Feeling Stuck with Your OKR Stretch Goals? Here’s How to Push Through

Frustrated by the challenge of training your team to set ambitious objectives?

You’re not alone. Many organisations struggle to understand and fully utilise OKR stretch goals to drive innovation and progress. You might wonder: how can you push boundaries and inspire your teams to aim higher?

The truth is, companies that succeed with OKR stretch goals do more than just set big targets; they pair them with a strong framework for execution. Whether you’re a startup or a scaling enterprise, learning how to set and pursue these goals effectively can change the game.

In this blog, we’ll break down what OKR stretch goals are, why they matter, and how you can write and execute them to drive real business results.

What are OKR stretch goals?

OKR stretch goals are ambitious objectives designed to push your team beyond current capabilities. They’re not meant to be easily attainable in fact, most organizations view 70% completion of OKR stretch goals as success.

These stretch goals serve as innovation triggers. They inspire bold thinking, risk-taking, and smarter ways of working. Tech giants like Intel pioneered the idea of using OKR stretch goals to achieve major breakthroughs

Why even create stretch goals?

Your KPIs or standard OKRs might be doing the job but are they pushing you to grow? Most likely, they’re based on past performance and comfort zones.

That’s where OKR stretch goals make the difference. They challenge teams to move past business-as-usual and into transformational thinking. Gartner research even supports that stretch goals tend to yield better outcomes than safe, easily achievable ones.

Setting OKR stretch goals boosts morale, sparks innovation, and increases adaptability especially in fast-paced industries.

Types of OKR stretch goals you should know

There’s no one-size-fits-all formula, but OKR stretch goals typically fall into two categories:

1. Incremental Stretch Goals
   These are slightly more ambitious than your regular goals. They push your team to outperform their usual targets without being completely out of reach.
   Example: Your sales team usually targets a 10% revenue increase. With OKR stretch goals, you set a 15% target instead.

2. Moonshots or BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals)
   These are the boldest form of OKR stretch goals. They often seem impossible at first, but they unlock groundbreaking innovation.
   Example: A tech company sets a stretch goal to develop a product that will redefine an entire market segment.

Organizations often rely on goal management tool to plan, monitor, and track these OKR stretch goals effectively.

How do you write OKR stretch goals?

If you want to integrate OKR stretch goals into your strategy, here’s how to make them meaningful and aligned:

1. Define what “stretch” means for your business

Ask these questions to shape your OKR stretch goals:

• What’s the most ambitious outcome you can imagine? 
• How can you fast-track progress toward it? 
• What changes will make a tangible impact? 

Using OKR stretch goals for objectives like ARR growth, market expansion, or breakthrough product adoption—when aligned with best OKR practices—gives your teams something exciting to chase.

2. Train your teams on stretch goal thinking

Don’t assume people naturally know how to set OKR stretch goals. Train them. Show them how these goals tie back to business impact and personal growth.

Host OKR workshops, share examples, and encourage autonomy. Let teams brainstorm and own their stretch goals it drives stronger commitment.

3. Align team OKRs with business-level OKR stretch goals

Here’s a quick example for a customer success team:

Objective: Improve customer onboarding experience (OKR stretch goal)

• KR1: Raise onboarding CSAT from 80% to 90% 
• KR2: Cut onboarding time from 7 days to 3 
• KR3: Increase new customer adoption rate by 20% 

When OKR stretch goals are clearly defined, the customer success team knows exactly what’s expected and why it matters.

4. Stay flexible and review your stretch goals regularly

OKR stretch goals aren’t set-and-forget. Teams need space to learn, iterate, and course-correct. Regular check-ins, feedback loops, and agile adjustments will help keep the stretch realistic without being discouraging.

Highlight how other companies have used OKR stretch goals to make leaps in performance, and share internal success stories too.

How ambitious should you make your OKRs?

That’s the golden question. Your OKR stretch goals should challenge you but not be so unrealistic they lead to burnout. The sweet spot? Ambitious enough to inspire, realistic enough to achieve with hard work.

Overreaching with your OKR stretch goals can hurt morale. But playing it too safe won’t push your teams to reach their full potential.

A checklist to see whether your OKRs are stretched

You should follow some rules to create meaningful stretch goals. Otherwise, your teams would make easier goals for themselves, for example, setting the bar too high, making them realistically unachievable.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself after setting your OKR stretch goals and align those goals with these aspects.

1. Ambitious targets: Are your Key Results challenging enough to push your team beyond their usual performance metrics?
2. Focus on less: Are you focusing on 3 or less ambitious OKRs to avoid diluting the team’s efforts?
3. Achievability: Are your Key Results realistic but require considerable effort and innovation to accomplish?
4. Time-bound: Are your Key Results set within a reasonable and specific timeframe, typically aligned with quarterly OKR cycles?
5. Alignment with Objectives: Do your Key Results directly contribute to achieving the overarching Objectives of your organization or team?
6. Risk consideration: Have you assessed the risks of pursuing these ambitious OKRs, balancing the potential rewards with potential challenges?
7. Feedback loop: Are you regularly reviewing and adjusting your OKRs based on feedback and changing circumstances to ensure they remain appropriately stretched?
8. Organizational support: Does your organization provide the necessary resources, support, and encouragement to pursue these stretched OKRs effectively?

