Page 189 - Retaining Top Employees

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The Role of the Manager, Part 2 177

Now, her manager brings up the concept of a stretch goal,
something further out there. How does this sales star react? She
thinks, “Oh, did we get it wrong the first time? So this is the new
target now?”
Top performers don’t need stretch goals to motivate them to
hit a higher target. To them, targets are targets. A stretch goal is
just a new target—and a statement that the first target was
wrong.
Does this mean that stretch targets have no value with top
performers? Absolutely not. The difference is in how they are
used. For most employees, stretch goals are a quantitative
stretch—usually “Do more of the same or do it faster.” For top
employees, stretch goals should be a qualitative stretch—“I
want you to do this better, more efficiently.”
You’ll recall our example from the last chapter:
Juanita, after setting Joe’s sales target with him, has chal-
lenged Joe to obtain 15% of his sales from new accounts in
the pharmaceuticals industry. She also asks Joe to pioneer
a new online data-sharing system she’s thinking of imple-
menting for all of her employees, by recording and sharing
all his sales data on the corporate intranet. This will involve
Joe in mastering new skills and in working with the
intranet, something he’s not wholly comfortable with. For
Joe, the sales target is his goal, the pharmaceutical ele-
ment is a challenge, and the intranet is a stretch.
In the preceding chapter, we discussed the need to chal-
lenge top employees. The difference between a challenge and a
stretch is one of comfort. A top employee will usually relish a
challenge (if not actually need one), while a stretch should
make the top employee uncomfortable.
Setting a challenge is management. Selling a stretch goal is
leadership!
Decision Making
The second area in which top employees appreciate strong
leadership is in making tough decisions. These employees are
effectiveness personified: they know how to reach their goals