business plan strategic goals

• Strategy & planning

How to set strategic goals (with 73 examples you can steal)

Georgina Guthrie

March 23, 2022

As a project manager, setting strategic goals for your team is an absolute must. By establishing objectives, you can ensure everyone (including yourself) is productive and moving in the right direction. It also means you can track progress and make real-time adjustments — which is incredibly difficult to do without clear metrics . In fact, without measurable goals, it’s near impossible to determine whether initiatives are working or not.

But what should these goals be?

What are strategic goals?

A strategic goal is a broad, long-term objective that a company strives to achieve. It can be something as general as becoming the top player in your industry or as specific as increasing market share by 20%.

There are different types of strategic goals (which we’ll explore in a little more detail later on), and each goal will involve metrics — the  criteria you’ll use to measure progress.

Why are performance metrics important?

Metrics are important because they provide concrete evidence of whether a goal is being achieved. Without metrics, it can be difficult to determine whether things are working and how well. Metrics also help to identify areas of improvement and allow for targeted action.

Here are some common strategic goals metrics:

• Revenue growth :  this metric measures how much revenue the company generates over some time. You can break it down by product, market, or other factors.
• Gross margin : this measures how much profit the company earns on each dollar of revenue. Gross margins are useful for tracking product profitability or comparing performance against competitors.
• Customer churn : churn refers to how many customers leave the company over a given period. It can identify areas of improvement and indicate which aspects of a service or product are driving away customers.
• Employee turnover : the opposite of retention, turnover measures how many employees leave the company over a given period. A high turnover rate often indicates that the company needs to improve its employee retention strategy or benefits package.
• Social media followers : this metric measures how many people follow your company on various social media platforms. Follower numbers help you determine the strength of the company’s brand awareness or engagement levels.
• Website visits : this metric shows how many people visit your company website over time. You can use this data to track the company’s online visibility or marketing efforts.
• Product launch success : this metric measures the success of a product release. You can use factors such as sales, customer feedback, and market share to understand product launch success clearly.

Strategic goals vs. strategic management: what’s the difference?

While both strategic goals and strategic management are important, they’re not the same thing.

• Strategic goals are the objectives a company aims to achieve.
• Strategic management is the process of setting and accomplishing those goals.

Think of strategic goals as the long-term outcome you envision — the things you want to achieve in three to five years. To achieve your goals, you need a well-defined process for developing and monitoring them. That’s where strategic management comes in.

Strategic goals vs. OKRs: what’s the difference?

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are a popular framework for setting strategic goals. But there are some key differences between OKRs and strategic goals.

Firstly, OKRs are typically shorter-term compared to strategic goals. Secondly, OKRs are more specific and quantitative, while strategic goals are broader and qualitative. Thirdly, OKRs are often used in performance-driven organizations, while strategic goals can be used in any organization.

Strategic goals vs. KPIs: what’s the difference?

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are a popular framework for measuring performance. Here’s where they differ from strategic goals.

KPIs are usually more narrow in scope than strategic goals. And while KPIs are highly specific and quantitative, strategic goals are more broad and qualitative. Also, KPIs are best suited for measuring operational performance , while strategic goals are better for measuring business performance overall.

Strategic goals vs. business goals:

There are some key similarities between strategic goals and business goals. Both are important for driving organizational success and must be measurable and achievable to offer the most value. But here’s where they differ:

• Strategic goals focus on long-term growth or performance, while business goals are more immediate targets you must hit to achieve bigger objectives.
• Business goals tend to be specific and quantitative, while strategic goals have a broader and more aspirational focus.
• Strategic goals encourage you to take a comprehensive approach to achieve organizational success. Business goals are more modular and focus on improving performance in individual business units or departments.

Which framework is right for your company?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The right goal-setting framework depends on your company’s size, culture, and industry. If unsure which model is right, speak with a business advisor or consultant for guidance. They can help you understand which operational factors impact your organization and choose a framework to drive progress.

How to set strategic goals

Now that we’ve covered some differences between strategic goals and other popular frameworks, let’s take a closer look at how to set effective strategic goals.

1. Start with the big picture

Start by thinking about the overall vision and mission of your company. What are you trying to achieve? Where do you want to be in three to five years? Once you have a general idea of where you want to go, you can start thinking about specific goals to help you get there.

2. Make them SMART

All goals should be SMART : that’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Your goals must be specific enough to be quantified and measured, achievable (not too easy or too difficult), and relevant to the company’s overall vision and mission. They should also have a specific timeframe for completion.

3. Communicate your goals to all employees

Make sure to communicate your goals to all employees, not just management. Employees need to understand what the company’s trying to accomplish and their role in achieving those objectives.

4. Hold everyone accountable

Holding employees accountable for meeting their goals is important to success. Use a system of rewards and penalties to motivate employees to stay on track.

5. Evaluate progress, and make changes as needed

Regularly evaluating progress is essential for managing the pace and success of your goals. If necessary, make changes based on what you learn from one milestone to the next.

Now, let’s get to some real-world examples.

73 strategic goal examples

We’ve split this list by goal type to make it easier to follow. Please note: the examples do not reflect Nulab’s goals; they’re here for educational purposes.

Strategic goals for finance

1) Increase revenue by 20% in the next three years 2) Reduce costs by 15% in the next 12 months 3) Invest in new technology that will improve our overall efficiency 4) Increase our market share by 5% in the next two years 5) Create a new product that will generate $1 million in revenue in the next 12 months 6) Diversify our revenue streams into two new markets 7) Become financially sustainable by 2023 8) Grow shareholder value by 20% in the next two years 9) Reduce marketing costs by 10% over the next year

Strategic goals for marketing

10) Increase website traffic by 25% in the next three months 11) Generate 1,000 leads through our website in the next six months 12) Double our social media following in the next six months 13) Increase customer satisfaction by five points in the next year 14) Increase brand awareness by 25% in the next year 15) Launch a new marketing campaign that generates a 10% ROI 16) Reach 10,000 people through our email list in the next six months 17) Secure two major partnerships in the next 12 months 18) Attend three industry tradeshows in the next year

Strategic goals for R&D

19) Develop a new product that will be in the market in 12 months 20) Patent our new technology by the end of the year 21) Increase our R&D budget by 15% in the next year 22) Hire two new senior scientists in the next six months 23) Double our current market share in the next three years 24) Develop a product that is fives times more efficient than our current products 25) Reduce the time to market for new products by 50% in the next year 26) Increase our customer base by 20% in the next year 27) Collaborate with two other companies in the next year

Strategic goals for employee productivity

28) Increase average billable hours per employee by 20% in the next three months 29) Streamline our billing process so that it takes employees less time to bill clients 30) Reduce customer support inquiries by 20% in the next month 31) Improve team productivity by 10% in the next three months 32) Implement a new CRM system that will make it easier for employees to find customer information 33) Create a training program for new employees that will shorten the learning curve 34) Hire two new customer service representatives in the next month 35) Allow employees to work from home one day a week 36) Give employees a 5% raise in the next three months

Strategic goals for innovation

37) Develop a new product that will be in the market in 12 months 38) Patent our new technology by the end of the year 39) Increase our R&D budget by 15% in the next year 40) Hire two new senior product designers in the next six months 41) Double our current market share in the next three years 42) Develop a product that is five times more efficient than our current products 43) Reduce the time to market for new products by 50% in the next year 44) Increase our customer base by 20% in the next year 45) Collaborate with two other companies in the next year

Customer-focused strategic goals

46) Increase customer satisfaction by five points in the next year 47) Decrease website bounce rate by 25% in the next three months 48) Generate 1,000 customer product reviews in the next six months 49) Secure a rating of 75% five-star reviews on Tripadvisor by the end of the quarter 50) Reduce refund time by one week by the end of next quarter 51) Host two focus groups in December to get feedback about the new product 52) Reduce customer call time wait by an average of three minutes in the next two months 53) Secure two major influencer partnerships in the next 12 months 54) Increase newsletter subscriptions by 20% by the end of 2022

Strategic goals for internal improvement

55) Increase average billable hours per employee by 20% in the next three months 56) Develop and implement new company core values by December 2023 57) Reduce staff turnover by 25% in the next six months 58) Increase employee satisfaction by 10% in the next six months 59) Implement a new training program for new employees 60) Give employees a raise of 5% in the next three months 61) Hire two new customer service representatives in the next month 62) Allow employees to work from home one day a week 63) Reduce the time it takes to process invoices by 50% in the next month 64) Implement new software that will improve team communication

Strategic goals to promote growth

65) Secure a new office space that is twice the size of our current one 66) Implement a new sales strategy that generates a 20% increase in sales in the next six months 67) Increase our customer base by 20% in the next year 68) Double our market share in the next three years 69) Collaborate with two other companies in the next year 70) Launch a new marketing campaign that generates a 10% ROI 71) Reach 10,000 people through our email list in the next six months 72) Secure two major partnerships in the next 12 months 73) Invest in a new advertising campaign

Final thoughts

Developing effective strategic goals is essential for any business, regardless of size or industry. By setting measurable, achievable objectives, you can ensure your company is moving fully ahead in the right direction and achieving its long-term goals.

As your organization or team grows and changes, choose tools that make collaborating and tracking your goal metrics as convenient as possible. By doing so, you’ll be able to work together as a team toward the success you and your business deserve.

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Strategic Planning: How to Write a Strategic Plan That Works

Learn the essential steps to writing a strategic plan that delivers real results and aligns with your business objectives. Contact us for more information!

Strategic planning is essential for any organization aiming to achieve its long-term goals and sustain growth. ClearPoint Strategy offers a powerful platform that streamlines the strategic planning process, making it easier for your organization to develop, implement, and monitor your strategic initiatives.

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“Why isn’t my strategy working?”

Statistics around the failure rates of corporate strategies vary—some put it as high as 9 out of 10 while others say nearly 7 out of 10.

It doesn’t matter which number is right; both estimates are higher than they should be. That means the majority of organizations are floundering when it comes to crafting and executing their strategy. Many executives, when faced with these stats, are wondering, “How do I avoid coming up short in my strategy?”

But don’t worry—these abysmal statistics don’t mean you’re doomed to failure. You can be in the small percentage of businesses that actually achieve the goals in their strategic plans, and we’re here to tell you how. (You’re already a step ahead of your competitors simply by taking the time to research the problem!)

Over the years, we’ve helped hundreds of clients beat the odds using the steps outlined in the guide below. It covers everything you need to know about strategy planning and execution, from beginning to end, in each of the three critical phases:

• Preparing for strategic planning
• Creating your strategic plan
• Putting your strategic plan into practice

Based on our experience, we know that following this three-phase approach will significantly increase your odds of getting high-quality results. ‍

So let’s get started.

What is Strategic Planning and Why is It Important?

Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its direction and long-term goals, creating specific plans to achieve them, implementing those plans , and evaluating the results. On one hand, that definition makes strategy planning sound like a Business 101 concept—define your goals and a plan to achieve them. Unfortunately, the strategic planning process isn’t as straightforward as it seems, especially for large companies.

Some experts say there’s a simple explanation behind the dismal statistics mentioned above: companies are failing to strategize at all. They may talk a good game and be able to explain an innovative new mission, but they cannot articulate the processes and business models that will make it happen.

As a result, nothing about their way of doing business—including their priorities, projects, or culture—changes. Months or years later, strategic leaders are left wondering why the company never achieved what was intended.

This absence of a strategic plan demonstrates why having one is so important.

The strategic planning process is about looking forward, outside the immediate future for your organization, to reach a particular set of goals. But as noted in the definition above, it also involves laying out—step-by-step—how you’re going to get there. Without this foundation in place, you’ll either continue on a path to nowhere, or get caught up in a tornado of urgent activities that may not actually benefit your organization in the long term. Neither of these scenarios will give you the competitive edge you hoped for.

Why Strategic Planning Fails

There are also plenty of organizations that do take steps to fulfill the requirements of strategic planning, yet still fail to see results. These strategies fail for many reasons, including:

• Lack of communication : This is a big one. Research shows that 95% of most companies’ employees don’t understand their organization’s strategy, and 85% of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy.
• Poor research around customer trends, organizational threats, and market opportunities : Companies tend to spend more time on internal issues (resolving conflicts and reconciling budgets) than they do analyzing important external information.
• Lack of management support : Organizations neglect to rally support for middle managers, who are key to making sure strategy is executed on a daily basis.
• Ineffective or inefficient performance evaluations : Organizations dedicate all their time to coming up with a plan, but either forget to follow through by tracking progress or have no organized, reliable way to track performance data.
• Lack of clear priorities : Organizations try to do too much at once and/or fail to identify the right activities that will help them achieve their strategy.
• Insufficient resources : Companies don’t acquire new resources, or shift existing resources, to support identified priorities.
• Disjointed departmental goals and activities : There’s no alignment of departmental goals with organizational strategy. Without everyone working together, goals become more difficult to reach.

Whatever is preventing you from meeting your strategic goals—whether it’s the absence of a strategic plan altogether or an imperfect plan execution—it’s worth your time to address the issue.

Analysis has shown that strategic planning has a positive and significant impact on organizational performance. Most importantly, it enhances an organization’s ability to achieve its goals, but there’s more to it than that. Because strategic planning forces companies to adopt a long-term view, it helps them better prepare for the future, setting them up to initiate influence instead of just responding to situations.

It also strengthens communication between employers and employees. The participation and dialogue that takes place among managers and employees throughout the strategic planning process improves transparency and engagement on everyone’s part.

However, the same team that conducted the above analysis also noted that, for strategic planning to work, it requires some specific ingredients, including formal analysis of the internal and external environment, consideration of several strategic options, and careful consideration around whom to involve during the different steps of the strategic planning process. We’ll go through all these ingredients—and more—in the strategic planning guide that follows.

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1. preparing for strategic planning, - gather your team, set up meetings, and create a timeline, get the right people involved.

Let’s get one thing straight right now: If your organization has turned to you (or your department, a colleague, etc.) and requested that you “make a strategic plan and then report back to the leadership team when you’re done”—stop right where you are. That’s not an effective plan. Why? You need to have buy-in across your organization, and so you need leadership involvement from the beginning.

Now let’s talk about the major player needed for this process: The strategic planner. The strategic planner’s job is to align thoughts from the leadership team with a process the organization can use to execute on their strategy. If this is your role (or even if you’re just highly involved in the process), this guide will be immensely helpful as you navigate the coordination of the strategy.

The strategic planner will also need the help of a cross-functional team that involves members of the board or leadership, along with representatives from finance, human resources, operations, sales, and any other critical functions. We’ll discuss this further when we talk through the Office of Strategy Management.

Set up your strategy review meetings

This is also a good time to think about your strategy review meetings, which are a necessity for staying on track over the long haul. However, try to avoid adding yet another meeting onto everyone’s plates; instead, there may be a current meeting you can replace or redesign to make time for strategy discussion.

For now, decide how often you’ll meet and who should be involved. As for timing, there are three types of strategy review meetings:

• Monthly , where you review progress on projects and initiatives
• Quarterly , where you review progress on strategy and discuss key action items
• Annually , where you review year-to-date performance and adjust the strategy as needed

For each of these, you’ll want to send out calendar invites in advance and make sure people know these meetings are a top priority.

Monthly meetings typically include department heads and subject matter experts. Quarterly review meetings may include department heads and upper management. Annual refresh meetings may include upper levels of management and occasionally board members.

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Create a reasonable timeline.

Next, you need to work out a timeline in which you can complete your strategic plan and move through the process. Reasonable is the key word here, as that depends on your organization’s maturity level with regard to strategic planning.

• If you refresh your strategic plan every year, you might be able to work through this process in 4-5 weeks .
• If you’ve never done strategic planning before, 6 months could be more realistic.

Whatever the case, don’t expect this to be done by the end of the week. You’ll be disappointed.

It’s important to understand strategy vs. tactics . Strategy is focused on the destination and how you are going to get there, and tactics are focused on the specific actions you plan to take along the way.

So while this whole process is focused on your overall strategy (i.e. your long-term goals and how you’ll achieve them), we’ll be placing a lot of emphasis on the smaller steps (i.e. practices, resources, initiatives) you’ll take to get there. Make sure your leadership team knows the difference between strategy and tactics going forward!

Sometimes it is smart to keep leadership out of the tactics, but other times, you might need a strong hand to guide the organization through some details.

- Gather the inputs to your Strategic Plan

Get appropriate background information for your strategic plan.

Now it’s time to dig into your internal and external information.

• Internal inputs : Do you know if one branch of your business is growing faster than another? If so, does this mean you’ll focus more energy on the faster growing area, or shift to help the underperforming areas? These are key questions you’ll have to assess. ‍
• External inputs : You may find that parts of your business have shifted, or outside factors are playing a role in where your business is headed. For example, in the late 1990s, the music industry evolved from albums to streaming, impacting many businesses who were associated with the industry. Or if you’re in the manufacturing industry and do a great deal of business overseas, political unrest or a trade dispute between your country and the foreign one you operate in could impact your strategy.

Once you’ve gathered up the quantitative data from the sources above, you’ll also want to get feedback from a number of different sources:

• Discuss the above findings with your leadership team and managers to see what their thoughts are about the future of the business.
• Talk with board members, customers, and industry experts to see what they think your organization is doing well and what needs improvement. These suggestions could deal with anything from operations to company culture.

Combined, all of this data will help you get a better grasp on the future of the business.

‍ Don’t reinvent the wheel—use our assortment of strategic planning templates to get your strategy up and running more easily. See our most popular templates here.

‍ A SWOT Analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This exercise offers a helpful way to think about and organize your internal and external data.

• What are your organization’s strong points?
• What are your organization’s weak points?
• Where are your biggest opportunities in the future?
• What are the largest threats to your business?

Sometimes it is helpful to use the SWOT analysis framework to organize your interview questions for your qualitative data gathering.

‍ Porter’s Five Forces is another tool used to find these inputs. It’s a time-honored strategy execution framework built around the competition in your industry. Who are your rivals? What are they doing? You then need to look at the threat of substitutes. Is there another product consumers could purchase instead of your industry’s product, for example, substituting natural gas or solar for coal when it comes to electricity generation?

Now that you’ve prepared for your strategy...

• You have a team of people who can help you with the strategic planning process.
• You have the raw material for strategy evaluation, including internal and external data.
• You can organize your raw data into a SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, or another strategy planning framework as you begin to create your strategic plan.

Pro tip You may have researched risk assessments, core competencies, scenario planning, or industry scans as part of your strategic planning. If you’re wondering where these tools fit, they’re all relevant to this first stage of strategic planning. They help you prepare to create the strategic plan. If you have worked through one of these tools before, the results can act as inputs to help you in the next stage.

2. Creating your strategic plan

You now have all the background information necessary to create your strategic plan! But this plan doesn’t live in a vacuum—so we’ll start by revisiting your mission and vision statements and then get into the nuts and bolts of the planning process.

- Confirm your mission and vision statements.

Mission & vision.

If you haven’t created formal mission and vision statements, this is the time to do so.

• Your mission statement describes what your company does and how it is different from other organizations in your competitive space
• Your vision statement describes a future state of what your organization wants to achieve over time.

Where the mission is timeless, your vision is time-bound and more tangible.

‍ Two tools that will help build your mission and vision statements:

• OAS statement : OAS stands for Objective, Advantage, Scope. Talking through these concepts as they apply to your organization will help formulate a vision that is tangible and interactive. Note that while this exercise may be helpful to you, it is optional. You can read more about creating your OAS statement here .
• Strategic shifts: A second tool some people find helpful is called Strategic Shifts. These are exercises for the leadership team to help them define today’s strategic priorities vs. tomorrow’s . For example, your leadership team may say, “We want to shift from central control to autonomy when it comes to our decision-making capability.” If the whole team can get on the same page with these shifts, it can help tremendously once you define your objectives, measures, and projects.

