When it comes to achieving success, it’s important to set goals for yourself. Having goals can help you stay focused and motivated, allowing you to reach your full potential. But what happens when you’ve achieved your goals and you’re looking for the next challenge? That’s where stretch goals can help. Stretch goals are goals that are ambitious, requiring you to step out of your comfort zone in order to achieve them. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the importance of setting stretch goals and share tips on how to set them properly. You’ll discover why setting stretch goals can help you become more successful and how you can use them to reach your dream goals. So, let’s get started and explore why stretch goals are so important and how you can make the most of them.
How to Set Effective Goals – SMART and Stretch Goals
Benefits of stretch goals
Stretch goals can aid a business in fostering creativity and enhancing performance. Here are some benefits of making these kinds of goals:
What are stretch goals?
Stretch goals are targets that motivate a business to finish a difficult task. They are ambitious in that they may “stretch” or increase a company’s current capabilities, and they demand an extraordinary amount of work and dedication from a team. Even though some stretch goals are unattainable, their purpose is to inspire staff to aim for the highest levels of success. Reaching a stretch goal can help a team go above and beyond their initial objectives and expand their business. Stretch goals can also encourage enthusiasm, motivation, productivity and innovation.
In some cases, a stretch goal is an optional additional objective a business can work toward if they surpass their initial goal. When a group of people raises the desired amount of money through crowdfunding, they frequently ask for additional donations to support a particular goal. For instance, if a group of people raises $10,000 for hurricane relief, they can set a new stretch goal of $1,500 to help even more needy families with food. Multiple stretch goals may be included in a successful campaign’s fundraising process.
7 Tips for creating stretch goals
Stretch goals can help a business to enhance its performance. Here are seven tips for considering and creating stretch goals:
1. Determine if stretch goals are right for your team
It’s crucial to consider whether the stretch goal process is appropriate given your team’s capabilities and preferences before starting. While some people prefer to work toward seemingly impossible goals, others prefer to focus on more modest, achievable objectives. To learn about the preferences and methods your team prefers to stay motivated, think about holding a group discussion with them. Research into how other teams have used the stretch goal technique and how well it has worked for them is another option.
Try a different strategy if your team is already having trouble finishing their tasks, like proximal goals, as opposed to setting stretch goals. Proximal goals are modest, doable objectives that can raise team morale and collaboration. Stretch goals can be more difficult and time-consuming than proximal goals because they place more emphasis on rapid progress. Select a goal-setting strategy that makes sense for your business and puts your staff in a position to succeed.
2. Choose the right moment
Timing can be important when creating stretch goals. When a team is building momentum and has finished a string of worthwhile projects, that is one of the best times to set a stretch goal. Employees may find it ideal to focus their efforts on overcoming a challenge at this time because they likely feel energized and confident.
3. Be realistic
The team leader must be realistic when setting stretch goals, despite the fact that their purpose is to be ambitious. For a team project, you should first create a reasonable goal. Then, you can create a stretch goal based on that. If the stretch goal is only slightly more difficult than usual rather than an impossibly difficult task, workers may perform better. To assess the skills of your team and establish achievable goals, it may be beneficial to take into account previous project outcomes.
Making sure a team can complete a project may be your duty as the team leader. Checking your available resources, including the number of staff members who can serve on a project team, will help you with this. Make sure your company has the time, money, talent, and resources necessary to reach a stretch goal, or is at least very close to having them. It’s crucial to be adaptable and modify a stretch goal as you gather more knowledge throughout a project.
4. Support your team members
It’s crucial to support your team members and make sure they feel competent and capable of performing their duties if you want to create a stretch goal that works. A stretch goal that is too unattainable could put additional pressure on workers, which would cause stress and attrition. However, you can support employees’ mental and physical health by ensuring they are up for a challenge before setting a stretch goal.
Make sure they work a regular schedule so they can get enough rest and sleep to effectively complete their tasks. Additionally, you can use rewards and positive reinforcement to encourage them to complete daily little tasks. Rewarding small tasks can help staff members stay motivated and feel successful. This will then inspire them to bravely take on new challenges.
5. Consider your organizations goals
To ensure that your stretch goal adds value to your business, align it with the organizational and strategic goals of your organization. Understanding that the goal of their work toward a goal is to fulfill a company’s mission can also help employees stay motivated. A stretch goal should be specific, but it should also aid a company in achieving a more substantial goal.
6. Make SMART goals and track your progress
Think about using the SMART process when formulating your stretch goals. This acronym stands for the following concepts:
Following the SMART process can assist in turning your stretch goal into a series of actions or a plan of action to turn an abstract idea into reality. It can also assist in breaking down a stretch goal’s difficulty into manageable chunks.
7. Visualize the outcome
Stretch goals can be challenging, so it’s helpful to picture the success to inspire a team. One way to accomplish this is by building a massive calendar that displays the progress a team has made toward a goal in a shared workspace or on a digital platform. This can assist a team in thinking through how and when they intend to accomplish a stretch goal.
Examples of stretch goals
Stretch goals can be excellent tools for personal growth even though they are frequently used by businesses. Here are some examples of stretch goals:
Example 1
Because of how well-known Jenny’s bagel shop is, she’s thinking about opening a second location in a nearby city. She wants to encourage her team and herself to open one now even though she is aware that she could probably open one in the future. She decides to hold the grand opening of her new restaurant in two years as a stretch goal. To keep track of the progress she and her group of managers are making toward the objective, she makes a calendar and hangs it on the office wall.
Example 2
A nonprofit that supports homeless youth by providing them with shelter is seeking funding to construct a new foster care facility. The project manager determines that they will create a stretch goal in order to boost team morale because they need to raise a significant sum of money quickly. In the following year, they set a stretch goal of submitting 100 grant applications and carrying out 50 fundraising campaigns. The project manager believes that given the size and reputation of their organization, this goal is doable with the available resources.
FAQ
What is a good stretch goal?
Stretch goals should concentrate on creating unique and innovative solutions to difficult problems, rather than necessarily requiring more work. They should motivate groups to experiment and think creatively outside the box.
What does stretch targets mean?
The definition of a stretch target in English is a demanding standard of performance that a worker must meet in order to be considered to be performing their duties satisfactorily. Stretch targets should establish the threshold at which a worker’s performance is considered to be “poor.”
How do you calculate stretch goal?
Although they are requested by all sales managers, few salespeople truly understand them. Simply put, a “stretch goal” is a goal that is set higher than what is anticipated to be achieved. Any metric or key performance indicator can be used with it.
