How Aggressive Should You Make Your Strategic Goals?

BLUF/Summary

Create a culture where goals are challenging enough that meeting 70–90% is considered a massive win. If your team is hitting 100% of their targets every quarter, you aren't setting goals; you’re just documenting current capacity.

The Tension of Ambition

Finding the right tension for your strategic goals is one of the hardest parts of leadership.

• The Over-Weighted Keel: Set goals too low, and you breed complacency, leaving growth and innovation on the table.
• The Over-Powered Sail: Set them too high, and you risk a "failure culture" where the crew stops trying because the finish line feels imaginary.

The answer depends on your organization's culture and current growth phase. However, for a fast-growing firm, stability is found in the "Stretch Zone."

The 70–90% Rule

In my experience as an advisor and investor, I’ve seen that the most resilient organizations utilize a model similar to Objectives and Key Results (OKRs):

• Objectives are broken down into measurable Key Results.
• An ideal annual goal should be uncomfortable but grounded in reality.
• Hitting 70–90% of a goal should be celebrated as a significant victory.

This creates a culture of high ambition without the demoralizing sting of constant perceived failure. It forces the organization into Quadrant II activities: preparation, prevention, and system design.

Integrating The Keel Framework

To make these aggressive goals achievable, they cannot exist in isolation. They must be "weighted" by your enterprise operating system:

1. The Keel (Operating System): Use a central planning system to ensure bidirectional traceability—every employee should see how their weekly tasks move the needle on these "70–90%" targets.
2. Destination (Multiscale Planning): Effectively decompose annual strategic planning into milestones and tasks to avoid reaching the end of the year with unfinished goals.
3. Sail & Adjust (Execution): Conduct recurring Strategy Reviews to hold leaders accountable and synchronize progress against quantifiable success criteria.

The Bottom Line

True strategic goals should stretch your resources and force you to rethink your processes. Aim for the "Gold Medal" performance but build a culture that rewards the grit it takes to reach 80%.