I am a proud but long-suffering Chicago Cubs baseball fan. The special relationship between Cubs fans and the "Lovable Losers" of the "Friendly Confines" of Wrigley Field is well documented. After all, we haven't won the World Series since 1908! In other words, there is no one alive today who has ever witnessed the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series major league baseball championship. There is hope - the Cubs this year have led their Division for the entire baseball season, and many baseball pundits are predicting that this may be the year that they finally return to the World Series (they actually haven't even made it to the World Series since 1945) and (fingers crossed) maybe even win it all! The Cubs started the year on a tear and looked unbeatable. Just before the mid-season All-Star break, they looked anything but like a team of destiny. Since the All-Star break, however, they have been back to their winning ways.
The team this year is loaded with talent - perhaps none more so than third baseman Kris Bryant. Number 17 could be the first player in major league baseball history to win the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award after winning the college player of the year, minor league player of the year, and rookie of the year. Bryant leads the Cubs in all three of the so-called Triple Crown categories (batting average, home runs, and runs batted in) and ranks 16th in batting average, 1st in home runs, and 3rd in runs batted in in the National League MVP standings as of today (August 27, 2016). Last night, Bryant hit his 34th home run of the year in the 8th inning to bring the Cubs within 1 run of the Los Angeles Dodgers and his 35th home run of the year to give the Cubs the lead in the 10th inning. The Cubs held on to eventually win the game.
In post-game interviews, a reporter from ESPN asked Bryan whether he was already surpassing the goals that he had set for himself before the start of the season or whether his goals were even higher than what he was already achieving! Bryant reported, "I'm not going to say. I look at them every day. I think that if you write them down, you're more likely to achieve them." The ESPN reporter kept on the theme of goal-setting and asked Bryant if he set goals that were attainable or if his goals were, "in essence, unachievable, raising the bar so high that he has to keep reaching for them." Bryant responded, "You have to put them that way" (referring to the latter and not the former), "It's what keeps me going and determined." In other words, Kris Bryant uses so-called "stretch goals" (also referred to as "aspirational goals" or as the management guru and author of "Good to Great" Jim Collins calls them, "Big Hairy Audacious Goals" or "BHAGs").
The question is, are "stretch goals" the right way to go or not? Management experts, particularly in the area of goal-setting, disagree somewhat on this point. On the one side are the experts who argue that setting unachievable, aspirational, stretch goals can paradoxically lead to less intrinsic motivation and ultimately to failure. On the other side, some experts argue that setting stretch goals leads to a greater degree of intrinsic motivation and success (even if the "aspirational goal" is not achieved, performance will be so close to the goal that the individual and/or organization ultimately benefits).
I keep promising to review the literature on this topic in greater detail in future posts. I guess in my own mind, I am not completely sure which is the right approach to take (I even recently wrote an editorial on this subject) in the journal, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. For now, I will simply say that arguably one of the best players on my beloved Chicago Cubs uses "stretch goals", and at least so far, they appear to be working out very well for him! Perhaps there is something to "stretch goals" after all.
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