If you’ve already created mission and vision statements, confirm that both are aligned with your current strategy before proceeding to the next step.

During your search for strategic planning tools, you’ve almost certainly come across a Strategy Pyramid (shown below). This pyramid can be visualized in countless different ways, the order of the pyramid isn’t what’s important. The importance lies in ensuring you’ve chosen the elements in the pyramid that work best for your organization, and making sure those components are going to help you achieve strategic success.

- Build out your five-year plan

Develop the framework that will hold your high-level priorities.

You can use your OAS or Strategic Shift exercises to help you define your priorities and objectives—but more importantly, you need a way to manage these elements. The way to do that is by selecting and developing a strategy management framework that will bring all your priorities together in one cohesive format.

Using a framework such as Balanced Scorecard (BSC), Theory of Change (TOC), or Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is critical to your strategic success. Many management teams fail at this point simply because of their disorganization!

Note: Choose only one of these three frameworks, as they have numerous similarities!

The Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard , developed by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, has been one of the world’s top strategy management frameworks since its introduction in the early 1990s. Those who use the BSC do so to bring their strategy to life, communicate it across their organization , and track their strategy progress and performance.

‍ The BSC divides up your objectives by perspectives—financial, customer, process, and people—and themes, like innovation, customer management, operational excellence, etc. (The idea of perspectives is fully developed in Norton and Kaplan’s book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action .) Here’s an example:

• Financial goals —“What financial goals do we have that will impact our organization?”
• Customer goals —“What things are important to our customers, which will in turn impact our financial standing?”
• Process goals —“What do we need to do well internally, to meet our customer goals, that will impact our financial standing?”
• People (or learning and growth) goals —“What skills, culture, and capabilities do we need to have in our organization to execute on the process that would make our customers happy and ultimately impact our financial standing?”

For an in-depth look at how your organization could use the BSC, check out this Full & Exhaustive Balanced Scorecard Example .

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Theory Of Change (TOC)

The Theory of Change is a logic model that describes a step-by-step approach to achieving your vision. The TOC is focused on how to achieve the change you’re looking for , and is popular amongst mission-driven organizations who are describing a change they’re making in the world instead of putting change in their pockets.

The idea behind TOC is that if you have the right people doing the right activities, they’ll affect change on your customers, which will impact your financials, and bring you closer to your vision. A great example of a this theory of change is the nonprofit RARE .

According to the Harvard Family Research Project , the steps to create a TOC are:

• Identify a long-term goal.
• Conduct “backwards mapping” to identify the preconditions necessary to achieve that goal.
• Identify the interventions that your initiative will perform to create these preconditions.
• Develop indicators for each precondition that will be used to assess the performance of the interventions.
• Write a narrative that can be used to summarize the various moving parts in your theory.

Objectives & Key Results (OKR)

OKR was originally created by Intel and is used today in primarily two ways: At the enterprise/department level and at the personal performance level.

• Objectives are goals.
• Key results are quantitative measures that define whether goals have been reached.

Claim your FREE Excel OKR template to set and achieve key objectives here

The idea is that your defined objectives and measurements help employees, managers, and executives link to and align with overall strategic priorities. Not only does OKR strive to measure whether objectives are successful, but also how successful they are.

Define your objectives, measures, and projects.

‍ The strategic planning frameworks above are all meant, in different ways, to help you organize your objectives, measures, and projects. So it’s critical that these elements are well thought-out and defined.

Here’s how objectives, measures, and projects interact:

‍ You have a high-level goal in mind—your objective. Your measures answer the question, “How will I know that we’re meeting our goal?” From there, initiatives, or projects, are put in place to answer the question, “What actions are we taking to accomplish our goals?”

‍ We’ve defined each of these concepts more thoroughly below with a few business strategy examples:

• Objectives are high-level organizational goals. The typical BSC has 10-15 strategic objectives.

Examples include:

• Increase Market Share Through Current Customers (Financial)
• Be Service Oriented (Customer)
• Achieve Order Fulfillment Excellence Through On-Line Process Improvement (Internal)
• Align Incentives And Rewards With Employee Roles For Increased Employee Satisfaction (Learning & Growth)
• Measures help you understand if you’re accomplishing your objectives strategically. They force you to question things like, “How do I know that I’m becoming an internationally recognized brand?” Note that while your measures might change, your objectives will remain the same. You may select 1-2 measures per objective, so you are aiming to come up with 15-25 measures at the enterprise level.
• Cost Of Goods Sold
• Customer Satisfaction & Retention
• Percentage Of Product Defects
• Percentage Of Response To Open Positions
• Initiatives are key action programs developed to achieve your objectives. You’ll see initiatives referred to as “projects,” “actions,” or “activities outside of the Balanced Scorecard.” Most organizations will have 0-2 initiatives underway for every objective (with a total of 5-15 strategic initiatives).
• Develop Quality Management Program
• Install ERP System
• Revamp Supply Chain Process
• Develop Competencies Mode

- Create your strategy map or graphic strategic model

Whether or not you’re using a Balanced Scorecard as your strategy framework, you’ll benefit from using a graphic model to represent your strategic plan. While many people use a strategy map (shown in the example below), you could also use icons or a color-coding system to visually understand how the elements of your strategy work together.

If you’re just becoming familiar with how strategy mapping works, this article will teach you exactly how to read one—and what you need to do to create one.

Get your FREE eBook with Balance Scorecard strategy maps for better strategic visualization

Now that you’ve created your strategic vision...

• You have a fully-defined mission and vision to use as you move forward with your strategy implementation process.
• You have chosen a strategic framework that will hold your five-year strategic plan.
• You have defined objectives, measures, and projects, and you know how they work together.
• You have a graphic representation of your strategic model.

Feeling the strategic fatigue? It’s okay! This is a tiring process—so be careful to tailor everything in this section to what those in your organization will tolerate. Putting your strategic plan into practice (our final step) is the key to making it all work during the strategy implementation plan, and getting these details 80% right in a timely fashion is much more important than getting them 100% right in a year.

3. Putting your strategic plan into practice

You’ve made it this far—now you have to be sure you launch correctly! To do so, you need someone from the Office of Strategy Management to push that process, ensure resources are aligned to your strategy, put a solid strategy communication program in place, and get technology to keep you organized.

- Launch your strategy

Ensure the office of strategy management (osm) is pushing things forward.

The Office of Strategy Management is comprised of a group of people responsible for coordinating strategy implementation. This team isn’t responsible for doing everything in your strategy, but it should oversee strategy execution across the organization. Typically, the OSM lives in the finance department—or it could be its own separate division that reports directly to the CEO.

Create your internal and external strategy communication plan

Internal— Be sure all elements of your strategy—like strategy maps or logic models—are contained within a larger strategic plan document. (If you use strategy software , the strategic plan document will likely be contained there.) A great way to be sure your leadership team has a firm grasp on your strategy is to ensure they each have a copy of this document, and they can describe the strategy easily to someone who wasn’t involved in the creation process .

More broadly, the strategy must be communicated throughout your organization. You should be shouting it from the rooftops to keep it top-of-mind across your organization. People won’t give it a passing thought unless you engage them—so every department head should be charged with explaining how their team fits into the strategy and why it matters. For actionable tips, check out this article that highlights how you can effectively communicate your strategic plan across your organization.

‍ External— You also need to be sure you have a plan for communicating your strategy outside the organization—with board members, partners, or customers (particularly if your organization is municipal or nonprofit). Think through how it will be shared, and which parts of it are relevant to outside parties.

Align your resources to your strategy

In the short term—which would be your next budgeting cycle or something similar—work to structure the budget around the key components of your strategy. You don’t need to completely rewire your budget, but you do need to create direct linkages between how your resources are allocated and how those efforts support your strategy. Over time, the areas that contribute less directly to strategic goals will become clear, and you can work on gradually aligning everything you fund.

But even if your budget only extends through the fiscal year, consider how you’ll align your strategy to projects in the future. For future resource allocation, link your operations (what some refer to as the “work planning process”) to your strategy. Your expectation should be that the process of aligning your resources to your strategy can happen within year two of your strategic planning execution.

- Evaluate your strategy

At this point, your strategy has been launched: Now you need to know whether or not you’re making progress! Here’s how to do that.

Claim your FREE Measure & Goal Evaluation Toolkit for streamlined analysis

Create reports to highlight your results

Ten years ago, you may have evaluated your strategy annually. But in today’s business environment, that’s not a feasible option. At a minimum, you should be reporting on your entire strategy on a quarterly basis, or breaking down your strategy into pieces and reporting on one of those pieces each month.

The report you use should highlight progress on your measures and projects, and how those link to your objectives. The point is to show how all these elements fit together and relate to the strategic plan as a whole.

Hold regular strategy meetings

Report on strategy progress via the quarterly or monthly review meetings you scheduled early in the process.

It’s important to note that throwing together an impromptu meeting to go over results isn’t going to get you anywhere. Instead, your strategy review meetings should be meticulously organized and accompanied by an agenda. (See this article for a sample agenda.)

‍ Your meetings should revolve around three key issues:

• What is your organization trying to accomplish? This may include reiterating your mission and vision to add context around the conversation.
• Are you making progress toward these goals? You might review key metrics and the status of initiatives and milestones.
• What actions need to be taken to continue making progress? If metrics are off-track, for example, what can be done to get back on course.

Encourage candid dialogue and make sure the discussion stays focused.

You may want a facilitator for the first few meetings, and you may want to script a few open discussions where a goal owner explains why they are behind schedule (red) on their goal, and the business leader offers support, not criticism. This will generate the atmosphere you need for everyone to start reporting honestly and working together to achieve the organization’s goals.

Deploy strategy reporting software (if you haven’t already)

To make strategy execution work, reporting is unavoidable. While you might be able to track your first strategy meeting in Excel or give your first presentation via PowerPoint, you’ll quickly realize you need some kind of software to track the continuous gathering of data, update your projects, and keep your leadership team on the same page.

If you want to learn more about the major areas of responsibility you should be covering in your strategy management process—and how strategy software can help with that— take a look at our ClearPoint tour .

Here are two additional helpful pieces of content as you move forward:

You’ve probably seen reference to the “Plan, Do, Check, Act” framework before. If you want to integrate this checklist, this is the time to do so. Here’s a breakdown on what it means:

• Plan refers to creating your strategic plan.
• Do refers to making progress on or executing on the plan.
• Check refers to the reporting and monitoring process.
• Act refers to taking action through projects, work plans, or the budgeting process to continue to manage and execute on the strategy.

The Benefits Of Strategic Planning (& Challenges You Should Be Aware Of)

Done right, strategy planning can benefit your business tremendously, but a certain degree of stick-to-itiveness is required to get the job done. (As we noted at the beginning of this guide, organizations that actually meet their strategic objectives are in the minority. Don’t worry, though, yours can be one of the success stories.) But those that develop a disciplined approach to both planning and execution have been shown to improve performance significantly.

‍ Why is strategic planning so effective? Because it fosters healthy organizational practices that drive better outcomes. Engaging in strategic planning will benefit you in multiple ways:

1. You have quality data available to support better decisions

Setting goals and choosing the relevant metrics to track progress toward achieving them means you always have meaningful data to reference. That naturally leads to faster, more efficient decision-making, especially when that data is readily accessible to employees at every level.

Timely, valid, and actionable information is especially valuable in situations where organizations need to react quickly, so they can make the best decisions possible for all their stakeholders.

2. You allocate resources more effectively

In Chapter 3, we discussed structuring the budget around the key components of your strategy. Doing so helps ensure resources are allocated correctly, and in a way that aligns with your goals.

Tying the budget directly to goals also makes it easy to adjust when necessary, if circumstances change and new goals are prioritized over old. For example, a local government may have had a goal to develop a green infrastructure plan at the beginning of 2020, but then had to pivot with the onset of COVID-19.

To support a new goal of developing a COVID-19 response plan, they could simply review the resources used by current projects, evaluate those projects’ priorities and budget needs in comparison to the new goal, and reallocate funds as necessary.

3. You maintain focus

Having a strategic plan brings your main focus points to the forefront, so you don’t have to dig into the details of everything your organization is doing. That means there’s no time wasted analyzing irrelevant and extensive data points in strategic meetings; instead, everyone stays focused on what is most important or where improvements need to be made.

4. You improve communication and build employee engagement.

Strategic planning is intended to create a single, focused vision of where an organization is headed. When that shared vision is communicated clearly and consistently, it inspires employees to take ownership over their role in the plan, and they are typically more motivated to do their best work. High engagement will directly impact your organization’s financial health and profitability.

3 Things To Consider Before You Embark On A Strategic Plan

Having helped hundreds of organizations—for-profit, nonprofit, and local governments included—navigate through the strategic planning and implementation process, we’ve seen firsthand the many challenges that arise along the way. There’s no “typical” scenario, but there are some common pitfalls that have the power to make or break your chances of success. Below are three things you should be aware of going into the process.

1. Everything about strategic planning takes time

Don’t expect your plan to materialize after a few meetings. The initial planning activities usually unfold over the space of several months, but strategy execution itself is an ongoing process. Anticipate devoting extensive time and effort in particular to:

• Choosing the appropriate planning model . Before you can even begin to articulate your strategy, you need to choose a strategy framework that fits your organization’s needs. All models can be customized to suit the way your business works, but this is a key decision that will shape all your efforts going forward.
• Creating a plan that everyone agrees on. It’s crucial for your leadership team to support the plan’s objectives if you want it to be adopted. Making sure everyone on the team has been heard and gaining a consensus is a time-consuming process.
• Getting “buy-in” for the plan. Research shows that, on average, 95% of an organization’s employees don’t understand its strategy—there’s no surer way to guarantee failure than to neglect communicating your goals to your employees. You must continuously keep your strategy top-of-mind in a creative and meaningful way over the long term to gain the buy-in you need to succeed.

2. There is a danger of “analysis paralysis”

Data and analytics are an integral part of strategic planning. And while it may be tempting to use all your available metrics, charts, and graphs for every business decision, doing so unnecessarily can be a detriment to the decision-making process. It’s easy to find yourself drilling deeper into data when perhaps only a high-level view of the information is needed. Avoid squandering time and energy on excessive analysis by making sure the right people are focusing on the right data and actions:

Leadership should focus on organization-wide goals and progress. Teams should focus on the individual projects and daily tasks that are helping to accomplish those goals (and the data that goes with them).

3. Having a plan doesn’t mean your organization will execute on it

Good planning is only half the battle; the lion’s share of forward progress is in executing that plan. But the execution stage is where many organizations stumble. They aren’t prepared for the work involved with follow-through, both in terms of the time commitment and the tools necessary to support performance improvement. Strategy consultants are excellent guides for plan creation, but most offer no guidance on how to carry it out; as a result, organizations are left floundering.

It’s imperative to have a system in place that will measure and monitor your progress toward goals during the execution phase. Performance management tools like ClearPoint allow organizations to track a variety of metrics related to strategic projects, helping to maintain focus over the long term. And our team of strategy implementation experts is always available to provide guidance on every aspect of execution, from setting up an efficient management process to using our reporting tools optimally.

With the right plan in place, tools to support it, and committed leadership, every organization has a good chance of seeing their strategy come to life.

See ClearPoint Strategy in action! Click here to watch our quick 6-minute demo

You’ve made it through these steps…..

...but be sure to place a great deal of emphasis on rightsizing this process for your own organization.

Did you recently do a SWOT analysis and create new vision and mission statements? Don’t do it again.

Do you already manage with a robust set of KPIs ? Use them.

Do you currently create reports for your board and management team? Modify them or use a strategy evaluation framework to make sure they’re focused and move on.

Rather than doing everything, it’s more important to realize there is overlap between these steps. Understand how they all fit into your own strategic planning process, and then move forward with the sections you’re missing.

And if you have any questions along the way, get in touch with us. We live and breathe strategic planning and are here to help!

Transform Your Strategic Planning with ClearPoint Strategy Software

Struggling with the execution of your strategic plans? You’re not alone. ClearPoint Strategy is here to turn your strategic planning around.

Our software is designed to address the common pitfalls in strategy execution, such as poor communication, misaligned goals, and ineffective tracking. By booking a demo with us, you’ll see firsthand how ClearPoint can enhance transparency, improve alignment, and boost execution efficiency across your organization.

Don't let your strategic efforts fail—discover how ClearPoint Strategy empowers you to be among the few who successfully achieve their strategic goals. Book your demo today and start making your strategy work for you!

Book your FREE 1-on-1 DEMO with ClearPoint Strategy

What are strategic planning tools.

Strategic planning tools are methodologies and frameworks that help organizations formulate, implement, and monitor their strategic plans. Common strategic planning tools include:

- SWOT Analysis: Identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. - PESTEL Analysis: Examines political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors. - Balanced Scorecard: Links strategic objectives to performance metrics across financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth perspectives. - Porter’s Five Forces: Analyzes competitive forces within an industry to understand its attractiveness. - Scenario Planning: Envisions different future scenarios to plan for uncertainties. Gap Analysis: Identifies the gap between current performance and desired goals.

What are strategic planning techniques?

Strategic planning techniques are methods used to develop and implement strategies effectively. These include:

- Visioning: Creating a clear, compelling vision of the future state. - Benchmarking: Comparing performance against industry leaders or best practices. - Stakeholder Analysis: Identifying and understanding the needs and influences of stakeholders. - Environmental Scanning: Systematically analyzing external and internal environments. - Strategy Mapping: Visualizing the relationships between different strategic objectives and actions. - Resource Allocation: Determining the best use of resources to achieve strategic goals.

How can strategic planning improve the performance of an organization?

Strategic planning can improve the performance of an organization by:

- Providing Direction: Clarifies the long-term vision and mission, guiding all organizational activities. - Aligning Resources: Ensures that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively to priority areas. - Enhancing Coordination: Fosters better communication and collaboration across departments. - Facilitating Decision-Making: Supports informed, data-driven decisions aligned with strategic goals. - Tracking Progress: Establishes benchmarks and performance metrics to monitor progress and make necessary adjustments. - Encouraging Innovation: Promotes creative thinking and innovation to achieve competitive advantage.

What is strategic planning in healthcare?

Strategic planning in healthcare involves developing long-term goals and strategies to improve healthcare delivery, patient outcomes, and operational efficiency. It includes:

- Assessing Needs: Evaluating patient demographics, healthcare trends, and community needs. - Setting Objectives: Defining specific goals related to patient care, quality, and efficiency. - Resource Management: Allocating resources such as staff, technology, and funding to meet healthcare goals. - Implementing Policies: Developing and implementing policies and procedures to enhance healthcare services. - Monitoring Outcomes: Continuously tracking performance metrics to ensure goals are being met and to identify areas for improvement.

Why is strategic planning important in business?

Strategic planning is important in business because it:

- Provides Clarity and Focus: Establishes clear goals and priorities, aligning efforts toward achieving them. - Enhances Competitiveness: Helps businesses identify opportunities and threats, enabling them to stay competitive. - Improves Resource Allocation: Ensures that resources are used efficiently to achieve the most significant impact. - Fosters Long-Term Thinking: Encourages a forward-looking approach, preparing the organization for future challenges and opportunities. - Increases Accountability: Sets clear expectations and performance metrics, holding individuals and teams accountable for results. - Drives Growth and Innovation: Supports the development of new products, services, and processes to drive growth and innovation.

Ted Jackson

Ted is a Founder and Managing Partner of ClearPoint Strategy and leads the sales and marketing teams.

