How do Stretch Goals make you feel or act? Stretch goals are those that are well beyond your normal goals and will take miracles, amazing innovation, superior thinking and creativity and novel solutions. And likely do not get extra funding or people resources
Very motivated and willing to go above and beyond19%
Curious, I will try to accomplish once my normal goals and work are completed63%
Put upon - the goals are already hard and these stretch goals are crazy without more resources14%
Demotivated The stretch goal clearly show’s leaders have no idea how under staffed and overwhelmed we are already5%
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Stretch goals each and every time, but it is a single mechanism inside of a carefully constructed reward and incentive system. John F. Kennedy's "moonshot" is a well-known example of setting stretch goals. But the US government also dedicated about of 3% of its GDP to the effort. So there was commitment and focus.
A stretch goal is the only way to make significant progress in my opinion, as long as all other things are equal. Set 1% improvement as a target by year end, and at best you get 1% improvement. Set a 200% improvement by year end and at worst you get 10% improvement.
But again, it is part of a system.
Set a stretch goal, but break it down into realistic steps.
Fund the steps
Monitor progress and regularly report it.
Perform continuous improvement analysis to make sure that in short time frames one is making progress to step goals.
Don't punish failure to not reach the "moon shot"; reward success in large steps toward it.
Develop and invest in action plans to achieve breakthrough performance.
Continuously focus on top actions and indicators (linked to continuous improvement methods)
Encourage fluid thinking, critical analysis, innovation and "out of the box"
Challenge the whys and whynots according to first principles.