Committed and stretch OKRs and their differences

Committed OKRs represent the goals that an individual or team is confident they can achieve with reasonable effort and resources. These goals are typically aligned with the organization’s overall strategy and are considered achievable within the given time frame. 

In contrast, stretch OKRs are more ambitious targets that go beyond what is easily achievable and require significant effort and innovation to accomplish.

Why grade your OKRs?

Scoring OKRs allows for self-reflection on achievements and potential improvements for the future. Lower scores mean you need to reevaluate your performance and OKRs, while higher scores offer concrete evidence of success and motivation.

Methods to grade your OKRs

You can use two commonly used methods called the Decimal and Binary methods.

Consider a team-level OKR to understand these methods effectively.

Objective: Increase customer satisfaction

Key Result 1: Achieve a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 9 or higher

Key Result 2: Resolve customer inquiries within 24 hours on average

Don’t forget to add qualitative evaluation to your OKR scoring. For example, you may not achieve the KR1 of NPS 9 or above.

Still, you get some beneficial user feedback that the product team implemented, which consequently increases product adoption among your current B2B clients.

So, you may give yourself a 0.7 instead of the 0.5 that you quantitatively achieved.

What are stretch goals in scrum?

By setting stretch goals, the software development team is encouraged to go beyond their comfort zone and strive for higher levels of productivity and innovation.

Stretch goals aim to deliver more value in a particular sprint. By challenging the team to reach further, stretch goals help enhance the product significantly within a shorter time frame, leading to increased user satisfaction and broader positive feedback from users.

Ordinary OKRs for a 4-week sprint

Objective: Improve product features and functionality

• KR1: Implement 2 new features based on user requests
• KR2: Reduce the average response time for user inquiries by 20%
• KR3: Conduct usability testing with at least 5 users

While they aim to improve the product, they may not necessarily push the team beyond their current capabilities.

Stretched or Aspirational OKRs for the same team in a 4-week sprint

Objective: Elevate user satisfaction and value

• KR1: Implement 4 new features based on user feedback with one innovative feature addressing a longstanding user pain point
• KR2: Decrease the average response time for user inquiries by 30%, achieving industry-leading customer support standards
• KR3: Conduct usability testing with at least 10 users with a comprehensive understanding of user needs and preferences

In this stretched OKR, the objective still focuses on the value for the users. However, the KRs are more ambitious, challenging the team to deliver more value to users within the sprint timeline.

The team is pushed to achieve greater levels of performance and innovation, ultimately leading to enhanced user satisfaction and product success.

A case study of a company succeeding with OKR stretch goals

This success story about a company using OKR stretch goals will give you confidence in the OKR framework and tell you how stretch goals can motivate a team to perform better than usual. We picked this story from whatmatters.com

Background of Allbirds

Allbirds, a sustainable footwear company founded in 2016, set out with a mission to create comfortable and eco-friendly shoes. Known for their innovative use of materials, especially merino wool, the company quickly gained popularity for its commitment to sustainability and comfort. 

Goals and challenges

As Allbirds grew, they faced the challenge of maintaining their eco-friendly practices while expanding their product line and market reach.

Allbirds aimed to become a global leader in sustainable fashion while addressing challenges such as scaling production sustainably, entering new international markets, and continually innovating their product offerings.

How did they work to succeed?

To achieve these ambitious objectives, they embraced using OKRs, focusing on stretch goals to push their boundaries. With the help of robust OKR software, they were able to align teams and track progress seamlessly.

Allbirds set a stretch goal to establish a significant presence in the European market within a year. This involved overcoming regulatory challenges, understanding local consumer preferences, and adapting their supply chain for international scalability.

The stretch goal fostered a mindset of adaptability and innovation, resulting in successful market entry and a growing customer base in Europe.

To maintain their commitment to sustainability, Allbirds set a stretch goal of developing a new line of shoes using even more eco-friendly materials.

This pushed their design and research teams to explore cutting-edge sustainable materials, contributing to a new product line and positioning Allbirds as an industry leader in sustainable fashion.

Conclusion

Setting stretch goals carefully is the key. You must realize that you must understand your current performance and situation and then create incremental goals that push you to grow and achieve more than usual.

In working toward your OKR stretch goals, you need the support of your colleagues and leaders. You typically cannot do it alone and must stay in sync with your team members using a robust strategic goal-setting and execution framework like the OKRs.

You can even read about the best practices for creating OKR stretch goals and use OKR templates as inspiration and guide for your teams.