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Strategic Goals Definition, Examples and Importance & Definition

Published: 25 December, 2023

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Digital Strategy

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Strategic goals are a critical component of an overall business strategy because they provide the focus and direction needed to align resources, efforts, and decision-making. Strategic goals provide specific, measurable, and actionable objectives that shape a company’s strategic planning process.

Additionally, strategic goals are a bridge between the company’s overall vision and its day-to-day operations. By defining clear and achievable goals, a company can ensure that all stakeholders are working toward the same end and that resources are being used effectively to achieve your business goals.

In this article, we explore the role strategic goals play in your business plan . What comes first: the goals or the plan? As you’ll see, it’s not really a matter of what goes on paper before the other that determines success, but rather, how both goals and plans are integrated into your overall business plan and business model.

What are Strategic Goals

Strategic goals are specific, long-term objectives that a company sets for itself to achieve its desired future state, refer to the precise financial and non-financial targets and outcomes that a company endeavors to attain within a defined timeframe, typically spanning the next three to five years. These strategic goals are both financial and non-financial objectives, so they can take a lot of different forms depending on the organization’s particular business model. It encompasses the precise financial and non-financial targets that a company endeavours to attain within a designated timeframe, typically spanning the upcoming three to five years.

These goals serve as a roadmap for a company. They provide direction and focus for decision-making, business strategy, resource allocation, and operational execution.

Strategic goals are different from tactical goals, which are short-term, specific, and focused on achieving specific tasks or milestones. Strategic goals are broader and longer-term, usually spanning somewhere between three and five years, and serve as the foundation for a company’s overall business strategy.

Examples of Strategic Goals

Various strategic goals can differ greatly from one business to another, depending on the company’s industry, size, and target market. However, many strategic goals share common characteristics such as a long-term focus, measurable targets, alignment with values, relevance to stakeholders, and adaptability. These commonalities help ensure that strategic goals are meaningful, relevant, and achievable and that they serve as a foundation for a successful business strategy.

Let’s look at some specific strategic goals businesses often adopt.

(1) Increasing market share

A larger market share usually translates into increased sales and revenue, which can increase a business’s overall profitability. A larger market share can help a business build brand recognition and increase its overall visibility and credibility, making it easier for the business to attract new customers and retain existing ones.

(2) Improving customer satisfaction

Happy customers are more likely to continue doing business with a company and to recommend it to others. Satisfied customers are less likely to switch to a competitor, reducing the costs associated with acquiring new customers, and they are more likely to share their positive experiences with others, helping a business build its reputation.

(3) Expanding into new geographic markets

Expanding into new geographic markets can help a business diversify its customer base and reduce its dependence on a single market or region. This can reduce the risk of economic downturns or market changes affecting the business. Additionally, new geographic markets can offer businesses access to new resources—such as talent, suppliers, and distribution channels —that can help them grow and innovate.

(4) Diversifying product offerings

By diversifying their product offerings, businesses can reduce their dependence on a single product or market. A business that offers a wide range of products can differentiate itself from its competitors, establishing a competitive advantage that can feature in its overall business model. A wider range of products can attract and retain more customers than you’re able to with a limited range of offerings.

(5) Reducing operating costs

Increased profitability comes from reducing costs, and it frees up additional resources for expansion and innovation. The increased flexibility that comes from having more available resources can be valuable in facilitating other goals.

(6) Improving employee satisfaction and retention

Happy and satisfied employees are more productive and engaged in their work, leading to better outcomes and results for the business. Improving employee satisfaction and retention can help a business create and maintain a positive organizational culture . This makes it easier to attract top talent, which in turn improves the business’s performance elsewhere.

(7) Developing and implementing new technologies

Developing and implementing new technologies is important for businesses because it can increase efficiency, competitiveness, customer satisfaction, innovation, and cost savings. These benefits can help a business grow and succeed in the long term.

(8) Improving supply chain management

A well-managed supply chain can help a business reduce lead times, minimize waste and errors, and increase productivity.  A company that effectively manages its supply chain can establish better relationships with its suppliers and can ensure that its customers receive the products and services they need in a timely and cost-effective manner.

(9) Enhancing brand recognition and reputation

When customers associate a positive image with a brand, they are more likely to remain loyal, even in the face of competition. A well-established brand can increase the value of a company. That’s especially important if you’re trying to attract investors or potential buyers.

(10) Increasing revenue and profitability

Clearly, improving sales and the impact of those sales is a valuable goal. Increased profitability ensures a company’s future and the security of its team members.

(11) Implementing sustainability practices

In addition to proving the business is a responsible global citizen, studies have shown that many customers respond favorably to a company’s sustainability efforts.

(12) Improving efficiency and productivity

Improving efficiency and productivity is crucial for a business to remain competitive, reduce costs, and increase profitability. By streamlining processes and making better use of resources, a business can create a more sustainable and successful operation.

(13) Developing and maintaining strong partnerships

Strong partner relationships have positive impacts in big ways and small ways: better terms, improved service, extended credit, and quality advice. Cultivating good relationships is often a surprisingly powerful goal.

(14) Enhancing product quality and reliability

When a company offers high-quality, reliable products, customers are more likely to be satisfied with their purchases and become repeat customers. By focusing on product quality and reliability, a business can drive innovation and create new products and services that meet the needs of its customers.

(15) Increasing innovation and creativity

New and innovative products and services can help a business expand into new markets and gain market share. Innovation is valuable because customers are often willing to pay a premium for unique and cutting-edge solutions.

(16) Strengthening the organizational culture

Strengthening organizational culture is an important aspect of business success. Open and honest communication between employees and management, and create opportunities for feedback and suggestions. This builds trust and reinforces the culture of collaboration and teamwork that is vital when the business is engaged in innovative practices.

(17) Building a talent pipeline and developing a strong workforce

Building a talent pipeline and developing a strong workforce can help a business achieve greater competitiveness, improved efficiency and productivity, and better customer satisfaction. A business can create a more sustainable and successful operation with a strong foundation for future growth.

(18) Improving the customer experience

Improving the customer experience can help a business by making customers happier and more satisfied with the products and services the business provides. When customers are satisfied with their experience, they may be more likely to spend more money with the business and make larger purchases.

(19) Expanding into new product categories or services

Diversifying into new product categories or services helps reduce the risk of relying on a single product or service for the majority of a business’s revenue . This added resiliency helps a business weather changes in the market, customer expectations or needs, and political events that can otherwise destroy more fragile organizations.

(20) Investing in research and development (R&D)

It’s impossible to predict with accuracy where the next important innovation will begin. Only by properly devoting resources to research and development can a business be sure it’s ready to pivot to the next big thing. Doing it quickly, before the competition, is one of the surest ways of securing success.

The Importance of Strategic Goals

Strategic goals are important because they help a business know where it wants to go and how it wants to get there. They provide direction, focus, and purpose for a business, making it easier to achieve success.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways the development of strategic goals benefits a business.

Clarify the Organization’s Mission & Values

Improve decision making, drive innovation & growth, increase productivity & efficiency.

Articulating strategic goals has a clarifying effect on an organization’s mission and values. Merely undertaking the process of setting goals on the page pushes leadership to reconsider all of its decisions within a different—and productive—context.

Business goals also play a significant role in shaping its organizational strategy . Mission and values help determine the shape of an organization as higher priorities attract a representative value of resources.

Once leaders are given a clearly articulated mission or set of values, they can solidify the direction they should be taking when making their decisions.

Strategic goals serve as a guiding light that motivates and guides decision-making.

When strategic goals include growth and change, they can be tremendous motivators for innovation.

Because everyone within the organization agrees that growth is an important goal, proper resources are easily allocated for these efforts.

Similarly, because strategic goals offer such a clear purpose, they allow for improved productivity and increased efficiency.

Everyone’s in agreement. Resources can be clearly directed and decisions are made much more quickly.

Characteristics of Strategic Goals

Strategic goals form the cornerstone of an organization’s long-term vision and planning, serving as the guiding stars that illuminate the path to success. These goals encapsulate the company’s aspirations, providing a framework for decision-making and resource allocation. To be effective, strategic goals possess a unique set of characteristics that distinguish them from other objectives within an organization. In this discussion, we’ll delve into the key traits that define strategic goals, shedding light on their crucial role in shaping a company’s future and driving its growth:

• Long-term Focus: Strategic goals are oriented toward the future and typically cover an extended period, often spanning several years, to allow for significant planning and execution.
• Broad and High-Level: They are overarching objectives that guide the entire organization, providing a sense of direction without getting into detailed specifics.
• Alignment with Vision and Mission: Strategic goals should align with the company’s vision and mission, ensuring that they contribute to the overarching purpose and values of the organization.
• Measurable and Specific: While they are high-level, strategic goals should still be measurable and specific enough to gauge progress and success effectively.
• Challenging Yet Achievable: They should be ambitious enough to inspire effort and innovation but also realistic enough that they can be accomplished with concerted effort and resources.
• Time-Bound: Strategic goals are set within a defined timeframe, which helps create a sense of urgency and ensures accountability.
• Guiding Decision-Making: These goals serve as a reference point for decision-making at all levels of the organization, helping to prioritize actions and allocate resources effectively.
• Adaptive: Strategic goals should be flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances and market dynamics while remaining true to the organization’s core objectives.
• Communicated and Shared: They should be well-communicated across the organization to ensure that all employees understand and align their efforts with these overarching goals.
• Impactful: Strategic goals should have a significant impact on the organization’s growth, profitability, market position, or other key performance areas.
• Continuous Improvement: Achieving strategic goals often involves a continuous improvement process, where progress is monitored, and adjustments are made as needed.
• Comprehensive: They may encompass various aspects of the business, including financial, operational, customer-related, and innovation-driven objectives.
• Reflective of Market and Industry Trends: Strategic goals should take into account the evolving market and industry trends to position the company competitively.
• Sustainable: Consideration of sustainability and responsible business practices may be incorporated into strategic goals to align with societal and environmental expectations.
• Inspiring and Motivating: Well-crafted strategic goals have the power to inspire and motivate employees, stakeholders, and partners, driving collective efforts toward success.

Strategic Goals vs Strategic Planning

Strategic goals and strategic planning are two closely related concepts in business, but they are not the same thing.

Strategic goals are specific, measurable, and actionable objectives.

Strategic planning, on the other hand, is the process of creating and implementing a strategy that supports the achievement of a business’s goals . The strategic planning process involves analyzing the business’s current situation, identifying its strengths and weaknesses, setting goals, and developing a plan to achieve those goals.

Strategic goals provide direction and focus for a business, while strategic planning is the process of creating and implementing a strategy to achieve those goals.

Strategic Goals vs. Business Goals vs. Business Objectives

In the realm of strategic planning, precision is paramount. While strategic goals, business goals, and business objectives provide the framework for a company’s vision, it’s the Business Model Canvas that transforms these abstract notions into actionable roadmaps. The Business Model Canvas is your compass, simplifying complex strategies into a visual guide that aligns aspirations with attainable steps. You can download it now.

Your download is now available!

You can now access the complete Business Model Canvas Package, including a full presentation, related models and instructions for use.

The UNITE Business Model Canvas

Strategic goals, business goals , and business objectives are all terms used to describe different aspects of a company’s desired future state and the steps it takes to achieve that state. However, they each have slightly different connotations and purposes:

• Strategic goals are the long-term aspirations that a company sets for itself. They provide a broad direction for the company and set the overall tone for decision-making and resource allocation. Examples of strategic goals might include becoming a market leader in a certain industry or expanding into new geographic markets.
• Business goals are more specific and measurable than strategic goals. They provide a concrete target for the company to aim for and help it track its progress toward its desired future state. Examples of business goals might include increasing market share by a certain percentage, reducing costs by a certain amount, or launching a new product line.
• Business objectives are the specific, actionable steps that a company takes to achieve its business goals. They provide a clear roadmap for the company and help it focus its efforts and resources on the most important tasks. Examples of business objectives might include launching a new marketing campaign, increasing product quality, or reducing waste.

In short, strategic goals set the overall direction for a company, business goals provide specific targets to aim for, and business objectives provide the concrete steps needed to achieve those targets.

Final Thoughts

In summary, strategic goals are the guiding beacons that illuminate an organization’s path to success, providing clarity, direction, and purpose for resource allocation and decision-making. Bridging the gap between overarching vision and daily operations, they underpin strategic planning and influence every facet of an organization’s strategy. These goals, characterized by specificity, measurability, and actionability, not only articulate the company’s mission and values but also enhance decision-making, spur innovation and growth, and optimize operational efficiency. By embracing diverse objectives, from market expansion to employee satisfaction and sustainability, businesses empower themselves to adapt, lead, and thrive in an ever-changing business landscape, with each strategic goal serving as a pivotal step toward a brighter future.

Frequently Asked Questions

(1) how are strategic goals different from operational goals.

Strategic goals are focused on long-term success and growth, while operational goals are focused on the day-to-day operations and the efficient running of the business.

(2) How can an organization measure its progress toward achieving its strategic goals?

By using specific, achievable Key Progress Indicators, a business can measure its progress toward its goals.

Measuring innovation is more challenging as its goals are often less concrete. While there are certainly some tangible measures you can consider—such as the number of product launches or patent applications over a given year—most experts advocate for a broader view that takes into account potential advancement as a result of innovation and its overall impact on a business’s goals.

How you measure innovation is likely dependent upon your overall strategic goals and the priorities you have built into your business model.

(3) How can organizations adapt to changes in the business environment and maintain their focus on strategic goals?

It’s important for organizations to be proactive and agile in their approach to change. Regularly reviewing and refining the organization’s strategy can help ensure that it stays aligned with its goals and the changing business environment.

Empowered decision-makers should have the responsibility of monitoring competitors, market trends, and changes in regulations in order to understand shifts in the business model environment.

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The Importance of Strategic Goals And How to Set Them

Strategic goals are like the foundation of a successful business. They act as a guide, helping a company reach its big-picture vision for the future. Unlike short-term goals, which focus on immediate wins, strategic goals aim to push a company forward in a significant and measurable way. These are the big milestones that, when achieved, can change a business and make it stand out in the market.

In this article, we’ll guide you on determining the appropriate times to establish strategic goals compared to other types of goals, and we’ll also explain the process of setting them.

What are Strategic Goals?

Strategic goals are the significant, long-term objectives that an organization sets to guide its overall direction and success. Unlike short-term goals that focus on immediate tasks, strategic goals are designed to have a lasting impact and propel the organization toward its broader vision. These goals typically span several years and are aligned with the company’s core mission and values. The main characteristics of strategic goals are:

Long-Term Impact : Strategic goals are all about the future, reaching beyond just this year and often spanning multiple years.

Alignment with Vision : These goals are closely connected to a company’s main mission and values, making sure that every effort contributes to the big picture.

Measurability : To know if you’re making progress, strategic goals need to be measurable, using clear metrics to track success.

When strategic goals match up with the long-term vision, leaders can make sure that everyone in the company is working together toward a big, game-changing objective. This is where tools like Creately come in handy, offering features like real-time collaboration and visual project management to keep everyone on track and moving in the right direction.

How Strategic Goals Are Different from Other Business Processes:

Strategic Goals VS Strategic Planning Strategic goals serve as the ultimate destinations for an organization, representing the long-term objectives that propel it forward. They are the ambitious milestones that, when achieved, transform a business fundamentally and secure its position in the market. On the other hand, strategic planning acts as the roadmap leading to these endpoints. It involves the thoughtful process of outlining steps, allocating resources, and devising strategies to reach the predetermined strategic goals.

Strategic Goals vs. Strategic Management While strategic goals represent the desired outcomes, strategic management involves the ongoing process of planning, implementing, and evaluating these strategies to ensure they align with organizational objectives.

Strategic Goals vs. Strategic Objectives Strategic objectives are the specific, measurable steps taken to achieve strategic goals. They break down the broader goals into actionable tasks, providing a clear path for implementation.

Strategic Goals vs. OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) OKRs are a goal-setting framework that encompasses both objectives (similar to strategic goals) and key results, which are specific, measurable indicators of progress toward those objectives.

Strategic Goals vs. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) While strategic goals are the overarching objectives, KPIs are specific metrics used to measure performance and track progress toward achieving those goals.

Strategic Goals vs. Business Goals Strategic goals are a subset of business goals, focusing on the long-term vision and transformation, whereas business goals can encompass a broader range of objectives, including short-term targets.

The Importance of Strategic Goals

The benifits of strategic goals.

Strategic goals play a critical role in organizational success. Here are some key benefits:

Provides Clarity and Direction : Strategic goals define the purpose and direction for the organization. They serve as a compass, guiding decision-making and resource allocation. By setting clear goals, companies can focus their efforts and ensure that actions are purposeful and directed towards specific outcomes.

Drives Alignment : Strategic goals unite individuals and teams towards a common objective. They foster collaboration and synergy, as everyone is working towards the same goals. Communication and cooperation are enhanced, unlocking the full potential of the organization.

Facilitates Decision-Making : Strategic goals provide a framework for decision-making. They serve as a reference point for evaluating opportunities, initiatives, and investments. When faced with various options, organizations can assess how well each choice aligns with their goals, ensuring that decisions are consistent and supportive of the overall company strategy.

Helps Prioritize Resources : In a world of limited resources, strategic goals help organizations prioritize where to allocate time, energy, and financial resources. By focusing on the most critical goals, companies maximize their impact and efficiency, ensuring that resources are utilized effectively.

Promotes Accountability and Measurement : Strategic goals provide a basis for accountability and measurement. They enable organizations to track progress, evaluate performance, and adjust their course as needed. By setting clear and measurable goals, companies can assess their success and identify areas for improvement.

Strategic Goals Are an Iterative Process

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Strategic planning is not a one-time event but a continuous, evolving process. Acknowledging the iterative nature of this approach is essential for organizations seeking sustained success in a dynamic business landscape.

Continuous Reassessment : Regularly revisiting and reassessing strategies is a cornerstone of the iterative process. Organizations must stay vigilant, evaluating whether the chosen strategies align with current objectives and market conditions.

Adapting to Evolving Objectives :Evolving objectives demand a proactive response. Strategic planning involves adapting to shifts in organizational goals, industry trends, and external factors. This adaptability ensures that the strategies remain relevant and effective.

Real-time Adjustments : An iterative approach allows for real-time adjustments. This agility enables organizations to respond swiftly to unforeseen challenges or capitalize on unexpected opportunities, fostering resilience in the face of uncertainties.

Learning from Experience : Each iteration provides valuable insights. Organizations should leverage lessons learned from previous planning cycles, using them to refine and enhance future strategies. This continuous learning process contributes to the overall effectiveness of strategic planning.

Developing Clear and Measurable Strategic Goals

Setting clear and measurable strategic goals is crucial for their effective execution and evaluation. To develop such goals, organizations can follow a framework: Identify Key Focus Areas: Determine the critical areas that require attention and improvement. These can be related to revenue growth, customer satisfaction, market expansion, or operational efficiency, among others. Gather Stakeholder Input: Involve key stakeholders, such as employees, customers, partners, and investors, in the goal-setting process. Their perspectives and insights can provide valuable input and help ensure that the goals are relevant and realistic.

Define Key Objectives: Break down each focus area into specific objectives that support the central vision. These objectives should be challenging yet achievable, aligning with the organization’s strategic priorities. Create Measurable Metrics: Establish metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to track progress and evaluate success. These metrics should be quantifiable, time-bound, and aligned with the objectives.

Assign Accountability and Resources: Determine who will be responsible for driving each strategic goal and ensure they have the necessary resources and support to achieve them. Clear ownership enhances accountability and increases the likelihood of successful execution.

