Picture a typical office step challenge. There’s a leaderboard on the wall. By day three, the same two marathon runners are miles ahead. By the end of week one, most people have quietly stopped looking. By week two, a few have stopped walking. The challenge that was meant to get everyone moving has mostly made a handful of people feel brilliant and everyone else feel a bit rubbish.
That’s the problem we wanted to fix with Strideora. We’re a team of three, Neil and his daughters J and F, and we wanted an app that the whole family could enjoy, not just the keenest walker. So we didn’t build a leaderboard. We built a team goal.
What’s wrong with a leaderboard?
Leaderboards aren’t evil. If you’re already fit and love a bit of competition, they can be fun. But for a mixed group of friends, family or colleagues, they have some built-in snags.
They reward the people who need the least encouragement. Whoever already walks the most will nearly always win. The person who’d benefit most from a nudge is usually the one at the bottom.
They turn friends into rivals. It’s hard to cheer someone on when they’ve just knocked you down a place.
They punish real life. Long shifts, small kids, a dodgy hip, a desk job: none of that shows up on a leaderboard, but all of it shows up in a step count.
They put everyone’s numbers on show. Not everyone wants their daily steps displayed to the whole group, and that’s fair enough.
How a team goal works instead
In Strideora, everyone sets their own private daily step goal. Something that fits their body, their week and their life.
Then the group score is simple: it’s the share of member-days where people hit their own goal. A “member-day” is just one person on one day.
Here’s a made-up example. Say there are five people in your group and you look at a week. That’s 35 member-days. If people hit their own goals on 28 of them, your group score for the week is 80%.
Notice what’s missing. Nobody’s step count goes into that sum. The friend who aims for a gentle walk and hits it counts exactly the same as the friend who aims high and hits it. Everyone counts equally.
Why that changes how people behave
When the group wins together, a few nice things happen.
Everyone matters. You don’t need to be the biggest walker to be the hero of the week. Just hitting your own goal moves the group forward.
Cheering makes sense. If your mate hits their goal, it helps you too. The group gets a notification when someone hits their goal, or strings together a streak of days in a row, so the activity feed fills up with cheers rather than envy. Nobody ever sees anyone’s step count, so there’s nothing to compare.
Nobody gets left behind. There’s no bottom of the table to sink to. If you miss a day, you’re not last; you’re just back on it tomorrow.
Goals stay honest. Because your goal is private and nobody’s comparing numbers, there’s no pressure to set something silly to look good. You can pick what’s genuinely right for you.
“But I like a bit of competition!”
Fair. A little challenge can be great fun. That’s why Strideora has monthly league challenges, with a new peak to climb each month. The challenge is the group against the mountain, not you against your mates. You still get the “can we do this?” buzz, and a celebration at the end of the month, without anyone feeling like the loser.
Who team goals work best for
Team goals shine whenever a group is a real mix:
- Friends with very different fitness levels.
- Families where grandparents, parents and teenagers all want in.
- Workplaces where some people sit all day and others are on their feet.
- Clubs and community groups where the point is being together.
If that sounds like your people, a leaderboard probably isn’t what you need. A shared goal probably is.
The short version
Leaderboards ask “who walked the most?” Team goals ask “did we all show up for ourselves?” We think the second question is kinder, fairer, and much more likely to keep a whole group walking.
Be first to try it
Strideora isn’t in the app stores just yet, but it’s nearly ready. If you’d like to try a team goal with your own group, add your name to the waitlist on our coming soon page and we’ll let you know when it launches. Members join free, and organisers get their first month free.
