hard to differentiate a google press release from a blurb for a sci-fi novel. Google is currently

• Running a study to understand what a healthy person looks like
• Figuring out how to make cars run on salt water
• Launching internet balloons that will bring wifi to every last inch of the world
• Sending out cars that already drive themselves
• And of course, moving us closer than anyone to the Singularity

Maybe you work for a company with goals as big as Google’s, but you probably don’t, and that’s ok. Most of us are working on goals like “Increase employee retention 12%.” Steady, incremental improvements designed to help us get a little bit better or even just keep the lights on another year.

There is nothing inherently wrong with incremental goals, but maybe we can also learn something from being a little more like Google, being a little more audacious.

What is an example of a good stretch goal?

Defining a Stretch Goal and Its Purpose

A stretch goal is a high-impact goal that challenges individuals or teams to achieve something significantly outside their current capabilities. It encourages innovative thinking and reimagining of problems, fostering 10x improvements rather than incremental gains. The main purpose of a stretch goal is to push boundaries and drive substantial transformations within an organization.

Example of a Work-Related Stretch Goal

In a corporate environment, a compelling example of a stretch goal would be aimed at increasing customer retention by 50% within a year. This goal might initially seem daunting, but it inspires creativity and collaborative problem-solving across departments, whether it's enhancing customer service, innovating products, or implementing a robust loyalty program.

Leadership Stretch Goal Examples

For leaders, stretch goals can play a crucial role in setting visionary targets that align with a company's long-term strategy. An example could include entering a new market segment and capturing a 20% share within two years. This stretch goal compels leaders to assess the market landscape critically and devise innovative entry strategies, ensuring the team is united by a common, ambitious objective.

Importance of 10x Thinking in Creating Stretch Goals

The concept of 10x thinking is instrumental in crafting effective stretch goals. This mindset shifts focus from incremental improvements to achieving tenfold progress. In organizations like Google, where innovation is key, this approach encourages teams to think beyond obvious solutions and invent new paths to success. PerformYard supports business professionals in embracing stretch goals, providing the tools needed to track progress and adapt strategies dynamically, ensuring that even the most ambitious goals are within reach.

What is a smart goal for stretching?

Applying the SMART framework to stretch goals can seem challenging given their aspirational nature, but it is indeed possible and beneficial in bringing structure to otherwise ambitious targets. The essence of a stretch goal is to promote significant growth, but melding it with the SMART criteria of being Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based adds clarity and focus.

Characteristics of SMART Goals Applied to Stretch Goals

When creating a SMART stretch goal, specificity is key. For instance, in a sales environment, a regular goal may be to increase sales by 5%. A stretch goal could be aiming for a 50% increase, but it needs to be outlined uniquely and logically to fit the SMART framework. The goal must indicate specific actions, such as "leveraging new digital marketing strategies to drive an additional 50% in sales over the next two quarters".

Differentiation Between Regular and Stretch SMART Goals

The primary differentiation lies in the scope of ambition. A regular SMART goal should be challenging yet comfortably attainable, whereas a stretch SMART goal pushes the boundaries of what's considered possible within a timeframe. Stretch goals should encourage innovative thinking and reassess the question of what’s achievable.

Examples of SMART Stretch Goals in Various Sectors

In the tech industry, a stretch SMART goal could be, "Develop and implement a next-gen AI-featured application to increase user engagement by 200% in one year." This is specific, measurable, and time-bound but emphasizes innovative strategies to make it achievable. Meanwhile, in healthcare, it might be, "Reduce patient waiting times by 75% within the next 18 months by overhauling operational procedures and adopting new queue management technology."

Such goals, whether they be in technology, sales, or healthcare, when aligned with the SMART methodology, provide a clear trajectory for teams to aim toward ambitious outcomes with precision and accountability.

What is the purpose of stretch goals?

Exploration of the Purpose Behind Setting Stretch Goals

In the realm of goal-setting, stretch goals serve a unique purpose by pushing individuals and organizations beyond their current capabilities, inspiring innovation and growth. Unlike regular goals, which aim for incremental progress, stretch goals challenge the status quo and encourage aspirational targets that can fundamentally transform processes, products, or outcomes. Such objectives foster a culture of creativity, driving teams to not just meet, but exceed expectations.

Stretch goals are essential because they promote out-of-the-box thinking and encourage a mindset shift from ‘what is’ to ‘what could be’. By setting ambitious targets, organizations can uncover hidden potentials and motivate employees to extend their skills and performance. This approach is not just about achieving the seemingly impossible, but about the journey and the significant learnings that occur along the way.