Communicate and Cascade: Communicate the strategic goals and their corresponding objectives to the entire organization. Ensure that everyone understands the purpose, rationale, and expected outcomes. Cascade the goals to different teams and individuals, establishing clear alignment with day-to-day activities.

Regularly Review and Adapt: Continuously monitor progress towards the goals and review the effectiveness of the strategies. If necessary, adapt and adjust the goals or tactics to stay on track and respond to changing circumstances.

100 Examples of Strategic Goals

Successful companies have demonstrated the power of strategic goal-setting. Here are 20 examples of strategic goals from various industries:

Financial Strategic Goals

Profit Maximization: Increase net profit margins by 10% over the next fiscal year.

Cost Reduction: Implement cost-cutting measures to reduce operational expenses by 15%.

Market Expansion: Expand into new markets, targeting a 20% increase in revenue and market share.

Debt Management: Reduce overall debt levels by 8% to improve financial health.

Working Capital Efficiency: Improve the working capital turnover ratio by 12% to optimize cash flow.

Investment Diversification: Allocate 15% of the portfolio to new investment opportunities to mitigate risks and enhance long-term returns.

Financial Sustainability: Achieve a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.8 to ensure long-term financial stability.

Cash Flow Improvement: Increase positive cash flow by 18% and reduce external financing dependency by 10%.

Credit Risk Management: Achieve a 5% reduction in bad debt through strengthened credit risk assessment.

Dividend Growth: Increase dividends to shareholders by 8% over the next three years.

Financial Compliance: Maintain a 95% compliance rate with financial regulations and reporting standards.

Tax Planning: Implement tax strategies to achieve a 10% reduction in tax liabilities.

Profitable Product Mix: Adjust product or service offerings to achieve a 15% increase in overall profitability.

Financial Forecasting Accuracy: Improve financial forecasting accuracy to within +/- 5% of actual results.

Investor Relations: Increase investor satisfaction ratings by 15% through improved communication.

Insurance Risk Management: Achieve a 10% reduction in financial risks through effective insurance coverage.

Mergers and Acquisitions: Realize cost synergies of 12% within two years of strategic mergers or acquisitions.

Return on Investment (ROI): Achieve an overall ROI increase of 7% on investments and capital expenditures.

Working Capital Optimization: Improve working capital turnover ratio by 10% through efficient management of inventory, accounts receivable, and accounts payable.

Credit Rating Improvement: Achieve an increase of one notch in the organization’s credit rating.

Financial Education Programs: Increase financial literacy among employees by 20% through education initiatives.

Sustainable Finance Initiatives: Allocate 5% of financial resources to projects aligned with ESG principles.

Cash Reserve Management: Maintain a cash reserve equivalent to three months' operating expenses.

Expense Control: Achieve a 10% reduction in overall expenses through stringent controls.

Capital Adequacy: Maintain a capital adequacy ratio of 12% to support operations and growth initiatives.

Customer Facing Strategic Goals

Customer Satisfaction: Achieve a customer satisfaction score (CSAT) of 90% or higher through surveys and feedback.

Net Promoter Score (NPS): Increase NPS by 15 points over the next year to measure customer loyalty and advocacy.

Customer Retention Rate: Maintain a customer retention rate of 85% to ensure long-term customer relationships.

Response Time: Reduce average response time to customer inquiries by 20%, enhancing service efficiency.

First Contact Resolution (FCR): Achieve an FCR rate of 90% to address customer issues in a single interaction.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Increase CLV by 10% through personalized offers and enhanced customer experiences.

Cross-Selling Success: Achieve a 15% increase in cross-selling success, measured by the percentage of customers purchasing additional products/services.

Average Order Value (AOV): Increase AOV by 12% through strategic upselling and bundling.

Customer Feedback Utilization: Act on 90% of customer feedback received, demonstrating responsiveness to customer concerns.

Customer Onboarding Efficiency: Reduce the time taken for customer onboarding by 20% to improve the initial customer experience.

Channel Diversification: Increase online channel sales by 25%, capturing a broader customer base.

Customer Education Engagement: Increase customer engagement with educational resources by 15%.

Product Adoption Rate: Achieve a 20% increase in the adoption rate of new products or features among existing customers.

Customer Referral Program Success: Increase the number of new customers acquired through referrals by 30%.

Customer Self-Service Utilization: Encourage self-service usage, aiming for a 15% increase in customer utilization of online resources.

Personalization Effectiveness: Increase conversion rates through personalized marketing efforts by 10%.

Mobile App Engagement: Achieve a 25% increase in monthly active users on the mobile app.

Social Media Interaction: Improve social media engagement metrics by 20%, including likes, comments, and shares.

Resolution Time for Complaints: Reduce the average resolution time for customer complaints by 15%.

Customer Community Growth: Increase the number of active participants in the customer community by 30%.

Customer Loyalty Program Participation: Increase participation in the loyalty program by 20%.

Feedback Implementation Time: Shorten the time between receiving feedback and implementing changes to products or services to within two weeks.

Customer Journey Mapping: Achieve a 95% completion rate in mapping the customer journey to enhance understanding and responsiveness.

Social Proof Metrics: Increase positive online reviews by 25% to enhance brand reputation.

Customer Upskilling: Achieve a 15% increase in customer knowledge and proficiency in using products/services through training initiatives.

Growth Strategic Goals

Revenue Growth: Achieve a 20% increase in overall revenue by the end of the fiscal year.

Market Expansion: Enter and establish a presence in three new markets within the next 12 months.

Customer Acquisition: Increase the customer base by 15% through targeted marketing campaigns.

Product Portfolio Expansion: Introduce and successfully launch three new products within the next quarter.

Market Share Increase: Capture an additional 5% market share within the industry by the end of the year.

Strategic Partnership Development: Form alliances with two key industry players to enhance market reach and capabilities.

Geographic Expansion: Open two new regional offices to tap into emerging markets.

Digital Presence Enhancement: Increase online sales by 25% through an enhanced digital marketing strategy.

Customer Retention Improvement: Implement initiatives to improve customer retention, aiming for a 10% increase.

Sales Team Performance: Enhance the sales team’s productivity, resulting in a 15% increase in sales per representative.

New Customer Segmentation: Target a 20% growth in sales from a newly identified customer segment.

Strategic Alliances: Establish partnerships with two complementary businesses to drive mutual growth.

E-commerce Sales Boost: Achieve a 30% increase in online sales through website optimization and marketing efforts.

International Expansion: Launch operations in two new international markets within the next fiscal year.

Productivity Improvement: Increase operational efficiency, leading to a 10% reduction in production costs.

Innovation Metrics: Introduce and successfully implement three innovative processes to streamline operations.

Employee Skill Development: Implement training programs to enhance employee skills, contributing to a 15% increase in productivity.

Diversification Success: Achieve a 25% revenue contribution from new product lines within the next 18 months.

Brand Awareness: Increase brand recognition by 20% through targeted marketing and advertising campaigns.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Enhance CLV by 12% through personalized customer engagement strategies.

Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) Reduction: Achieve a 15% reduction in the cost of acquiring new customers.

Quality Improvement: Increase customer satisfaction by 15%, as measured by post-purchase surveys.

Operational Capacity Expansion: Expand operational capacity to meet growing demand, targeting a 20% increase.

Employee Engagement: Improve employee satisfaction, aiming for a 10% increase in employee engagement scores.

Profit Margin Enhancement: Increase profit margins by 5% through cost optimization and revenue growth strategies.

Internal Strategic Goals

Employee Productivity Improvement: Increase individual employee productivity by 15% through targeted training and support programs.

Operational Efficiency: Achieve a 20% reduction in operational costs by streamlining processes and improving resource utilization.

Employee Satisfaction: Boost employee satisfaction scores by 10% through surveys and feedback mechanisms.

Skill Development Programs: Implement training initiatives resulting in a 15% improvement in employees' relevant skills.

Leadership Development: Identify and groom internal talent, aiming for a 20% increase in the promotion of employees to leadership positions.

Employee Retention Rate: Maintain a minimum employee retention rate of 90% to ensure continuity and reduce recruitment costs.

Workplace Diversity and Inclusion: Increase diversity by 15% in all levels of the organization through targeted recruitment efforts.

Employee Wellness Program Success: Improve overall employee well-being, measured by a 20% reduction in absenteeism.

Knowledge Management: Implement a knowledge-sharing platform, aiming for a 25% increase in the sharing of critical information.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Enhance collaboration between departments, targeting a 15% increase in cross-functional projects.

Internal Communication Effectiveness: Improve internal communication, aiming for a 20% increase in response rates to internal communications.

Change Management Success: Achieve a 90% or higher success rate in implementing organizational changes, as measured by employee feedback.

Employee Recognition Program Impact: Increase employee morale by 15% through the successful implementation of an employee recognition program.

Employee Training Completion Rates: Achieve a 95% completion rate for mandatory employee training programs.

Team Building Effectiveness: Enhance team cohesion, as measured by a 20% increase in team satisfaction scores.

Innovation Culture: Foster an innovation-friendly culture, aiming for a 10% increase in employee-generated innovative ideas.

Workplace Flexibility Implementation: Successfully implement workplace flexibility policies, resulting in a 15% improvement in work-life balance satisfaction.

Performance Appraisal Accuracy: Improve the accuracy of performance appraisals, aiming for a 90% or higher alignment with employee achievements.

Cost of Employee Recruitment: Achieve a 15% reduction in the cost of recruiting new employees.

Technology Adoption: Increase the adoption rate of new technologies, targeting a 20% improvement in efficiency.

Succession Planning: Develop and implement a comprehensive succession plan, aiming for a 90% or higher success rate in filling key roles internally.

Employee Diversity Training: Implement diversity training programs, aiming for a 20% improvement in employees' understanding and appreciation of diversity.

Employee Workload Management: Achieve a 10% reduction in employee workload stress, as measured by employee surveys.

Employee Skill Utilization: Increase the utilization of employee skills, targeting a 15% improvement in aligning skills with job responsibilities.

Team Performance Metrics: Improve team performance, as measured by a 15% increase in key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to team goals.

Strategic goals are essential for organizational success. They provide clarity, drive alignment, facilitate decision-making, help prioritize resources and promote accountability and measurement. By tying these goals to the overall company strategy, communicating effectively, involving stakeholders, and using visual templates and ideation sessions, organizations can set clear and measurable objectives that propel them toward their desired future state. The key to successful execution lies in breaking goals into actionable steps, assigning responsibility, providing support, measuring progress, and fostering a culture of regular review and adaptability. With a well-defined and executed strategic goal framework, organizations can unlock their full potential and create a path toward sustainable success.

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

More Related Articles

Chiraag George is a communication specialist here at Creately. He is a marketing junkie that is fascinated by how brands occupy consumer mind space. A lover of all things tech, he writes a lot about the intersection of technology, branding and culture at large.

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What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

How to build an organizational strategy

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What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

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How to make a business plan

Table of Contents

How to make a good business plan: step-by-step guide.

A business plan is a strategic roadmap used to navigate the challenging journey of entrepreneurship. It's the foundation upon which you build a successful business.

A well-crafted business plan can help you define your vision, clarify your goals, and identify potential problems before they arise.

But where do you start? How do you create a business plan that sets you up for success?

This article will explore the step-by-step process of creating a comprehensive business plan.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a formal document that outlines a business's objectives, strategies, and operational procedures. It typically includes the following information about a company:

Products or services

Target market

Competitors

Marketing and sales strategies

Financial plan

Management team

A business plan serves as a roadmap for a company's success and provides a blueprint for its growth and development. It helps entrepreneurs and business owners organize their ideas, evaluate the feasibility, and identify potential challenges and opportunities.

As well as serving as a guide for business owners, a business plan can attract investors and secure funding. It demonstrates the company's understanding of the market, its ability to generate revenue and profits, and its strategy for managing risks and achieving success.

Business plan vs. business model canvas

A business plan may seem similar to a business model canvas, but each document serves a different purpose.

A business model canvas is a high-level overview that helps entrepreneurs and business owners quickly test and iterate their ideas. It is often a one-page document that briefly outlines the following:

Key partnerships

Key activities

Key propositions

Customer relationships

Customer segments

Key resources

Cost structure

Revenue streams

On the other hand, a Business Plan Template provides a more in-depth analysis of a company's strategy and operations. It is typically a lengthy document and requires significant time and effort to develop.

A business model shouldn’t replace a business plan, and vice versa. Business owners should lay the foundations and visually capture the most important information with a Business Model Canvas Template . Because this is a fast and efficient way to communicate a business idea, a business model canvas is a good starting point before developing a more comprehensive business plan.

A business plan can aim to secure funding from investors or lenders, while a business model canvas communicates a business idea to potential customers or partners.

Why is a business plan important?

A business plan is crucial for any entrepreneur or business owner wanting to increase their chances of success.

Here are some of the many benefits of having a thorough business plan.

Helps to define the business goals and objectives

A business plan encourages you to think critically about your goals and objectives. Doing so lets you clearly understand what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there.

A well-defined set of goals, objectives, and key results also provides a sense of direction and purpose, which helps keep business owners focused and motivated.

Guides decision-making

A business plan requires you to consider different scenarios and potential problems that may arise in your business. This awareness allows you to devise strategies to deal with these issues and avoid pitfalls.

With a clear plan, entrepreneurs can make informed decisions aligning with their overall business goals and objectives. This helps reduce the risk of making costly mistakes and ensures they make decisions with long-term success in mind.

Attracts investors and secures funding

Investors and lenders often require a business plan before considering investing in your business. A document that outlines the company's goals, objectives, and financial forecasts can help instill confidence in potential investors and lenders.

A well-written business plan demonstrates that you have thoroughly thought through your business idea and have a solid plan for success.

Identifies potential challenges and risks

A business plan requires entrepreneurs to consider potential challenges and risks that could impact their business. For example:

Is there enough demand for my product or service?

Will I have enough capital to start my business?

Is the market oversaturated with too many competitors?

What will happen if my marketing strategy is ineffective?

By identifying these potential challenges, entrepreneurs can develop strategies to mitigate risks and overcome challenges. This can reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes and ensure the business is well-positioned to take on any challenges.

Provides a basis for measuring success

A business plan serves as a framework for measuring success by providing clear goals and financial projections . Entrepreneurs can regularly refer to the original business plan as a benchmark to measure progress. By comparing the current business position to initial forecasts, business owners can answer questions such as:

Are we where we want to be at this point?

Did we achieve our goals?

If not, why not, and what do we need to do?

After assessing whether the business is meeting its objectives or falling short, business owners can adjust their strategies as needed.

How to make a business plan step by step

The steps below will guide you through the process of creating a business plan and what key components you need to include.

1. Create an executive summary

Start with a brief overview of your entire plan. The executive summary should cover your business plan's main points and key takeaways.

Keep your executive summary concise and clear with the Executive Summary Template . The simple design helps readers understand the crux of your business plan without reading the entire document.

2. Write your company description

Provide a detailed explanation of your company. Include information on what your company does, the mission statement, and your vision for the future.

Provide additional background information on the history of your company, the founders, and any notable achievements or milestones.

3. Conduct a market analysis

Conduct an in-depth analysis of your industry, competitors, and target market. This is best done with a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, identify your target market's needs, demographics, and behaviors.

Use the Competitive Analysis Template to brainstorm answers to simple questions like:

What does the current market look like?

Who are your competitors?

What are they offering?

What will give you a competitive advantage?

Who is your target market?

What are they looking for and why?

How will your product or service satisfy a need?

These questions should give you valuable insights into the current market and where your business stands.

4. Describe your products and services

Provide detailed information about your products and services. This includes pricing information, product features, and any unique selling points.

Use the Product/Market Fit Template to explain how your products meet the needs of your target market. Describe what sets them apart from the competition.

5. Design a marketing and sales strategy

Outline how you plan to promote and sell your products. Your marketing strategy and sales strategy should include information about your:

Pricing strategy

Advertising and promotional tactics

Sales channels

The Go to Market Strategy Template is a great way to visually map how you plan to launch your product or service in a new or existing market.

6. Determine budget and financial projections

Document detailed information on your business’ finances. Describe the current financial position of the company and how you expect the finances to play out.

Some details to include in this section are:

Startup costs

Revenue projections

Profit and loss statement

Funding you have received or plan to receive

Strategy for raising funds

7. Set the organization and management structure

Define how your company is structured and who will be responsible for each aspect of the business. Use the Business Organizational Chart Template to visually map the company’s teams, roles, and hierarchy.

As well as the organization and management structure, discuss the legal structure of your business. Clarify whether your business is a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, or LLC.

8. Make an action plan

At this point in your business plan, you’ve described what you’re aiming for. But how are you going to get there? The Action Plan Template describes the following steps to move your business plan forward. Outline the next steps you plan to take to bring your business plan to fruition.

Types of business plans

Several types of business plans cater to different purposes and stages of a company's lifecycle. Here are some of the most common types of business plans.

Startup business plan

A startup business plan is typically an entrepreneur's first business plan. This document helps entrepreneurs articulate their business idea when starting a new business.

Not sure how to make a business plan for a startup? It’s pretty similar to a regular business plan, except the primary purpose of a startup business plan is to convince investors to provide funding for the business. A startup business plan also outlines the potential target market, product/service offering, marketing plan, and financial projections.

Strategic business plan

A strategic business plan is a long-term plan that outlines a company's overall strategy, objectives, and tactics. This type of strategic plan focuses on the big picture and helps business owners set goals and priorities and measure progress.

The primary purpose of a strategic business plan is to provide direction and guidance to the company's management team and stakeholders. The plan typically covers a period of three to five years.

Operational business plan

An operational business plan is a detailed document that outlines the day-to-day operations of a business. It focuses on the specific activities and processes required to run the business, such as:

Organizational structure

Staffing plan

Production plan

Quality control

Inventory management

Supply chain

The primary purpose of an operational business plan is to ensure that the business runs efficiently and effectively. It helps business owners manage their resources, track their performance, and identify areas for improvement.

Growth-business plan

A growth-business plan is a strategic plan that outlines how a company plans to expand its business. It helps business owners identify new market opportunities and increase revenue and profitability. The primary purpose of a growth-business plan is to provide a roadmap for the company's expansion and growth.

The 3 Horizons of Growth Template is a great tool to identify new areas of growth. This framework categorizes growth opportunities into three categories: Horizon 1 (core business), Horizon 2 (emerging business), and Horizon 3 (potential business).

One-page business plan

A one-page business plan is a condensed version of a full business plan that focuses on the most critical aspects of a business. It’s a great tool for entrepreneurs who want to quickly communicate their business idea to potential investors, partners, or employees.

A one-page business plan typically includes sections such as business concept, value proposition, revenue streams, and cost structure.

Best practices for how to make a good business plan

Here are some additional tips for creating a business plan:

Use a template

A template can help you organize your thoughts and effectively communicate your business ideas and strategies. Starting with a template can also save you time and effort when formatting your plan.

Miro’s extensive library of customizable templates includes all the necessary sections for a comprehensive business plan. With our templates, you can confidently present your business plans to stakeholders and investors.

Be practical

Avoid overestimating revenue projections or underestimating expenses. Your business plan should be grounded in practical realities like your budget, resources, and capabilities.

Be specific

Provide as much detail as possible in your business plan. A specific plan is easier to execute because it provides clear guidance on what needs to be done and how. Without specific details, your plan may be too broad or vague, making it difficult to know where to start or how to measure success.

Be thorough with your research

Conduct thorough research to fully understand the market, your competitors, and your target audience . By conducting thorough research, you can identify potential risks and challenges your business may face and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Get input from others

It can be easy to become overly focused on your vision and ideas, leading to tunnel vision and a lack of objectivity. By seeking input from others, you can identify potential opportunities you may have overlooked.

