Find Big Wins by Setting Exponential Goals

Teresa Torres argues that teams who set incremental goals get incremental results, and that big wins require exponential goals. She recommends focusing on a single metric chosen for its impact on the business, understanding its historical trend, and forecasting the impact of a realistic activity plan. She then brainstorms 'pie-in-the-sky' activities that could multiply the metric, and sets a goal built from a committed subset of those bets plus everyday work. The approach matters because it turns goal-setting into a plan-backed, aggressive but credible commitment rather than a guess.

01Key takeaways

• Set exponential goals, since incremental goals reliably produce only incremental results.
• Choose one metric and direct essentially all effort toward moving it.
• Study the metric's historical trend and natural fluctuations before forecasting any target.
• Write down assumptions behind each impact estimate so you can learn where your intuition fails.
• Brainstorm new activities that could multiply the metric, and drop any that only look incremental.
• Set the goal from a committed plan: aggressive and a little scary, but not impossible.

02Key sections

Focus on One Metric

Pick one metric whose multiplication would meaningfully improve the product, so that all effort concentrates on moving it. The metric may change over time, but focus is the point.

Choose the Right Metric

List current metrics, ask why each matters, and identify the one with the biggest impact over the next few months. A test is whether focusing on it would change what you stop and start doing.

Get a Trend Over Time

Study the metric's history, including fluctuations and how past actions affected it, before forecasting. Today's value alone says little about what is achievable.

Predict the Impact of Activities

Estimate the impact of your normal activity plan, make assumptions explicit, and compare them to outcomes to improve forecasting. This usually yields only incremental gains.

Pie-in-the-sky Activities and Goal Setting

Brainstorm radically new activities aimed at doubling or 10x-ing the metric, discard incremental ideas, then commit to a subset and discount their estimates by confidence to set a goal between the conservative and aggressive bounds.

03From the post

“I've spent a lot of January working with folks on goal-setting. Setting the right goal can be hard. Whether it's picking the right metric or determining the target, there are plenty of places where goal-setting can go wrong. The biggest mistake I see is, people set”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.