This content was created by Dave Kashen. This content was uploaded by Dave Kashen. This is a YouTube Q&A titled "When Should I Adjust My Team’s Goals If They’re Falling Behind? | Ask Dave Kashen" (posted January 5, 2026). The excerpt is an English conversational exchange between a questioner (Speaker A) and Dave Kashen. Dave advises treating goals as a means to promote motivation and creativity, discusses setting goal difficulty (examples: Google-style two-thirds, high-confidence 95%, or moonshot 50% goals), stresses clarity about the team’s risk/achievement expectations, and emphasizes aligning metrics with the mission (measuring ultimate impact rather than only revenue).
And I guess what would be a really good way to put this question? When should I, when should I adjust my team's goals if they're falling behind? Falling behind?
Yeah. One thing I said to a client once was like, most people think of the goals as the ends unto themselves, but it's useful to think of goals as a means the ends of which are enjoying the pursuit, creativity, motivation, inspiration. And so then the question becomes what goals best serve us? You know, and the other thing is it's really useful to get clear of like how you're relating to the goals. 'Cause like Google, when they set OKRs, at least historically, They said, you know, two-thirds, if we hit two-thirds of our goals, that's, that's a win. So they purposely set like stretch goals knowing that they likely wouldn't hit them all, and that served them. Other teams like to set like, basically it's like, what probability are you playing with, right? So Google was like, two-thirds probability we hit this, and if we hit two-thirds, Great. You know, other teams will set like 95% probability goals because they just, they want more consistency of like achieving their goals and the feeling of that. Like, we, you know, we did what we said we would do. Other teams might be more like Moonshot and they set 50% goals. So the other thing that really matters is being clear with the team what, you know, how do we say it? Like, What risk level are we taking, right? And like, to what degree do we want to set stretch versus kind of realistic goals? And there's not a right answer, but if you, if one person on the team thinks it's, it's, it's like a, you know, 95% probability goal and another one thinks it's a 65%, you know, they're going to have issues in how they respond to whether or not they achieve the goals. Anything else there? I think that's the main— yeah, main point is goals are a means. So the way to think about goals is what goals best serve the team, how much of a stretch, how many, you know, like that. Um, and then obviously it relates back to the whole accounting blame thing. Let me see if anything comes up, anything else comes up. I'd also say like it's, it's, it's important to set goals that you actually want to hit, as silly as that sounds. Like not the ones you think are right or you should set, but like, what do you, what, what game do you want to play? Right? What, again, what goals are most energizing? Um, what, you know, what are meaningful?
Do you have any stories or examples of clients where they went through adjusting their goals or? Or not, or—
I think it was called Angel Points or something like that. They were basically trying to get people inside companies to give their time and money. Um, and it was like a system that made it easy to do that. But like they weren't actually measuring the degree to which, um, I wish I could remember it more precisely. They weren't actually measuring the degree to which people were doing that. They were measuring like, you know, revenue and like stuff like that. But basically whatever the ultimate mission of the company was and like the impact they were trying to have, they weren't actually measuring that. They were measuring revenue and other things, And so, you know, it's like you manage what you measure. And so there were like, it created a lack of a sense of meaning in the company because they weren't actually measuring the ultimate impact they were trying to have. That was the main point, right? So there wasn't a linkage between what they were measuring and what they were, you know, trying to create and their mission basically.