Review and revise regularly

A business plan is a living document. You should update it regularly to reflect market, industry, and business changes. Set aside time for regular reviews and revisions to ensure your plan remains relevant and effective.

Create a winning business plan to chart your path to success

Starting or growing a business can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, a well-written business plan can make or break your business’ success.

The purpose of a business plan is more than just to secure funding and attract investors. It also serves as a roadmap for achieving your business goals and realizing your vision. With the right mindset, tools, and strategies, you can develop a visually appealing, persuasive business plan.

Ready to make an effective business plan that works for you? Check out our library of ready-made strategy and planning templates and chart your path to success.

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How To Write A Strategic Plan That Gets Results + Examples

Are you feeling overwhelmed with the thought of writing a strategic plan for your business? Do you want to create a plan that will help you move your team forward with inspired alignment and disciplined execution? You're not alone.

Gone are the days of rigid, 5- or 10-year planning cycles that do not leave room for flexibility and innovation. To stay ahead of the curve, you need a dynamic and execution-ready strategic plan that can guide your business through the ever-evolving landscape.

At Cascade, we understand that writing a strategic plan can be dreadful, especially in today's unpredictable environment. That's why we've developed a simple model that can help you create a clear, actionable plan to achieve your organization's goals. With our tested and proven strategic planning template , you can write a strategic plan that is both adaptable and effective .

Whether you're a seasoned strategy professional or a fresh strategy planner, this guide will walk you through the process step-by-step on how to write a strategic plan. By the end, you'll have a comprehensive, easy-to-follow strategic plan that will help you align your organization on the path to success.

Follow this guide step-by-step or skip to the part you’re most interested in: 

• Pre-Planning Phase: Build The Foundation

Cascade Model For Strategic Planning: What You Need To Know

• Key Elements of a Strategic Plan

How To Write A Strategic Plan In 6 Simple Steps

3 strategic plan examples to get you started, how to achieve organizational alignment with your strategic plan.

• Quick Overview of Key Steps In Writing A Strategic Plan

Create An Execution-Ready Strategic Plan With Cascade 🚀

*Editor’s note: This article is part of our ‘How to create a Strategy’ collection. At the end of this article, you’ll find a link to each piece within this collection so you can dig deeper into each element of an effective strategic plan and more related resources to master strategy execution.

Pre-Planning Phase: Build The Foundation 

Before we dive into writing a strategic plan, it's essential to know the basics you should cover before the planning phase. The pre-planning phase is where you'll begin to gather the data and strategic insights necessary to create an effective strategic plan.

1. Run a strategic planning workshop

The first step is to run a strategic planning workshop with your team. Get your team in the room, get their data, and gather their insights. By running this workshop, you'll foster collaboration and bring fresh perspectives to the table. And that’s not all. 

The process of co-creating and collaborating to put that plan together with stakeholders is one of the most critical factors in strategy execution . According to McKinsey’s research , initiatives in which employees contribute to development are 3.4 times more likely to be successful. They feel like the plan is a result of their efforts, and they feel ownership of it, so they're more likely to execute it. 

💡 Tip: Use strategy frameworks to structure your strategy development sessions, such as GAP analysis , SWOT analysis , Porter’s Five Forces , Ansoff matrix , McKinsey 7S model , or GE matrix . You can even apply the risk matrix that will help you align and decide on key strategic priorities.

2. Choose your strategic planning model

Before creating your strategic plan, you need to decide which structure you will use. There are hundreds of ways to structure a strategic plan. You’ve likely heard of famous strategic models such as OKRs and the Balanced Scorecard .

But beyond the well-known ones, there's also a myriad of other strategic planning models ranging from the extremely simple to the absurdly complex.

Many strategic models work reasonably well on paper, but in reality, they don't show you how to write a strategic plan that fits your organization's needs.

Here are some common weaknesses most popular strategic models have:

• They're too complicated. People get lost in terminology rather than focus on execution.
• They don’t scale. They work well for small organizations but fail when you try to extend them across multiple teams.
• They're too rigid. They force people to add layers for the sake of adding layers.
• They're neither tangible nor measurable. They’re great at stating outcomes but lousy at helping you measure success.
• They're not adaptable. As we saw in the last years, the business environment can change quickly. Your model needs to be able to work in your current situation and adapt to changing economic landscapes.

Our goal in this article is to give you a simpler, more effective way to write a strategic plan. This is a tested and proven strategic planning model that has been refined over years of working with +20,000 teams around the world. We call it the Cascade Strategy Model.

This approach has proven to be more effective than any other model we have tried when it comes to executing and implementing the strategy .

It’s easy to use and it works for small businesses, fast-growing startups, as well as multinationals trying to figure out how to write a fail-proof strategic plan.

We’ve created a simple diagram below to illustrate what a strategic plan following the Cascade Model will look like when it's completed:

Rather than a traditional roadmap , imagine your strategy as a flowchart. Each row is a mandatory step before moving on to the next.

We call our platform  Cascade for a reason: strategy must cascade throughout an organization along with values, focus areas, and objectives.

Above all, the Cascade Model is intended to be execution-ready —in other words, it has been proven to deliver success far beyond strategic planning. It adds to a successful strategic management process.Key elements of a Strategic Plan

Key Elements Of A Strategic Plan

The key elements of a strategic plan include: 

• Vision : Where do you want to get to? 
• Values : How will you behave on the journey? 
• Focus Areas : What are going to be your strategic priorities? 
• Strategic objectives : What do you want to achieve? 
• Actions and projects : How are you going to achieve the objectives? 
• KPIs : How will you measure success?

In this part of the article, we will give you an overview of each element within the Cascade Model. You can follow this step-by-step process in a spreadsheet , or sign up to get instant access to a free Cascade strategic planning template and follow along as we cover the key elements of an effective strategic plan.

Your vision statement is your organization's anchor - it defines where you want to get to and is the executive summary of your organization's purpose. Without it, your strategic plan is like a boat without a rudder, at the mercy of strong winds and currents like Covid and global supply chain disruptions.

A good vision statement can help funnel your strategy towards long-term goals that matter the most to your organization, and everything you write in your plan from this point on will help you get closer to achieving your vision.

Trying to do too much at once is a surefire way to sink your strategic plan. By creating a clear and inspiring vision statement , you can avoid this trap and provide guidance and inspiration for your team. A great vision statement might even help attract talent and investment into your organization.

For example, a bike manufacturing company might have a vision statement like, “To be the premier bike manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest.” This statement clearly articulates the organization's goals and is a powerful motivator for the team.

In short, don't start your strategic plan without a clear vision statement. It will keep your organization focused and help you navigate toward success.

📚 Recommended read: How to Write a Vision Statement (With Examples, Tips, and Formulas)

Values are the enablers of your vision statement —they represent how your organization will behave as you work towards your strategic goals. Unfortunately, many companies throw around meaningless words just for the purpose of PR, leading to a loss of credibility.

To avoid this, make sure to integrate your organization’s core values into everyday operations and interactions. In today's highly-competitive world, it's crucial to remain steadfast in your values and cultivate an organizational culture that's transparent and trustworthy.

Companies with the best company cultures consistently outperform competitors and their average market by up to 115.6%, as reported by Glassdoor . 

For example, a bike manufacturing company might have core values like:

• Accountability

These values reflect the organization's desire to become the leading bike manufacturer, while still being accountable to employees, customers, and shareholders.

👉 Here’s how to add vision and values to your strategic plan in Cascade: 

After you sign up and invite your team members to collaborate on the plan, navigate to Plans and Teams > Teams page, and add the vision, mission and values. This will help you to ensure that the company’s vision, mission statement, and values are always at top of mind for everyone.

📚When you're ready to start creating some company values, check out our guide, How To Create Company Values .

3. Focus Areas

Your focus areas are the strategic priorities that will keep your team on track and working toward the company’s mission and vision. They represent the high-level areas that you need to focus on to achieve desired business outcomes.

In fact, companies with clearly defined priorities are more likely to achieve their objectives. According to a case study by the Harvard Business Review , teams that focus on a small number of key initiatives are more likely to succeed than those that try to do too much. 

That’s also something that we usually recommend to our customers when they set up their strategic plan in Cascade. Rather than spreading your resources too thin over multiple focus areas, prioritize three to five. 

Following our manufacturing example above, some good focus areas include:

• Aggressive growth
• Producing the nation's best bikes
• Becoming a modern manufacturer
• Becoming a top place to work

Your focus areas should be tighter in scope than your vision statement, but broader than specific goals, time frames, or metrics. 

By defining your focus areas, you'll give your teams a guardrail to work within, which can help inspire innovation and creative problem-solving. 

With a clear set of focus areas, your team will be better able to prioritize their work and stay focused on the most important things, which will ultimately lead to better business results.

👉Here’s how you can set focus areas in Cascade: 

In Cascade, you can add focus areas while creating or importing an existing strategic plan from a spreadsheet. With Cascade’s Focus Area deep-dive functionality , you will be able to: 

• Review the health of your focus areas in one place.
• Get a breakdown by plans, budgets, resources, and people behind each strategic priority. 
• See something at-risk? Drill down into each piece of work regardless of how many plans it's a part of.

📚 Recommended read: Strategic Focus Areas: How to create them + Examples

4. Strategic Objectives

The importance of setting clear and specific objectives for your strategic plan cannot be overstated. 

Strategic objectives are the specific and measurable outcomes you want to achieve . While they should align with your focus areas, they should be more detailed and have a clear deadline. 

According to the 2022 State of High Performing Teams report , there is a strong correlation between goals and success not only at the individual and team level but also at the organizational level. Here’s what they found: 

• Employees who are unaware of their company's goals are over three times more likely to work at a company that is experiencing a decline in revenue than employees who are aware of the goals. 
• Companies with shrinking revenues are almost twice as likely to have employees with unclear work expectations. 

Jumping straight into actions without defining clear objectives is a common mistake that can lead to missed opportunities or misalignment between strategy and execution.

To avoid this pitfall, we recommend you add between three and six objectives to each focus area .

It's here that we need to start being a bit more specific for the first time in your strategic planning process . Let's take a look at an example of a well-written strategic objective:

• Continue top-line growth that outpaces the industry by 31st Dec 2023.

This is too specific to be a focus area. While it's still very high level, it indicates what the company wants to accomplish and includes a clear deadline. Both these aspects are critical to a good strategic objective.

Your strategic objectives are the heart and soul of your plan, and you need to ensure they are well-crafted. So, take the time to create well-planned objectives that will help you achieve your vision and lead your organization to success. 

👉Here’s how you can set objectives in Cascade: 

Adding objectives in Cascade is intuitive, straightforward, and accessible from almost anywhere in the workspace. With one click, you’ll open the objective sidebar and fill out the details. These can include a timeline, the objective’s owner, collaborators, and how your objective will be measured (success criteria).

📚 Recommended read: What are Strategic Objectives? How to write them + Examples

5. Actions and projects

Once you’ve defined your strategic objectives, the next step is to identify the specific strategic initiatives or projects that will help you achieve those objectives . They are short-term goals or actionable steps you or your team members will take to accomplish objectives. They should leverage the company’s resources and core competencies. 

Effective projects and actions in your strategic plan should: 

• Be extremely specific. 
• Contain a deadline.
• Have an owner.
• Align with at least one of your strategic objectives.
• Provide clarity on how you or your team will achieve the strategic objective.

Let's take a look at an example of a well-written project continuing with our bike manufacturing company using the strategic objective from above:

Strategic objective: Continue top-line growth that outpaces the industry by 31st Dec 2023.

Project: Expand into the fixed gear market by 31st December 2023.

This is more specific than the objective it links to, and it details what you will do to achieve the objective.

Another common problem area for strategic plans is that they never quite get down to the detail of what you're going to do.

It's easier to state "we need to grow our business," but without concrete projects and initiatives, those plans will sit forever within their PowerPoint templates, never to see the light of day after their initial creation.

Actions and projects are where the rubber meets the road. They connect the organizational strategic goals with the actual capabilities of your people and the resources at their disposal. Defining projects is a vital reality check every strategic plan needs.

👉Here’s how you create actions and projects in Cascade: 

From the Objective sidebar, you can choose to add a project or action under your chosen objective. In the following steps, you can assign an owner and timeline to each action or project.

Plus, in Cascade, you can track the progress of each project or action in four different ways. You can do it manually, via milestones, checklists, or automatically by integrating with Jira and 1000+ other available integrations .  

📚 Recommended read: How to create effective projects

Measuring progress towards strategic objectives is essential to effective strategic control and business success. That's where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come in. KPIs are measurable values that track progress toward achieving key business objectives . They keep you on track and help you stay focused on the goals you set for your organization.

To get the most out of your KPIs, make sure you link them to a specific goal or objective. In this way, you'll avoid creating KPIs that don't contribute to your objectives and distract you from focusing on what matters. 

Ideally, you will add both leading and lagging KPIs to each objective so you can get a more balanced view of how well you're progressing. Leading KPIs can indicate future performance while lagging KPIs show how well you’ve done in the past. Both types of KPIs are critical for operational planning and keeping your business on track.

Think of KPIs as a form of signpost in your organization. They provide critical insights that inform business leaders of their organization’s progress toward key business objectives. Plus, they can help you identify opportunities faster and capitalize on flexibility. 

👉Here’s how you can set and track KPIs in Cascade: 

In Cascade , you can add measures while creating your objectives or add them afterward. Open the Objective sidebar and add your chosen measure. 

When you create your Measure, you can choose how to track it. Using Cascade, you can track it manually or automatically. You can automate tracking via 1000+ integrations , including Excel spreadsheets and Google Sheets. In this way, you can save time and ensure that your team has up-to-date information for faster and more confident decision-making.

📚 Recommended reads:

• 10 Popular KPI Software Tools To Connect & Visualize Your Data (2023 Guide)
• ‍ How To Track KPIs To Hit Your Business Goals

Corporate Strategic Plan 

Following the steps outlined above, you should end up with a strategic plan that looks something like this:

This is a preview of a corporate strategic plan template that is pre-filled with examples. Here you can use the template for free and begin filling it out to align with your organization's needs. Plus, it’s suitable for organizations of all sizes and any industry. 

Once you fill in the template, you can also switch to the timeline view. You’ll get a complete overview of how the different parts of your plan are distributed across the roadmap in a Gantt chart view.

This template will help you create a structured approach to the strategic planning process, focus on key strategic priorities, and drive accountability to achieve necessary business outcomes. 

👉 Get your free corporate strategic plan template here.

Coca-Cola Strategic Plan 

Need a bit of extra inspiration to start writing your organization’s strategic plan? Check out this strategic plan example, inspired by Coca-Cola’s business plan: 

This template is pre-filled with Coca-Cola’s examples so you can inspire your strategic success on one of the most iconic brands on the planet. 

👉 Grab your free example of a Coca-Cola strategic plan here.

The Ramsay Health Care expansion strategy

Ramsay Health Care is a multinational healthcare provider with a strong presence in Australia, Europe, and Asia.

Almost all of its growth was organic and strategic. The company founded its headquarters in Sydney, Australia, but in the 21st century, it decided to expand globally through a primary strategy of making brownfield investments and acquisitions in key locations.

Ramsay's strategy was simple yet clever. By becoming a majority shareholder of the biggest local players, the company expanded organically in each region by leveraging and expanding their expertise.

Over the last two decades, Ramsay's global network has grown to 460 locations across 10 countries with over $13 billion in annual revenue.

📚 Recommended read: Strategy study: The Ramsay Health Care Growth Study

✨ Bonus resource: We've created a list of the most popular and free strategic plan templates in our library that will help you build a strategic plan based on the Cascade model explained in this article. You can use these templates to create a plan on a corporate, business unit, or team level.

We highlighted before that other strategic models often fail to scale strategic plans and goals scales across multiple teams and organizational levels. 

In an ideal world, you want to have a maximum of two layers of detail underneath each of your focus areas. This means you'll have a focus area, followed by a layer of objectives. Underneath the objectives, you'll have a layer of actions, projects, and KPIs.

If you have a single team that’s responsible for the strategy execution, this works well. However, how do you implement a strategy across multiple and cross-functional teams? And why is it important? 

According to LSA research of 410 companies across 8 industries, highly aligned companies grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable. And this is what Cascade can help you achieve. 

To achieve achieve organization-wide alignment with your strategic plan and impact the bottom line, there are two ways to approach it in Casade: through contributing objectives or shared objectives .

1. Contributing objectives

This approach involves adding contributing objectives that link to your main strategic objectives, like this:

For each contributing objective, you simply repeat the Objective → Action/Project → KPI structure as follows:

Here's how you can create contributing objectives in Cascade: 

Option A: Create contributing objectives within the same plan 

This means creating multiple contributing objectives within the same strategic plan that contribute to the main objective. 

However, be aware that if you have a lot of layers, your strategic plan can become cluttered, and people might have difficulty understanding how their daily efforts contribute to the strategic plan at the top level. 

For example, the people responsible for managing contributing objectives at the bottom of the plan ( functional / operational level ) will lose visibility on how are their objectives linked to the main focus areas and objectives (at a corporate / business level ). 

This approach is best suited to smaller organizations that only need to add a few layers of objectives to their plan.

Option B: Create contributing objectives from multiple plans linking to the main objective

This approach creates a network of aligned strategic plans within your organization. Each plan contains a set of focus areas and one single layer of objectives, each with its own set of projects, actions, and KPIs. This concept looks like this:

This example illustrates an objective that is a main objective in the IT strategic plan , but also contributes to the main strategic plan's objective.

For example, let’s say that your main business objective is to improve customer satisfaction by reducing product delivery time by 25% in the next quarter. This objective requires multiple operational teams within your organization to work together to achieve a shared objective. 

Each team will create its own objective in its plan to contribute to the main objective: 

• Logistics team: Reduce the shipment preparation time by 30%
• IT team: Implement new technology to reduce manual handling in the warehouse
• Production team: Increase production output by hour for 5%   

Here’s how this example would look like within Cascade platform:

Although each contributing objective was originally created in its own plan, you can see how each contributing objective relates to the main strategic objective and its status in real-time.

2. Shared objectives

In Cascade, shared objectives are the same objectives shared across different strategic plans.

For example, you can have an objective that is “Achieve sustainable operations”. This objective can be part of the Corporate Strategy Plan, but also part of the Operations Plan , Supply Chain Plan , Production Plan, etc. In short, this objective becomes a shared objective between multiple teams and strategic plan. 

This approach helps you to:

• Cascade your business strategy as deep as you want across a near-infinite number of people while maintaining strategic alignment throughout your organization .
• Create transparency and a much higher level of engagement in the strategy throughout your organization since objective owners are able to identify how their shared efforts contribute to the success of the main business objectives.

The more shared objectives you have across your organization, the more your teams will be aligned with the overarching business strategy. This is what we call " alignment health ”. 

Here’s how you can see the shared objectives in the alignment map and analyze alignment health within Cascade:

You get a snapshot of how is your corporate strategic plan aligned with sub-plans from different business units or departments and the status of shared objectives. This helps you quickly identify misaligned initiatives and act before it’s too late.  Plus, cross-functional teams have better visibility of how their efforts contribute to shared objectives. 

So whether you choose contributing objectives or shared objectives, Cascade has the tools and features to help you achieve organization-wide alignment and boost your bottom line.

Quick Overview Of Key Steps In Writing A Strategic Plan

Here’s a quick infographic to help you remember how everything connects and why each element is critical to creating an effective strategic plan:

This simple answer to how to write a strategic plan avoids confusing jargon and has elements that the whole organization can both get behind and understand. 

