Plentiful research emphasizes the value of setting huge goals, says Deborah Crown, a professor at the University of Alabama's College of Commerce and Business Administration in Tuscaloosa. Research says this is the ideal difficulty level when you want to get people initiating, working harder and squarely directing their efforts at achieving goals. Better still, she adds, you can bet that nearly 90 percent of your workers will come through. The goal itself is motivating. It gets people to give that extra effort and to keep on pushing.
Vague goals are worthless.
But a quantifiable goal isn't enough. A valid stretch goal also needs to have measures that identify progress toward it. Workers are much less likely to slack off when forward motion is continually monitored. But Apollo had feedback mechanisms that allowed it to make rapid course corrections. Stretch your workers, in other words, but don't break them.