Introduction

Challenge is an opportunity for growth. It’s a chance to move beyond where you currently are, but it won’t be easy. There are lots of examples in personal life: fitness, eating, reading, career, etc. Personal challenges come when we seek greater fulfillment and satisfaction than we currently have. Similarly, organizations can challenge themselves and work together towards new growth.

Start Where You are Now

The opposite of a challenge is status quo, it’s continuing the way you are today without significant change. We might also refer to this as business as usual. Even starting to use OKRs here can be useful, with an intention for future growth. One option is to start determining where you might want growth. Perform an assessment of where you could do better. Establish a baseline.

Here are a few ideas to establish a baseline:

Look at existing measurements. Perhaps you already have some KPIs. See if any of those provide insights into a place to improve.
Collect data where it’s missing. Perhaps you can add analytics to an existing product or service to measure some aspect of it.
Ask your customers and stakeholders. What do they say about the service or product you offer? Where are they satisfied and dissatisfied? What contributes to their assessment? You can use this information to identify aspects that could be improved.

It’s hard to know what’s challenging and achievable without a sense for where you are now. Another option is to take an existing initiative or project and create OKRs to express the benefits you hope it will deliver. Here you are starting to build some accountability and awareness of your goals and ability to achieve them. If you’ve ever had a coached workout, particularly with a personal trainer, they often want to see how you do things on your own to assess where you are first. The same applies here.

Roofshots

As you shift your focus to getting better, building confidence and momentum are key. You want to start to build a habit of setting and accomplishing goals. Roofshots are commonly defined as committed goals. 100% of the goal is considered success. Committed goals are typically, but not exclusively, smaller goals that can be achieved in a shorter period of time. The longer the period of time the greater the risk and uncertainty. OKRs that are set for a quarter or less, such as every two weeks, are good candidates for roofshot goals. Working towards these smaller goals has the added benefit of letting you know if you’re on track towards larger, longer term goals. If you don’t have longer term goals, you can still get started with incremental improvements in key areas.

As you achieve those, celebrate the wins. When you don’t, celebrate the learning and make adjustments. Just because roofshots are smaller doesn’t mean they should be easy. Consider these small stretches. Roofshots are perfect to build the goal setting muscles you need for significant growth. You can make lots of progress, and build confidence, with a large number of roofshots.

Moonshots

Moonshots are aspirational. You may or may not be able to achieve them. Regardless, you will have to stretch beyond your current capabilities to have any chance of success. Because they are aspirational, they also may take longer. Consider these more aggressive goals for annual or strategic OKRs. When combined with roofshots for shorter durations, you gain insights that help you make adjustments to accomplish these more aggressive, challenging goals.

Moonshots are often referred to as another term for stretch goals. Most suggest that 60-70% of the goal may be considered successful. Used too often they can be demotivational since 100% of the goal is frequently not achieved. They can also start to dilute the challenge as people stop taking the stated goal seriously and adjust to the 70% expectation.

Achievement

Setting meaningful, challenging goals and achieving them with regularity is no small feat. It requires focus, alignment, collaboration, and skill. If you’re missing your goals, ask yourself are the goals too hard (i.e. too many moonshots) or is there something else going on. What’s the impact on the people in your organization in either scenario? What do they need to be successful? How would you respond in either scenario? What can be very valuable about OKRs is how you learn and improve while trying to achieve them.

Create opportunities to learn about how to set better goals and how best to achieve them. Don’t settle for the status quo when you can grow your capabilities to a higher level.

Summary

Challenging goals are important for real growth, as a business, as an organization, and as individuals working together. Moonshot goals represent the most challenging goals, and tend to be aspirational. For organizations that are already used to setting and achieving goals, moonshots may already be familiar. If not, you’re probably ready to start using them. For those not used to goal setting, aside from completing assigned work or projects, start with a baseline so you get some perspective on where you are. Be opportunistic by setting goals for work you’ve already committed to do. You will gain some valuable practice. Set regular roofshot goals on a quarterly, or more frequent cadence. Celebrate the successes along the way and every once in a while reflect on exactly how far you’ve come. Mix in moonshots to stretch your ability, you might be surprised by what you’re able to achieve.