💡Tip: Save this image or bookmark this article for your next strategic planning session.

If you're struggling to write an execution-ready strategic plan, the Cascade model is the solution you've been looking for. With its clear, easy-to-understand terminology, and simple linkages between objectives, projects, and KPIs, you can create a plan that's both scalable and flexible.

But why is a flexible and execution-ready strategic plan so important? It's simple: without a clear and actionable plan, you'll never be able to achieve your business objectives. By using the Cascade Strategic Planning Model, you'll be able to create a plan that's both tangible and measurable, with KPIs that help you track progress towards your goals.

However, the real value of the Cascade framework lies in its flexibility . By creating links between main business objectives and your teams’ objectives, you can easily scale your plan without losing focus. Plus, the model's structure of linked layers means that you can always adjust your strategy in response to new challenges or opportunities and keep everyone on the same page. 

So if you want to achieve results with your strategic plan, start using Cascade today. With its unique combination of flexibility and focus, it's the perfect tool for any organization looking to master strategy execution and succeed in today's fast-paced business world. 

Want to see Cascade in action? Get started for free or book a 1:1 demo with Cascade’s in-house strategy expert.

This article is part one of our mini-series "How to Write a Strategic Plan". This first article will give you a solid strategy model for your plan and get the strategic thinking going.

Think of it as the foundation for your new strategy. Subsequent parts of the series will show you how to create the content for your strategic plan.

Articles in our How to Write a Strategic Plan series

• How To Write A Strategic Plan: The Cascade Model (This article)
• How to Write a Good Vision Statement
• How To Create Company Values
• Creating Strategic Focus Areas
• How To Write Strategic Objective
• How To Create Effective Projects
• How To Write KPIs + Ultimate Guide To Strategic Planning

More resources on strategic planning and strategy execution: 

• 6 Steps to Successful Strategy Execution
• 4-Step Strategy Reporting Process (With Template)
• Annual Planning: Plan Like a Pro In 5 Steps (+ Template) 
• 18 Free Strategic Plan Templates (Excel & Cascade) 2023
• The Right Way To Set Team Goals
• 23 Best Strategy Tools For Your Organization in 2023

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How to Develop a Business Strategy: 6 Steps

• 25 Oct 2022

Business strategy can seem daunting, and for good reason: It can make or break an organization. Yet, developing a strong strategy doesn’t need to be overwhelming.

In the online course Business Strategy , Harvard Business School Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee posits that strategy is simple. His secret? Focus on your organization’s value creation.

“Strategy often sounds like a lofty concept that only the most senior executives can develop,” Oberholzer-Gee says. “But actually, anyone can think and act strategically. It doesn’t need to be difficult; all you need is a proven framework.”

Here’s a breakdown of why business strategy is important, the basics of value-based strategy, and six steps for developing your own.

Why Do You Need a Business Strategy?

Business strategy is the development, alignment, and integration of an organization’s strategic initiatives to give it a competitive edge in the market. Devising a business strategy can ensure you have a clear plan for reaching organizational goals and continue to survive and thrive.

According to a study by Bridges Business Consultancy , 48 percent of organizations fail to meet half of their strategic targets and 85 percent fail to meet two-thirds, highlighting why dedication to the business strategy process is crucial.

One type of business strategy is called value-based strategy, which simplifies the process by leveraging the value stick framework to focus on the advantage your business creates.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Value-Based Strategy?

Value-based strategy , also called value-based pricing, is a pricing method in which an organization relies on the perceived value of its goods and services to determine its pricing structure and resource allocation.

The value stick framework can be used to visualize how various factors impact each other and determine which initiatives to pursue to increase value for all parties.

The value stick has four factors:

• Willingness to pay (WTP) : The highest price a customer is willing to pay for your product or service
• Price : The amount customers have to pay for goods or services
• Cost : The amount a company spends on producing goods or services
• Willingness to sell (WTS) : The lowest amount suppliers are willing to accept for the materials required to produce goods or services

To determine how to best create value, you can toggle each factor on the value stick to see how the others are affected. For instance, lowering price increases customer delight.

"As strategists, we really ask three questions,” Oberholzer-Gee says in Business Strategy. “How can my business best create value for customers? How can my business create value for employees? And how can my business create value by collaborating with suppliers? Think of a company's strategy as an answer to these three questions."

Related: 4 Business Strategy Skills Every Business Leader Needs

6 Steps to Develop a Value-Based Business Strategy

1. define your purpose.

When approaching business strategy, defining your organization’s purpose can be a useful starting point.

This is vital in creating customer and employee value, especially if your organization’s purpose is linked to a cause such as environmental protection or alleviating specific social issues.

A recent survey conducted by clean energy company Swytch found that nearly 75 percent of millennials would take a decrease in salary if it meant working for an environmentally responsible company. Nearly 40 percent selected one job over another because of an organization’s sustainability practices.

Additionally, research in the Harvard Business Review shows that consumers’ motivation to buy from sustainable brands is on the rise. Sales of products marked as sustainable grew more than five times faster than those that weren’t.

By starting with purpose, your organization can create more value down the line.

2. Assess Market Opportunity

Next, understand your market’s competitive landscape. Which companies own shares of the market? What differentiates your competitors’ products from yours? Are there any unmet needs your organization could take advantage of?

Conducting this research before planning a strategy is critical in identifying how your organization provides unique customer value and opportunities to create even more.

3. Create Value for Customers

With an understanding of the market and your company’s purpose, you can determine how your organization provides unique or greater value and strategize ways to improve.

On the value stick, the value captured by customers is called “customer delight.” It can be increased by raising their willingness to pay and decreasing the product’s price. If lowering the price isn’t an option, brainstorm how you could make the product more valuable to customers, thus increasing their willingness to pay.

Some ways to create customer value include:

• Lowering the product’s price
• Increasing the product’s physical quality and longevity
• Providing quick, high-quality customer service and a smooth shopping experience
• Leveraging network effects , if applicable, to create a community of users
• Incorporating an environmental or social cause into processes, packaging, and branding

4. Create Value for Suppliers

In addition to creating value for customers, you also need to provide value for suppliers. Suppliers can include any company that provides raw materials, labor, and transportation to help your organization produce goods or deliver services.

Supplier surplus, also called supplier delight, is created when the cost of materials increases or their willingness to sell decreases. The relationship between a firm and its suppliers can be contentious, given that both want to increase their margins. Yet, there are ways to create value for both parties.

Some ways to create value for suppliers include:

• Agreeing to pay more for higher quality materials : While this increases the supplier surplus, it may also increase customer delight by raising willingness to pay, or increase the firm’s margin by allowing you to raise prices.
• Working with the supplier to increase efficiency : This strategy can increase supplier surplus by lowering the overall cost of the supplier’s labor and their willingness to sell.

5. Create Value for Employees

Creating value for employees is a critical part of an effective business strategy and can be assessed using the value stick. Think of your employees as the “supplier” of labor and the supplier margin as employee satisfaction.

Employee satisfaction can be increased by raising wages or lowering the minimum salary they’re willing to receive by delivering value in other ways. Satisfied employees may provide a better customer experience, resulting in increased customer delight.

The value you provide employees ensures they’re motivated to do their best work, develop their skills, and stay with your company long-term.

Some examples of ways to create value for your employees include:

• Offering competitive salaries and bonuses
• Offering benefits like ample paid vacation and sick days, generous parental leave, and wellness budgets
• Providing flexibility of work location, whether your team is fully remote or hybrid
• Aiding in professional development
• Creating a workplace rich with a diversity of experiences, identities, and ideas
• Fostering a supportive organizational culture

One example from Business Strategy is that of a call center for a diagnostics company. The employees were being paid minimum wage and expressed that the analytical nature of their phone calls with customers warranted higher pay. They also expressed pain points about cumbersome tasks and work conditions.

When a pay increase was implemented for all employees, along with operational changes to make processes smoother, employee productivity increased to the point that it balanced out the higher cost of salaries.

Because the employees’ satisfaction increased, they also began providing better experiences on the phone with customers. This increased the customers’ willingness to pay, directly impacting customer delight.

6. Map Strategy to Actionable Tasks and KPIs

Amidst creating value for each of the three groups, don’t forget the fourth party that needs value: your company. By creating value for employees, suppliers, and customers, you’re creating value for your firm, too.

To ensure you’re tracking to goals, determine your key performance indicators, what metrics constitute success, and how you’ll report results over time. Then, break each of the above value-creation goals into action items. For instance, what steps can you take to increase your employees’ compensation? Who will be responsible for each task?

Having actionable assignments and clear metrics for success will allow for a smooth transition from strategy formulation to execution.

Building Your Strategic Skill Set

By leveraging the value stick, you can create a business strategy that provides value to employees, customers, suppliers, and your firm.

To develop your strategies further and dig deeper into how to navigate value creation, consider taking an online course like Business Strategy . Professor Oberholzer-Gee walks through real-world examples of business challenges, prompts you to consider how you’d create value, and then reveals what those business leaders did and how you can apply the lessons to your organization.

Want to learn more about how to craft a successful strategy for your organization? Explore Business Strategy , one of our online strategy courses , to learn how to create organizational value. Not sure which course is the right fit? Download our free flowchart .

About the Author

Strategic Goals: Definition, Importance, and 14 Examples

Strategic goals are more than targets — they’re a vision of your organization’s future. Learn the art of setting and achieving them with our guide.

At the heart of every prosperous organization, from multinational corporations to grassroots nonprofits, are  well-defined goals .

But it’s not just about setting goals; it’s about setting the  right  goals.

Strategic goals serve as the backbone of any successful endeavor, guiding organizations and individuals with a clear vision.

But what do strategic goals look like? And how do you create them?

We’ll break down what strategic goals are and how to develop clear, purposeful ones that can help take your team to the next level.

What are strategic goals?

Strategic goals are broad, primary outcomes or objectives that organizations aim to achieve as they pursue their mission and long-term vision. They provide direction and purpose, guiding the organization’s efforts and resources over a specific time frame — usually several years.

Strategic goals are crucial for guiding organizational strategy.

Characteristics of strategic goals

Strategic goals are typically:

• ‎ Broad in scope:  Unlike tactical or operational goals, which often focus on specific tasks or short-term outcomes, strategic goals address high-level and long-term outcomes.
• Future-oriented:  Strategic goals focus on desired future states or outcomes, pushing the organization forward.
• Motivating:  Strategic goals inspire and engage members of the organization. They provide a sense of purpose and direction.
• Measurable:  Though they are broad, strategic goals are quantifiable in some way so that progress toward achieving them can be tracked.
• Realistic yet challenging:  Strategic goals are achievable, given the organization’s resources and constraints, but they are also demanding enough to drive performance.
• Aligned with the organization’s mission and vision:  Strategic goals directly support the organization’s mission (its core purpose) and vision (its desired future state).
• Limited in number:  Organizations shouldn’t have too many strategic goals at once. A handful is enough.
• Long-term:  Strategic goals typically span multiple years, though the exact time frame can vary depending on the organization and the context of the goal.

Strategic goals vs. other types of goals

Now that we’ve delved into what strategic goals are, you might be wondering how they differ from other goal types.

‎Operational goals

Operational goals are specific targets that relate to the day-to-day functions of an organization. They focus on the internal processes and procedures that need to be improved or enhanced for the organization to meet its strategic goals.

Operational goals are usually  short-term goals  — often set on a yearly basis.

“Reduce production downtime by 10% this year” is an example of an operational goal for a manufacturing company.

Tactical goals

Tactical goals bridge the gap between strategic and operational goals. They are focused on how to achieve  strategic objectives  by outlining specific steps or actions to be taken within a shorter time frame — usually one to three years.

An example of a tactical goal would be “Launch three new product lines within the next 24 months to capture a greater market share.”

SMART goals

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.  SMART goals  provide a framework for setting objectives that are clear, realistic, and trackable.

For instance, instead of simply saying, “Increase sales,” a SMART goal would specify, “Increase sales by 15% over the next six months by expanding our online marketing efforts.”

Stretch goals

Stretch goals  are ambitious targets that go beyond what seems achievable based on the organization’s current circumstances or past performance. They are designed to push the organization out of its comfort zone to achieve exceptional results. While stretch goals are challenging, they’re not completely unrealistic.

“Increase annual revenue by 60% instead of the organization’s typical 20% growth” would be an example of a stretch goal.

The importance of strategic goals

Let’s now delve into how strategic goals can shape an organization’s future.

Provide direction and purpose

Strategic goals provide the organization with a clear direction. They define what the company aims to achieve in the long term, ensuring that everyone is working toward a common objective.

Guide decision-making

Strategic goals act as a guiding light for  decision-making  at all organizational levels. When faced with choices, managers and leaders can refer to the business’s strategic goals to ensure alignment with long-term objectives.

Improve resource allocation

Clear strategic goals help organizations more effectively allocate their resources (time, money, manpower). They help leaders prioritize initiatives that directly contribute to the organization’s pursuit of desired outcomes.

Enhance performance measurement

Strategic goals allow organizations to measure their performance over time. Setting them allows organizations to track their progress, identify areas for improvement, and ensure accountability.

Boost motivation and engagement

Clear and compelling goals inspire and motivate employees. And when employees understand and believe in the organization’s objectives, they are more likely to be engaged and committed to their roles.

‎Support stakeholder communication

Strategic goals communicate the organization’s ambition and future direction to external stakeholders, such as investors, partners, and customers. They provide a sense of stability and assurance that the organization is forward-thinking and has a plan in place.

Align team members

Strategic goals help ensure that different departments or teams within the organization are aligned. Everyone knows the bigger picture, which helps avoid conflicts and overlaps. This, in turn, fosters a  sense of unity and collaboration .

How do you write a strategic goal?

Ready to write your own strategic goals? The steps below will provide a solid foundation for setting goals that guide your organization’s direction.

‎1. Define the organization’s vision

Before diving into specific goals, it’s crucial to have a clear vision statement. A vision statement paints a picture of the organization’s future and clarifies the direction in which the company is heading. It answers the question, “Where do we want to be?”

A vision statement should be aspirational yet grounded in reality. Engage with different stakeholders, from employees to customers, to get diverse input when creating your vision.

As an example, Google’s vision statement is “To provide access to the world’s information in one click.”

2. Perform a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis is a structured approach to evaluating the internal and external factors that impact an organization. It involves examining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Understanding where the organization excels and where challenges lie can help you craft goals that leverage your strengths and address areas of improvement.

Conduct regular SWOT sessions — ideally involving team members from various departments to get a holistic view of the organization.

3. Prioritize the organization’s objectives

Not all objectives are created equal. Determine which goals will best help you realize the organization’s vision and prioritize them. Use tools like the Eisenhower Matrix to determine your goals’ urgency and importance.

For example, if an e-commerce company identifies international expansion and launching a mobile app as objectives, but budget and time are constraints, it might prioritize the app based on potential immediate revenue.

4. Make the goals SMART

SMART goals  are designed to be clear and reachable.

‎A goal like “increase sales” is vague. However, “increase sales by 15% in the next 12 months” is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This clarity increases the goal’s effectiveness and the likelihood of achieving it.

5. Communicate the goals to your team

Once you’ve set the strategic goals, it’s essential to verify that everyone in the organization understands them. This encourages alignment, fosters collaboration, and ensures everyone is pulling in the same direction.

Use a variety of communication channels — such as  team meetings , emails, and internal platforms — to ensure wide reach and comprehension.

6. Stay flexible

A business environment is dynamic. As situations change, be ready to adjust your goals as needed, ensuring they always align with the broader vision and the current context.

Schedule regular meetings  to assess the relevance and practicality of current goals. Then, make adjustments based on real-time data and feedback.

14 strategic goals examples

Here are 14 examples of strategic goals for different business contexts:

• Corporate growth:  “Achieve $2 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2025.”
• Market penetration:  “Increase our market share in Europe from 15% to 25% by 2024.”
• Innovation:  “Launch three new innovative products that address emerging market needs by the end of 2023.”
• Customer satisfaction:  “Achieve a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 80 or above consistently over the next three years.”
• Operational efficiency:  “Reduce operational costs by 10% while maintaining product quality by Q4 2023.”
• Employee development:  “Ensure 90% of employees undergo at least two professional development training sessions annually.”
• Environmental sustainability:  “Reduce our carbon footprint by 50% by 2030 and implement a zero-waste policy in all our locations.”
• Expansion:  “Open 20 new retail stores across Asia and North America by 2024.”
• Brand recognition:  “Become one of the top three most recognized brands in our industry by 2025.”
• Digital transformation:  “Implement an integrated digital platform to enhance customer experience, aiming for a 20% increase in online sales by 2023.”
• Supply chain optimization:  “Establish two new distribution centers to decrease delivery lead times by 30%.”
• Community engagement:  “Partner with five local nonprofits to drive community upliftment projects by 2024.”
• Product diversification:  “Expand our product line to include five new categories by 2025.”
• Stakeholder engagement:  “Increase shareholder dividend payouts by 10% year-over-year for the next five years.”

Strategic goal best practices

Incorporating the following best practices when setting strategic goals can significantly increase an organization’s likelihood of success, fostering a culture of clarity, commitment, and achievement:

• Break them down:  Create clear, actionable steps for each goal. Splitting larger goals into smaller objectives or tasks makes them more manageable and less daunting. This approach allows for a systematic progression toward the end goal.
• Be realistic:  Goals should be ambitious, but they also need to be achievable. Setting unrealistic targets can demotivate teams when they continually fall short. It’s vital to strike a balance between aspiration and practicality.
• Celebrate  milestones :  Recognizing and celebrating interim achievements can boost morale and motivation. These moments serve as reminders of progress and inspire teams to keep pushing forward.
• Consider external factors:  External influences, such as market conditions, technological advancements, or regulatory changes, can impact the feasibility and relevance of strategic goals. Regularly reassess and adjust your strategic goals in light of these external developments.
• Ensure accountability:  Assign responsibility for each goal to specific teams or individuals. When people know they are accountable, they’re more likely to take ownership, drive results, and ensure their goals’ completion.

Bring your strategic goals to life with Motion

Strategic goals offer companies a clear direction and purpose, ensuring that every step taken aligns with the bigger picture. However, crafting and tracking these goals can be challenging.

Motion simplifies the goal-setting process, providing tools to help break down, monitor, and accomplish organizations’ ambitions. Its intuitive interface allows teams to stay synchronized, celebrate milestones, and adjust to challenges.

Don’t just set goals; achieve them with precision and efficiency using Motion.  Sign up for a free 7-day trial today .

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Strategic Planning

The art of formulating business strategies, implementing them, and evaluating their impact based on organizational objectives

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the art of creating specific business strategies, implementing them, and evaluating the results of executing the plan, in regard to a company’s overall long-term goals or desires. It is a concept that focuses on integrating various departments (such as accounting and finance, marketing, and human resources) within a company to accomplish its strategic goals. The term strategic planning is essentially synonymous with strategic management.

The concept of strategic planning originally became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and enjoyed favor in the corporate world up until the 1980s, when it somewhat fell out of favor. However, enthusiasm for strategic business planning was revived in the 1990s and strategic planning remains relevant in modern business.

CFI’s Course on Corporate & Business Strategy is an elective course for the FMVA Program.

Strategic Planning Process

The strategic planning process requires considerable thought and planning on the part of a company’s upper-level management. Before settling on a plan of action and then determining how to strategically implement it, executives may consider many possible options. In the end, a company’s management will, hopefully, settle on a strategy that is most likely to produce positive results (usually defined as improving the company’s bottom line) and that can be executed in a cost-efficient manner with a high likelihood of success, while avoiding undue financial risk.

