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What are stretch goals?
Philip Sutton
Director, Policy & Strategy
Green Innovations Inc
195 Wingrove Street
Fairfield VIC 3078
Tel & fax: (03) 9486 4799
26 October 2000
Stretch goals and performance targets are very different things with quite different roles.
If a person, organisation or society wishes to achieve a major change it is helpful to use stretch goals in combination with short-term performance targets.
Short-term performance targets are used to specify the outcomes that can be fairly confidently expected to be achieved in the near term. Such targets are based on known technology and methods and readily accessible skills. They represent outcomes that are realistically achievable.
Short-term performance targets can be expressed as either some increment of change from the status quo or better still an increment of change towards a more ambitious longer-term goal. It is reasonable for people to be held accountable for any failure to achieve short-term performance targets.
Stretch goals however are used, not to drive short-term action, but to inspire longer term innovation processes aimed at making desirable outcomes that are currently impossible achievable at some future time. While it might be hoped to achieve a stretch goal either in large measure or in full within a defined time frame (usually quite some time into the future) the timing of the achievement of the stretch goal cannot be guaranteed - it can only be striven for.
Du Pont has been pursuing a goal of 'zero accidents' for the last 200 years. While it has not yet fully achieved this goal in every factory around the globe it has cut its accident rate to a level that is very substantially under the industry average and it continues to lower its accident rate every year. This is an example of a stretch goal that has been substantially but never (yet) completely achieved. On the other hand getting humans to the moon in 10 years was a stretch goal set for the US by President Kennedy in the 1960s that was achieved in full - even though, at the time the goal was set, it was not yet technically feasible.
The whole purpose of stretch goals is to inspire efforts to go well beyond what is currently feasible and such goals are only achievable if they stimulate and inspire creativity, invention and innovation.
In the environmental arena stretch goals can be couched in negative or positive terms eg. zero waste, zero pollution or 100% renewable energy.
Stretch goals do not have to expressed in such all or nothing terms, but there is a strong argument for pushing a stretch goal as far as possible in a desirable direction because this creates the maximum scope for the application of creativity. The basic formula might be to drive a negative condition to a zero level (eliminate the negative) or to drive a desirable state to a 100% percent achievement level (attain the positive).
With such 'extreme' goals, care needs to be taken that their pursuit does not lead to a single-mindedness that causes other problems to be created in the process. Stretch goals should always be pursued within a "no-major trade-off" policy setting. To ensure this outcome other complimentary policy goals need to be specified to provide the necessary balance. Balance comes in this context not from trade-off but from complementarity.
A comprehensive set of stretch goals aimed at achieving ecological sustainability can be found at:
Business orientated problem solving and opportunity creating tools suitable for a no-compromise approach can be found at:
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