What executive hasn’t dreamed of transforming an organization by
achieving seemingly impossible goals through sheer force of will?
Indeed, in countless business narratives, the practice of setting such
objectives has been celebrated as a key source of achievement. But in
practice, stretch goals rarely work out, the authors’ research shows.
Consider Yahoo. When Marissa Mayer took the helm of the ailing internet
giant, in 2012, she announced a number of wildly ambitious targets,
including the exceptionally difficult objective of achieving
double-digit annual growth. Five years later, she’d fallen far short on
them all, and Yahoo was still struggling. The problem is that
organizations that would most benefit from stretch goals—those with
recent wins and slack resources— seldom employ them. But businesses in
trouble often adopt them in a desperate attempt to turn things
around—and they nearly always fail. This is the stretch goal paradox. In
this article the authors explain how to determine whether stretch goals
are right for your organization and, if they are not, what alternative
strategies you can pursue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]