The development and execution of strategic planning are typically viewed as consisting of being performed in three critical steps:

1. Strategy Formulation

In the process of formulating a strategy, a company will first assess its current situation by performing an internal and external audit. The purpose of this is to help identify the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats ( SWOT Analysis ). As a result of the analysis, managers decide on which plans or markets they should focus on or abandon, how to best allocate the company’s resources, and whether to take actions such as expanding operations through a joint venture or merger.

Business strategies have long-term effects on organizational success. Only upper management executives are usually authorized to assign the resources necessary for their implementation.

2. Strategy Implementation

After a strategy is formulated, the company needs to establish specific targets or goals related to putting the strategy into action, and allocate resources for the strategy’s execution. The success of the implementation stage is often determined by how good a job upper management does in regard to clearly communicating the chosen strategy throughout the company and getting all of its employees to “buy into” the desire to put the strategy into action.

Effective strategy implementation involves developing a solid structure, or framework, for implementing the strategy, maximizing the utilization of relevant resources, and redirecting marketing efforts in line with the strategy’s goals and objectives.

3. Strategy Evaluation

Any savvy business person knows that success today does not guarantee success tomorrow. As such, it is important for managers to evaluate the performance of a chosen strategy after the implementation phase.

Strategy evaluation involves three crucial activities: reviewing the internal and external factors affecting the implementation of the strategy, measuring performance, and taking corrective steps to make the strategy more effective. For example, after implementing a strategy to improve customer service, a company may discover that it needs to adopt a new customer relationship management (CRM) software program in order to attain the desired improvements in customer relations.

All three steps in strategic planning occur within three hierarchical levels: upper management, middle management, and operational levels. Thus, it is imperative to foster communication and interaction among employees and managers at all levels, so as to help the firm to operate as a more functional and effective team.

Benefits of Strategic Planning

The volatility of the business environment causes many firms to adopt reactive strategies rather than proactive ones. However, reactive strategies are typically only viable for the short-term, even though they may require spending a significant amount of resources and time to execute. Strategic planning helps firms prepare proactively and address issues with a more long-term view. They enable a company to initiate influence instead of just responding to situations.

Among the primary benefits derived from strategic planning are the following:

1. Helps formulate better strategies using a logical, systematic approach

This is often the most important benefit. Some studies show that the strategic planning process itself makes a significant contribution to improving a company’s overall performance, regardless of the success of a specific strategy.

2. Enhanced communication between employers and employees

Communication is crucial to the success of the strategic planning process. It is initiated through participation and dialogue among the managers and employees, which shows their commitment to achieving organizational goals.

Strategic planning also helps managers and employees show commitment to the organization’s goals. This is because they know what the company is doing and the reasons behind it. Strategic planning makes organizational goals and objectives real, and employees can more readily understand the relationship between their performance, the company’s success, and compensation. As a result, both employees and managers tend to become more innovative and creative, which fosters further growth of the company.

3. Empowers individuals working in the organization

The increased dialogue and communication across all stages of the process strengthens employees’ sense of effectiveness and importance in the company’s overall success. For this reason, it is important for companies to decentralize the strategic planning process by involving lower-level managers and employees throughout the organization. A good example is that of the Walt Disney Co., which dissolved its separate strategic planning department, in favor of assigning the planning roles to individual Disney business divisions.

An increasing number of companies use strategic planning to formulate and implement effective decisions. While planning requires a significant amount of time, effort, and money, a well-thought-out strategic plan efficiently fosters company growth, goal achievement, and employee satisfaction.

Additional Resources

Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to Strategic Planning. To keep learning and advancing your career, the additional CFI resources below will be useful:

• Broad Factors Analysis
• Scalability
• Systems Thinking
• See all management & strategy resources
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13 SMART Goals Examples for Strategic Planning

In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business landscape, organizations must have a clear vision and direction to achieve their goals. This is where strategic planning comes into play.

Strategic planning can be defined as defining an organization’s direction, making decisions on allocating resources to pursue this strategy, and guiding the implementation of the chosen plan.

It’s a structured approach that helps organizations set priorities , focus resources, strengthen operations, and ensure employees work towards common goals.

Below, we’ll cover examples of SMART goals to help organizations effectively utilize strategic planning for their success. Let’s dive into it.

Table of Contents

What is a SMART Goal?

The SMART template is a powerful tool that can help you establish goals for strategic success. If you’re unfamiliar, SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.

Let’s better understand each element of the SMART approach:

Rather than setting broad and ambiguous objectives like improving strategic skills or climbing the corporate ladder, it’s crucial to specify what you want to devise a roadmap.

Whether increasing revenue by X% or seeking professional growth opportunities, be sure to have a well-defined strategic plan to fuel your journey.

Quantifiable goals enable you to monitor progress and pinpoint areas that need enhancement. For instance, if your goal is to boost profits by 35%, then routinely tracking the financial metrics can help you ascertain whether this is being realized.

While it might be alluring to aim for the stars, keep your feet grounded in reality. Setting unrealistic goals can often cause frustration, adversely affecting your performance. Therefore, evaluate what’s achievable given your current capabilities.

Formulating goals that align with your core values is the secret to enduring tough times. Doing so can ignite an inner passion that resonates with us profoundly. Otherwise, it’s easy to lose steam and abandon our goals when confronted with hurdles.

Incorporating a timeline can ensure consistent progress and keep your aims in view. Understand that success isn’t an overnight phenomenon; it’s the cumulative result of persistent resilience over time.

1. Improve Employee Retention

“Our company will boost employee retention for three years by providing more opportunities for professional growth, implementing a fair and transparent promotion process, and creating a positive work environment.”

Specific: The actions taken are providing professional opportunities, implementing a fair promotion process, and fostering a positive workplace.

Measurable: Reduction in employee turnover rate can be determined. Employee satisfaction can also be tracked through surveys.

Attainable: As long as the company is willing to implement these changes, they are possible.

Relevant: This goal ties into promoting a positive work environment and improving employee retention .

Time-based: The actions should be implemented over three years.

2. Expand Market Share

“By the end of two years, I want to increase our market share by 30% through targeted marketing campaigns and expanding into new territories. I’ll evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts every 6 months to ensure we are on track.”

Specific: The goal is to increase market share by 30% within two years.

Measurable: Progress will be evaluated every 6 months to track the growth in market share.

Attainable: Although ambitious, this is doable through the listed action items (targeted marketing and expanding into new territories).

Relevant: This statement pertains to strategic planning as it focuses on the organization’s long-term growth.

Time-based: The goal has a time frame of two years for accomplishment.

3. Minimize Carbon Footprint

“The company will reduce its carbon emissions by 20% within three years by implementing energy-efficient practices, utilizing renewable energy sources, and promoting remote work options for employees.”

Specific: The goal is explicit in stating that the company will reduce carbon emissions by 20%.

Measurable: The company can track its progress through regular energy consumption reports and employee surveys about remote work options.

Attainable: Assuming the organization has the resources to implement energy-efficient practices and renewable energy sources, this goal is feasible.

Relevant: Reducing carbon emissions is essential for environmental sustainability and can also decrease energy costs for the company.

Time-based: There is a three-year window for strategic success.

4. Strengthen Brand Awareness

“We want to increase our social media presence by 20% for the next year through consistent posting and engaging with followers. That way, we can increase brand recognition and reach a larger audience.”

Specific: This goal specifies the desired result (20% increase in social media presence) and how to reach it (consistent posting and engaging with followers).

Measurable: Monitor the number of followers, likes, shares, and comments on social media platforms.

Attainable: Increasing social media presence is feasible with a consistent and strategic approach.

Relevant: Strategic planning must include marketing and promoting the organization’s brand.

Time-based: The goal is set for one year, providing a timeline for completion.

5. Develop New Products or Services

“Our company will develop three new products or services to expand our customer base. We plan to conduct market research to identify potential ideas and then allocate resources to create these products/services within the next 18 months.”

Specific: This specifies the number of new products or services to be developed and a timeline of 18 months.

Measurable: The outcome of conducting market research and allocating resources can be measured by successfully creating three new products or services.

Attainable: While it may require significant resources, launching new services or products is a matter of careful planning and execution.

Relevant: If the market research is conducted effectively, the new products/services will appeal to a larger customer base and contribute to the organization’s growth.

Time-based: Success is anticipated over the following 18 months.

6. Enhance Customer Satisfaction

“The goal is to improve customer satisfaction by enhancing the quality of our products and services. Over the two years ahead, we aim to increase our customer satisfaction score from 85% to 95%.”

Specific: The goal is clearly defined as improving customer satisfaction.

Measurable: Gauge progress by the customer satisfaction score, increasing from 85% to 95%.

Attainable: Any company can strive to improve customer satisfaction by enhancing the quality of their services and products.

Relevant: High customer satisfaction is crucial for strategic planning as it can lead to positive word of mouth.

Time-based: The SMART statement will be met after two whole years.

7. Streamline Business Processes

“Our organization aims to streamline business processes by automating repetitive tasks within 10 months. This will involve thoroughly analyzing current processes and selecting appropriate software solutions.”

Specific: The goal is clearly defined as streamlining business processes using technology and automation.

Measurable: This can be evaluated based on the number of tasks successfully automated within the given time frame.

Attainable: With proper resources and planning, automating repetitive tasks is a feasible goal for a company to achieve in 10 months.

Relevant: Streamlining business processes through automation is an excellent strategic goal for organizations looking to improve efficiency.

Time-based: Your company has an end date of 10 months for optimal success.

8. Increase Revenue

“For this fiscal year, we will increase revenue by 20% by implementing a new marketing strategy and expanding into international markets.”

Specific: This goal states the desired outcome—increasing revenue and the methods to achieve it.

Measurable: The 20% increase in business revenue is a quantifiable target.

Attainable: Implementing a new marketing strategy and expanding into international markets are feasible actions that can lead to increased revenue.

Relevant: This strategic goal relates to the organization’s overall objective of growth and expansion.

Time-based: The deadline for this statement is within the fiscal year.

9. Foster Innovation and Creativity

“I’ll help foster a culture of innovation and creativity within my department by creating a dedicated team and providing resources for brainstorming. Within 15 months, I aim to increase the number of original ideas generated by 50%.”

Specific: The SMART goal clearly outlines steps towards fostering innovation and creativity.

Measurable: You can track the number of new ideas the team generates over time.

Attainable: A well-defined plan is in place to encourage innovation within the department.

Relevant: It aligns with the organization’s strategic plan of promoting innovation and staying ahead of the competition.

Time-based: Goal achievement is expected over the following 15 months.

10. Build Stronger Partnerships

“We will develop a partnership with two local businesses to support our community initiatives for four years. That should allow us to expand our reach and increase our impact in the local area.”

Specific: You’ll help build partnerships with two specific local businesses.

Measurable: Assess if the partnerships are formed and how strong they are.

Attainable: As part of your strategic planning, forming partnerships with local businesses for community support is feasible.

Relevant: This goal aligns with your organization’s mission and values to positively impact the local area.

Time-based: Four years are allotted for the partnership to grow and expand.

11. Review and Update Company Policies

“Within two years, I’ll review and update all company policies to ensure they align with current laws and regulations. This includes conducting a thorough analysis of any changes needed and seeking legal counsel where necessary.”

Specific: The SMART goal is evident as it outlines the steps involved in reviewing and updating company policies.

Measurable: Keep a record of policies that have been reviewed and updated within the two-year time frame.

Attainable: Commencing the review process and seeking legal counsel are not extremely difficult tasks.

Relevant: Adhering to updated company policies is relevant to the organization’s strategic success.

Time-based: There is a two-year end date for goal attainment.

12. Improve Work-Life Balance

“I’ll limit my work hours to 40 per week for three months and use my weekends to disconnect from work and spend quality time with my family. I must balance work and personal life, so this is my first step.”

Specific: This explains what you’ll do ( limit work hours ) and how long you will do it for (three months).

Measurable: Counting the hours worked per week can determine if the goal has been met.

Attainable: Limiting work hours is reasonable with proper time management and prioritization.

Relevant: Your strategic plan might be less effective if you constantly feel overworked and lack quality time with loved ones.

Time-based: The SMART statement will be achieved in three months.

13. Reduce Production Costs

“By implementing more efficient processes and sourcing materials at lower costs, I aim to reduce the overall production costs of my company by 20% within the next two years.”

Specific: The goal states what will be done (implementing efficient processes and sourcing materials) and how much production costs should be reduced (20%).

Measurable: Many tools and metrics can track production costs, like cost per unit or total production expenses.

Attainable: The goal is feasible by implementing practical process changes and materials sourcing.

Relevant: Cost reduction is an important aspect of maintaining a successful business.

Time-based: The deadline for this SMART goal is two whole years.

Final Thoughts

Strategic planning is a vital process that helps organizations succeed. Using the SMART method , you can ensure that your organization’s strategic goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.

This framework boosts the likelihood of success and provides a roadmap for accomplishing goals. Remember to review your goals to align them with your company’s vision and objectives.

Keep striving towards these goals to stay ahead of the competition and drive organizational success. With proper planning and execution, strategic goals can pave the way for a prosperous future.

Strategic Goals: What They Are, Examples, and How They Work

Strategic business growth is a goal of most entrepreneurs and business leaders. Strategic growth is the deliberate and planned efforts of a business to expand its operations, increase its market share, or enhance its financial performance. However, this growth cannot happen without the business setting and accomplishing solid strategic goals. 

What Are Strategic Goals

 Strategic business goals ar e critical high-level objectives set by a company to steer its overall direction and development. These goals are typically broad and long-term. They are the framework that helps a company with its operational planning and decision-making.

Strategic Goals vs Tactical Goals

Also, they often span several years instead of months. When a business has long-term goal s , those goals should involve multiple considerations. Strategic goals will often be things like expanding market share or developing a new product line. These types of goals do not happen overnight and are much more involved and involve a lot more planning and participation from everyone in the organization. 

Both types of goals are important. However, knowing the difference between the two can help leaders increase the odds of reaching success.

Examples of Strategic Goals

Increase total revenue by $3m in the next 2 years.

It may require the business to focus on market expansion, product development, or service enhancement. This goal aligns with the broader vision and mission of the company. That means the goal will help guide decision-making at the highest level. Also, achieving this significant financial milestone often necessitates substantial planning and resource allocation over an extended period. This is why this is more of a strategic rather than a tactical goal.

Reduce Costs by 15% in the Next 12 months

However, if the business is a drop shipping company, it would need to examine the cost of advertising its products. It could also look into low-cost marketing methods like content marketing. Both examples would require time, effort, and consistent focus. The solutions rarely appear overnight which would not qualify this goal as tactical. 

Diversifying Revenue Streams by Adding 2 New Products

Increasing customer conversion rates by 10%.

Increasing customer conversion rates is a goal focused on optimizing the effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies to turn prospects into paying customers at a higher rate. This can involve refining marketing messages, improving user experience on digital platforms, or enhancing customer service.

Acquiring a New Company Within 3 years

It is a good strategic move to buy a company because the acquiring company can absorb the strengths of the company. They also expand their product line without having to develop a new product. In essence, the acquisition of a competitor could help a business reach several strategic goals all at once. 

Reducing Employee Turnover to 17% During the Next 12 Months

Leaders would have to examine company culture, career growth opportunities, salaries, benefits, and other things that may be causing low retention rates. This is strategic because the benefits of lowering employee turnover will benefit the company in the long run.

10 Powerful Non-Financial Business Goals to Set for Yourself

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21 Strategic Goals Examples To Drive Your Company Forward

• OKR - Objectives & Key Results

What Are Key Strategic Goals and Objectives?

21 examples of strategic goals, 5 steps for writing strategic goals for a company, start setting strategic business goals today.

As a leader, setting business goals and tracking them are essential parts of your job. You may be used to setting goals for the year or the quarter, but you also need to think bigger than that if you want to produce real change at your company.

This is where strategic goals come into play.  

When they’re accompanied by good execution and implementation, strategic goals have the potential to drive success in a major way. This is especially true when they’re written down and reviewed during weekly check-in meetings. One study even showed that these two steps can increase your chances of achieving your goals by 76%.

Read on for an in-depth explanation of what strategic goals are and how goals differ from objectives . You’ll also find some practical strategic goals examples to inspire your team, as well as some goal-setting tools to start using today.

A strategic goal is a long-term goal — complete with a set of specific Objectives and Key Results — that a business strives to achieve over a period of time.

These goals are typically projected several years into the future — in most cases, between 3 and 5 years.

Goals vs Objectives

A lot of people use the terms “goals” and “objectives” interchangeably. However, there are some important differences between the two:

• Goals : Goals are long-term, broad, and achievable.
• Objectives : Objectives are specific and measurable — each team or employee uses them to achieve their overall goals.

Imagine a business that wants to become an industry leader in its field. The desire to become an industry leader would be the long-term goal. However, the company and its various teams would also set more specific, short-term objectives (such as quarterly or yearly objectives) to achieve that larger goal.

Strategic goals will ideally be simple, easy-to-measure, easy-to-track, specific, and have a clear deadline. Below are some strategic goals and objectives examples to inspire you and your team:

Examples of Strategic Goals in Management

• Add 30 new employees within the next 5 years
• Write and distribute new company values by the end of 2025
• Create and implement a new employee referral program by the end of 2025.

Financial Strategic Goals Examples

• Increase revenue by 50% by the end of 2026
• Diversify company revenue streams by the end of 2025
• Triple the number of products in the company portfolio in the next 5 years.

Strategic Operational Goals Examples

• Cut the number of product returns in half in the next 3 years
• Decrease customer delivery time by 3 days by the end of 2025
• Decrease the number of customer complaints by 30% by the end of 2026.

HR Strategic Goals Examples

• Create and implement a communication skills training program by the end of 2027
• Decrease employee turnover by 5% by the end of 2025
• Increase employee satisfaction rating by 10% by the end of 2026.

Strategic Marketing Goals Examples

• Increase website traffic by 100% by the end of 2026
• Complete a total website redesign by the end of 2027
• Create and implement a social media influencer marketing program in the next 3 years. 

Strategic Sales Goals Examples

• Increase customer conversion rate by 3% in the next 3 years
• Increase sales revenue by 15% in the next 5 years
• Increase customer retention by 5% each year for the next 3 years.

IT Strategic Goals Examples

• Reduce cost per ticket by 15% by the end of 2026
• Reduce IT costs to 2% of company revenue by the end of 2025
• Reduce IT spending by 20% by the end of 2026.

Consider also using individual employee goals. They increase job satisfaction and confidence amongst employees. Read more

Set Strategic Goals as OKRs

Using software to set, track and measure strategic goals is a great choice. Try the OKR methodology in Weekdone for real company results.

Approximately 77% of small business owners are confident in their ability to execute their strategies, but 95% of them fall short each year.

To avoid being part of this group, remember the examples of strategic goals discussed above, and follow these 4 steps to write strategic goals:

1. Evaluate Your Current State

If you look at most examples of smart goals for strategic planning, you’ll see that they start with an evaluation of the business’s current state — how the company’s doing, the milestones you’ve met recently, challenges you’re facing, etc.  

2. Consider Your Desired Future State

This step involves answering questions like “What kind of value do you want to provide to your customers/clients in the future?”, “Where I want my company to be in terms of customers, sales, revenue, and profit after five years from today?”, “What type of changes would I like to see outside my company in the next five years? Is it possible, and how much?”.

3. Write Specific Strategic Goals

Next, you’ll write more specific, long-term goals that help you identify where you want your company to be in the future. Whether you’re working on a Shopify email marketing campaign or are launching a new app feature, consider using the strategic, tactical, and operational goals examples listed above to provide more information and guide you through this step.

