Do people systematically set goals lower than warranted in order to guarantee success?

Dave Clark · Jul 17, 2023

Setting a stretch goal well beyond what seems realistic produces more net output than setting a realistic target, even accounting for the higher miss rate

A 150-yard goal missed 30-40% of the time still makes you far more likely to exceed 100 yards than a 100-yard goal does

Scope: you must not punish people for missing the big goal; a 50-yard result against a 150-yard goal is a different matter

5:56 20VC: Top Three Lessons from Working with Jeff Bezos for 23 Years at Amazon, How the Best Leader Hire, Fire, Prioritise and Make Decisions & How to Be Responsible for 1M Employees and Be a Rockstar Husband and Father with Dave Clark @ Flexport

Adam Mosseri · Jul 24, 2023

Mark Zuckerberg's insistence on ever-higher goals and his willingness to take risks is very good for the company over the long run, even when it's infuriating.

He fears failing to hit goals all the way down, so he keeps raising the bar; on Threads he was the most convicted about building a separate app when the team wanted to build inside Instagram.

Scope: 'sometimes infuriating'

49:34 20VC: Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri on Threads: The Journey from 0-100M Users; What Worked, What Didn't and the Plans Ahead | Instagram: Biggest Mistakes, Successes, Misconceptions, TikTok Competition & The Future of Social Media; Interest Graph or Friend G

Tony Fadell · May 11, 2022

After a success, a leader must raise the stakes with stretch goals whose risks can be mitigated, rather than letting the team coast

Success invites competition, so you must keep leapfrogging your last version to stay differentiated; but risks must be within reason and believable to the team, not ludicrous 'conquer the world' bets

39:03 Raise stakes with mitigated not reckless stretch goals after a success

Stephane Kurgan · Jul 28, 2023

Teams should set their own goals, with leaders challenging them only when the goals aren't stretching enough

Setting their own goals is what makes teams engaged and leads them to stretch themselves

18:27 Teams should set their own goals with leaders challenging only if not stretching enough

Harry Stebbings · Nov 20, 2023

People systematically set goals lower than they should because they want the goal to be achieved and counted as a success

64:30 People set goals low to guarantee the goal is achieved

Shishir Mehrotra · Sep 25, 2020

Reframing the market you measure yourself against — for YouTube, television's five billion hours a day rather than online video properties — is what makes a goal genuinely aspirational.

Coca-Cola escaped trading 48/52% cola share with Pepsi by reframing the question as what share of all liquid people drink comes from them, which broadened the market; YouTube did the same by benchmarking against TV instead of Facebook and other online properties.

32:59 Reframing the comparison market broadens ambition and makes goals genuinely aspirational