Horizontal vs. Vertical Stretch Goals

When implementing stretch goals, it's crucial to understand the distinction between horizontal and vertical stretch goals. Horizontal stretch goals focus on expanding efforts across different areas without necessarily pushing for 10x improvements in one specific feature or metric. Instead, they involve broadening the scope or scale of existing efforts, ensuring that growth is comprehensive and balanced.

In contrast, vertical stretch goals are characterized by aggressive targets that focus on significant enhancement or breakthrough in a particular aspect. These require deep focus and substantial changes in approach and processes to achieve marked improvements, typically by an order of magnitude.

Impact of Stretch Goals in Healthcare and Other Industries

The implementation of stretch goals is particularly evident in sectors like healthcare, where they drive excellence and innovation. For instance, a healthcare organization might set a stretch goal to reduce patient wait times by 50%. This requires a rethinking of scheduling, staffing, and resource management — fostering innovation in both thought and practice. Similarly, in tech industries, setting a stretch goal could mean developing a new product that revolutionizes user experience or functionality.

In these industries, stretch goals can lead to groundbreaking advancements by challenging teams to go above and beyond routine improvements. They catalyze deeper collaboration, improve cross-functional integration, and often result in transformative solutions that secure long-term competitive advantages.

PerformYard offers a robust platform to help organizations implement and track stretch goals effectively. By providing insights and tools necessary for aligning individual efforts with larger organizational aspirations, PerformYard assists your team in unlocking their potential and redefining success. Embrace the challenge of stretch goals with PerformYard as your guide to achieve unprecedented growth and innovation.

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Larry Says No Buffering

Hunter Walk use to work at Google, but these days he invests in startups and writes a great business blog. Hunter recently shared a post about a meeting he once had with Larry Page the founder of Google.

“Larry, this quarter we’re going to aim to reduce buffering events from X to 90% of X through…,” our engineering lead started explaining before Larry looked up from the paper we’d given him.

“You should have zero buffering,” the Google cofounder suggested.

As we detailed why of course that would be impossible because of all the things we can’t control for and the desire to manage our own bandwidth costs, I saw a familiar look settle on Larry’s face. Half-impish (as in “oooh, you really want to go down this rabbit hole with me”) and half-incredulous (as in “Each day I awake with my mind wiped of the fact most people aren’t as smart as I am and then progressively discover during the course of my meetings that you’re all idiots”).

“You should come back with a plan for zero buffering.” End of meeting.

Hunter’s team went back to the drawing board, and something amazing happened. Before, the team had been “tracking occurrences of buffering in the player and browser, trying to categorize the causes (insufficient steady state user bandwidth, connectivity interruption, overworked client CPU, etc) and prioritizing which we could intelligently solve for.” Now with this audacious goal in front of them they were forced to think differently about the problem.

They started by just finding solutions, no matter how impractical they were, for example “A totally private, worldwide high-speed internet with locally cached video and free state-of-the-art PCs for every end user.” They also considered approaching the problem from a different angle, “what if it was more of a design challenge? Imagine a quick transition animation which played when you pressed the Play button that seemed to be a UX affordance but actually allowed us to start caching the video locally so we could tolerate connectivity interruptions in the post-play experience.”

Hunter’s team never achieved the zero buffering goal that Larry had set, but they did radically change their approach and achieve much more aggressive targets then they had originally thought possible, “the nature of the discussion was changed by a simple stretch goal exercise.”

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10x vs 10%

Larry’s insistence on zero buffering is called “10x Thinking.” It is Google’s first of 8 principles for their innovative culture. “To put the idea simply: true innovation happens when you try to improve something by 10 times rather than by 10%.”

It is very easy to try. Take whatever it is you are setting a goal for and instead of multiplying it by 1.10 multiply it by 10. Look at that new audacious, Google-sized goal and ask yourself, “how would we do it?”

The beauty of 10x thinking is that there is no way you will be able to reach your 10x goal by just improving what you’re already doing. The exercise forces you to totally rethink your approach, maybe even rethink the problem.

Hunter Walk says “when I talk with any startup – Google scale or not – my easiest recommendation in brainstorming and goal-setting is to not get caught up in just local optimizations, not to stay exclusively in the land of reasonable, but devote some time to 10x Impact conversations.”

So even if you’re just trying to keep the lights on it might be worth thinking in terms of 10x rather than 10%.