4. Draft an Action Plan

Next, you’ll create an action plan with specific OKRs to measure progress and make goals more manageable. 

If you need help creating an action plan for your team, use this strategic business goals template to get started. Simply download the template, fill it in, and distribute it to your team to keep everyone in the loop.

You can also use a strategic goal setting software instead of spreadsheets – making it easier for you and your teams to set and track goals.

Advantages of strategic goal-setting software Everyone gets updated automatically whenever changes are made; Easier alignment between team goals and company-wide goals; Visual dashboards make it easier to follow along and measure progress.

Strategic business goals help to drive your company forward and achieve desired results over a longer time period (3-5 years). Benefits of strategic goals include easier prioritization, easier resource allocation, better budgeting, and more alignment among team members.

It’s important to understand strategic planning goals and objectives examples because they provide valuable insights for your team:

• An understanding of examples of strategic objectives and goals is beneficial to all kinds of teams, including managers, finance teams, HR teams, marketing teams, and IT teams;
• The process of writing strategic goals includes evaluating your company’s current state, considering where you want to be in the future, writing specific goals related to where you want to be in the future, and identifying specific key results to help measure progress;
• Goal-setting software can help you write effective strategic goals for your team and monitor progress more easily. 

If you need more examples of strategic planning, these goal-setting and OKR resources can provide more insights:

• An in-depth guide to Objectives and Key Results
• How to write great Objectives and Key Results
• When to use annual OKRs vs quarterly OKRs
• The best goal-setting tools for OKRs 

If you’re ready to change your approach to writing strategic goals, Weekdone can help.

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Strategic Planning Should Be a Strategic Exercise

• Graham Kenny

Don’t create a plan. Create a system.

Many managers complain that strategy-making often reduces to an operational action plan that resembles the last one.  To prevent that from happening they need to remember that strategy is about creating a system whereby a company’s stakeholders interact to create a sustainable advantage for the company.  Strategic planning is how the company designs that system, which is very different from an operational action plan in that it is never a static to-do list but constantly evolves as strategy makers acquire more insights into how their system of stakeholders can create value.

Over the years I’ve facilitated many strategic planning workshops for business, government, and not-for-profit organizations. We reflect on recent changes and future trends and consider how to engage with them for corporate success.

• Graham Kenny is the CEO of Strategic Factors and author of Strategy Discovery . He is a recognized expert in strategy and performance measurement who helps managers, executives, and boards create successful organizations in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. He has been a professor of management in universities in the U.S. and Canada.

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How to Write a Business Plan Outline in 9 Steps (Example Included!)

Starting a business often begins with writing a business plan , especially if you need funding . It acts as a roadmap, guiding you through each stage of launching and managing your company, and it presents a clear, compelling case to potential investors and partners. But here's the thing: not everyone finds this step intuitive. That's where a business plan outline can be incredibly helpful.

Creating a detailed business plan outline helps you organize your thoughts and ensure you cover all the key aspects of your business strategy. Plus, it might be just what you need to overcome that blank page and start typing.

Below, you'll find an easy-to-follow guide on how to craft your business plan outline, and an example to show you what it should look like.

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What is an outline of a business plan?

Think of a business plan outline as the skeleton of your entire business plan. It gives a high-level overview of the main sections you'll need to flesh out later. It's not the final document but a crucial step in getting you there.

Simply put, it's like creating a detailed table of contents for your business plan, showing you exactly what information to include and how everything fits together. A well-structured business plan outline also helps you plan things ahead, saving time and effort.

Writing a business plan outline in 9 steps

Follow these steps to build your business plan outline and learn exactly what each section should include.

(Bear in mind that every business plan is unique, tailored to the specific needs and goals of the business. While the structure below is common, the order of sections may vary—only the executive summary will always come first.)

1. Executive summary

Imagine you have just 60 seconds to convince someone to invest in your business. That's the essence of a strong executive summary. Although it appears first on your business plan, this section is often written last because it sums up the entire plan. Think of it as your elevator pitch . This section gives a quick overview of your entire business plan, highlighting key points that grab the reader's attention.

Keep it clear and concise. Start with a brief overview of your business, including its name and what it offers. Summarize your mission statement and objectives, and don’t forget to mention crucial aspects like financial projections and competitive advantages.

2. Company description

Here's where you provide detailed information about your company. Begin with the business name and location. Describe the legal structure (e.g., sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation) and ownership. If your business already exists, share a brief history.

For new ventures, explain the business's nature and the problems you aim to solve. Go into more detail about your vision and mission statements, outlining your goals and the principles guiding your business. This section helps potential investors and stakeholders grasp your company’s identity and purpose.

3. Market research and analysis

This section shares insights into your company’s industry. Start with a landscape analysis to give an overview of the market, including its size, growth rate, and key players.

Next, define your target market and customer demographics—age, location, income, and interests—detailing who your ideal customers are. Identify market needs and trends your business will address, and highlight customer pain points your product or service aims to solve.

Consider conducting a SWOT analysis to evaluate your business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and gain a strategic view of where your business stands in the competitive landscape.

4. Organization and management

Describe how your business is structured and who runs it. Outline the organizational structure, and if helps, include a chart. Introduce the leadership team and key personnel, highlighting their qualifications and roles. If you have a board of directors, mention them and briefly explain their involvement.

Then, outline your production processes, detailing how your product or service is (or will be) created—from sourcing materials to delivery—to give a comprehensive view of your operational capabilities.

5. Products and services

This section of your business plan outline is crucial for showing potential investors what makes your products and services unique and valuable.

Clearly describe what your business offers, emphasizing your unique selling propositions (USPs) and the benefits and features that set you apart from the competition. Talk about the product life cycle, including any plans for future updates.

If your business holds any intellectual property or proprietary technologies, detail them here to underscore your competitive advantages.

6. Marketing strategy

Having a fantastic product or service is just half the battle. The marketing plan section should outline how you'll reach your target market and convert them into customers.

Begin with market positioning and branding, explaining how you want your brand perceived. Detail your marketing and promotional strategies, including specific tactics to reach your target audience.

Discuss your sales strategy, focusing on how you'll convert leads into customers. Lastly, include your pricing strategy and provide a sales forecast, projecting your expected revenue over a certain period.

7. Operations plan

Here, the goal is to give a detailed overview of the physical and logistical aspects of your company. Start with the business location and facilities, describing where it operates and any significant physical assets. Detail the technology and equipment needed for daily operations.

Briefly describe your supply chain and logistics processes to illustrate how you manage inventory, procurement, and distribution. Finish it by outlining your production process and quality control measures to ensure your products or services consistently meet high standards.

8. Financial plan

Use this section of the business plan to show how your company will succeed financially. Include financial projections like income statements and cash flow statements. Specify how much capital you need and how you plan to use it, discussing funding sources.

Conduct a break-even analysis to estimate when your business will become profitable. Be transparent and address any financial risks and assumptions, outlining how you plan to mitigate them.

9. Appendices and exhibits

In this section, include any additional information that supports your business plan. This might be resumes of key personnel to highlight your team's expertise and experience, or even legal documents and agreements.

Include market research data and surveys to back up your market analysis. Add financial statements for a detailed look at your financial plan. Also, provide detailed product specifications to give a clear understanding of your products and services.

Here's a business plan outline example

Not quite there yet? Take a look at this business plan outline example—it will make everything clear for you.

3.1 Executive Summary

• Overview of the business
• Key points of the business plan

3.2 Company Description

• Business name and location
• History and nature of the business
• Legal structure and ownership
• Vision and mission statement

3.3 Market Research and Analysis

• Industry analysis
• Target market and customer demographics
• Market needs, trends
• Customer pain points
• SWOT analysis

3.4 Organization and Management

• Organizational structure
• Leadership team and key personnel
• Roles and responsibilities
• Board of directors (if applicable)
• Production processes

3.5 Products and Services

• Description of products or services offered
• Unique selling propositions, benefits, features
• Product lifecycle and development plans
• Intellectual property and proprietary technologies

3.6 Marketing Strategy

• Market positioning and branding
• Marketing and promotional strategies
• Sales strategy and tactics
• Pricing strategy and sales forecast

3.7 Operations Plan

• Business location and facilities
• Technology and equipment
• Supply chain and logistics
• Production process and quality control

3.8 Financial Plan

• Financial projections (income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements)
• Funding requirements and sources
• Break-even analysis
• Financial risks and assumptions

3.9 Appendices and Exhibits (if applicable)

• Supporting documents and additional information
• Resumes of key personnel
• Legal documents and agreements
• Market research data and surveys
• Financial Statements
• Detailed Product Specifications

Bonus tips on how to write a winning business plan

Once you've done your business plan outline, it's time to fill in the gaps and craft a winning business plan. Here are some bonus tips to keep in mind:

• Tailor it to fit your business : Customize sections to meet industry-specific needs and highlight what makes your business unique.
• Keep it clear and concise : Use straightforward language and support your points with data to ensure easy understanding and avoid any confusion.
• Set actionable and realistic goals : Define measurable objectives with clear timelines and milestones to track your progress.
• Update regularly : Keep your plan dynamic by making regular updates to reflect changes in goals, market conditions, and strategies.
• Seek feedback : Gain insights from mentors and advisors to refine your plan.

Read this next: How to Start a Business in 8 Steps: A Comprehensive Guide from Concept to Launch

Business Goals: Strategies for Achieving Organizational Success

By GGI Insights | July 14, 2024

Table of contents

Whether you're a startup striving to make your mark or an established enterprise aiming for growth, clear goals are the roadmap guiding your company to new heights. Incorporating a well-defined growth strategy into your goal-setting process can significantly enhance your business's trajectory. This blog delves into effective strategies for achieving business goals, helping you navigate the often tumultuous journey of growing and sustaining your organization. You'll find practical tips, proven frameworks, and inspiring examples that can revolutionize your goal-setting approach, driving both short-term wins and long-term triumphs. So, if you're ready to transform your business aspirations into actionable strategies, read on!

Why Setting Business Goals is Crucial for Success

Defining your vision and mission.

Before diving into strategies, understanding the importance of defining your business vision and mission is essential. These elements form the foundation upon which all business goals rest. Your vision gives you a picture of where you want to be in the future, while your mission defines the purpose and the path to get there.

Defining your vision and mission not only provides direction but also sets the emotional tone for your organization. It inspires and galvanizes your team, serving as a beacon for decision-making and strategic planning. For example, a vision statement like "To revolutionize the way people live by offering cutting-edge technology" can propel a tech company to strive for excellence and constant innovation.

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Aligning Goals with Vision and Mission

Once you have a clear vision and mission, aligning your business goals with these elements ensures that every step taken is a step towards your ultimate objectives. This alignment creates coherence and consistency in all your business activities.

Alignment ensures that resources are efficiently utilized, and the team is moving in a unified direction, minimizing wasted efforts. A practical approach is to evaluate each goal through the lens of your vision and mission. For instance, if your mission is to offer unparalleled customer service, a goal might be "Improve customer service response times by 30% within the next six months."

• Vision Statement: Craft a vision statement that is inspirational and ambitious. This should reflect your long-term ambitions and where you see the company in the future.
• Mission Statement: Develop a mission statement that is clear and action-oriented. This should define what your organization is about right now, and how you'll achieve your vision.

Improving Organizational Focus and Productivity

Clear business goals help improve organizational focus. They provide a clear direction and help prioritize tasks, ensuring that all team members are working efficiently towards the same objectives.

By laying down well-defined goals, you minimize distractions and direct attention towards high-impact activities. This is particularly useful in dynamic business environments where distractions are abound. For example, a day-to-day operational goal might be "Reduce production downtime by 15% by implementing predictive maintenance."

• Prioritization: Sort tasks by their impact on achieving business goals. High-impact tasks should be at the forefront, with clear timelines and assigned responsibilities.
• Time Management: Allocate time and resources to activities that align with your primary objectives. Time is a finite resource, and effective allocation can significantly enhance productivity.

Enhancing Team Cohesion and Motivation

When everyone in the organization understands and works towards the same business goals, it fosters a sense of unity and collaboration. Team members are more likely to feel motivated and engaged, seeing their efforts contribute to larger objectives.

A unified team is more resilient and creative, capable of overcoming challenges with collective effort. Conduct regular team-building exercises and strategy sessions to ensure everyone is on the same page. For instance, a goal like "Increase team cross-functional collaboration by 50% within the next quarter" can drive substantial improvements in project outcomes.

• Team Meetings: Regularly communicate goals and progress to keep all members aligned. Use these meetings as opportunities to celebrate small wins and address challenges.
• Recognition: Acknowledge and reward contributions towards achieving business goals. Recognition acts as a powerful motivator, reinforcing positive behavior and encouraging further effort.

Effective Strategies for Setting and Achieving Business Goals

Smart goals framework.

One of the most widely-used frameworks for setting business goals is the SMART criteria. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This approach ensures that your goals are clear and achievable.

Using the SMART framework helps in breaking down broader business objectives into actionable tasks. It’s particularly effective because it provides a built-in mechanism for progress tracking and accountability. For example, "Expand our market presence," would become "Increase market share in the European market by 15% within the next fiscal year through strategic partnerships and marketing campaigns."

Being specific about what you want to achieve eliminates ambiguity and provides a clear target. Specificity breeds clarity, enabling detailed planning and better resource allocation.

• Example: Instead of saying "Increase sales," specify "Increase online sales by 20% in Q1." This is more goal-oriented and provides a clear target to aim for.

Quantifying your goals helps in tracking progress and measuring success. Measurable goals ensure that you can assess the effectiveness of your strategies and make data-driven decisions.

• Example: "Achieve a customer satisfaction score of 90% in the first half of the year." This enables you to quantify and monitor customer feedback systematically.

Set realistic goals that challenge yet are within reach considering your resources and constraints. Setting unattainable goals can lead to frustration and demotivation.

• Example: "Expand to two new markets by the end of the fiscal year." This goal is challenging but can be achieved with proper planning and resources.

Ensure that the goals are pertinent to the direction you want your business to take. Relevant goals align with your broader objectives and vision, driving meaningful progress.

• Example: "Develop a new product line that aligns with our core competencies." This ensures that the new development is well within the realms of your company’s expertise and market needs.

Assign a deadline to your goals to create a sense of urgency and prevent procrastination. Deadlines drive focus and ensure timely achievement of objectives.

• Example: "Launch the marketing campaign within the next three months." This sets a clear timeline, helping you allocate resources and efforts accordingly.

Utilizing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are quantifiable measures that gauge the performance of various aspects of your business. They provide valuable insights into how well you are progressing towards your business goals.

Selecting Relevant KPIs

Choose KPIs that are directly linked to your business goals to provide accurate insights. Relevant KPIs act as a performance dashboard, helping you gauge the effectiveness of your strategies.

• Sales KPIs: Monthly sales growth, average order size, conversion rate. These metrics give a clear view of your revenue generation efficiency.
• Customer KPIs: Net promoter score (NPS), customer retention rate, lifetime value (LTV). These KPIs help in understanding and optimizing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Regular Monitoring and Adjustment

Consistently track your KPIs to stay informed about your progress and make necessary adjustments. Monitoring KPIs enables you to be agile, making data-backed adjustments promptly.

• Dashboard Tools: Utilize tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, or customized dashboards for real-time insights. These tools provide comprehensive visualizations to track various performance metrics.
• Regular Reviews: Schedule periodic reviews to assess and refine strategies. Conduct quarterly or monthly reviews to realign goals and strategies based on current performance and market conditions.

Leveraging Technology and Tools for Goal Achievement

Project management software.

Project management software can greatly enhance your ability to set, track, and achieve business goals by providing a structured approach. These tools bring accountability and streamline workflows, ensuring efficient project execution.

Popular Tools

Some well-known project management tools include:

• Trello: For visual task management using boards and cards. Ideal for small to medium-sized projects that benefit from a visual approach.
• Asana: For comprehensive project tracking and team collaboration. Asana is suitable for larger teams needing robust project management features.
• Monday.com: For customizable workflows tailored to specific business needs. Highly flexible, it can adapt to various project types and industry requirements.

Collaboration Tools

Smooth communication and collaboration among team members are crucial for achieving business goals efficiently. Effective collaboration tools minimize communication gaps and enhance productivity.

Examples of Effective Collaboration Tools

• Slack: An instant messaging platform for real-time communication. Slack integrates with numerous apps to streamline workflows and improve team collaboration.
• Microsoft Teams: Combines chat, video conferencing, and file sharing. Ideal for businesses that require comprehensive communication tools and seamless integration with other Microsoft products.
• Google Workspace: Provides a suite of communication and productivity tools. Its collaborative features like Google Docs and Sheets are perfect for real-time teamwork.

Automation Tools

Automating repetitive tasks can save you time and resources, allowing you to focus more on strategic activities. Automation not only boosts efficiency but also reduces the risk of errors.

Useful Automation Tools

• Zapier: Connects different apps to automate workflows. Zapier excels in linking various software tools, creating seamless workflows.
• IFTTT (If This Then That): Automates activities based on specific triggers. It's an excellent choice for simple, rule-based automations.
• HubSpot: Provides marketing, sales, and service automation. Ideal for companies looking to automate and integrate their customer relationship management activities.

Real-World Examples of Successful Business Goal Execution

Case study: apple's goal for innovation.

Apple is renowned for its relentless focus on innovation. Steve Jobs' vision of creating transformational technology became the company's cornerstone, guiding their business goals.

Aligning Innovation with Vision

Apple aimed to lead in technology innovation and market creation. The company's ability to consistently deliver novel products is a testament to its strategic alignment with its vision.

• Strategies Employed: Continuous investment in R&D, design-focused product development, and maintaining a high-performance culture. Apple excels in turning visionary ideas into market-leading products.
• Results: Introduction of groundbreaking products like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, which revolutionized their respective markets. These products not only fueled Apple's growth but also set new industry benchmarks.

Case Study: Amazon's Customer-Centric Approach

Amazon’s primary business goal has always been to become the Earth's most customer-centric company.

Customer Obsession as a Guiding Principle

Amazon aligns its business goals with providing the best possible customer experience. This customer-centric approach drives Amazon’s innovation and operational strategies.

• Strategies Employed: Streamlining operations for fast delivery, offering a wide variety of products, and investing in customer service technologies. Their relentless focus on customer satisfaction has set them apart from competitors.
• Results: Becoming a global leader in e-commerce and cloud computing services. Amazon's deep commitment to customer experience has led to massive growth and customer loyalty.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Setting Business Goals

Setting vague goals.

Ambiguity in business goals leads to confusion and lack of direction. Ensure each goal is specific and clear.

• Pitfall: "Become a market leader." This goal is too broad and lacks actionable specifics.
• Solution: "Capture 25% market share in our industry within the next two years." This goal is clear, specific, and measurable, making it easier to develop a strategy for achieving it.

Overloading with Too Many Goals

Focusing on too many goals at once can dilute efforts and resources. Prioritize and focus on a few strategic goals.

• Pitfall: Trying to achieve multiple major objectives simultaneously. This can overwhelm your team and spread resources too thin.
• Solution: Select 2-3 high-impact goals and dedicate resources to achieve them. This concentrated focus increases the chances of successful outcomes.

Neglecting Employee Involvement

Employees are crucial to the achievement of business goals. Ignoring their input and not aligning their personal goals with the company’s objectives can lead to disengagement.

• Pitfall: Centralized goal setting without team consultation. This approach can lead to misalignment and lack of motivation.
• Solution: Involve employees in the goal-setting process to ensure buy-in and increased motivation. Collaborative goal setting fosters ownership and accountability, enhancing overall performance.

Actionable Steps to Implement Business Goal Strategies

Step 1: conduct a swot analysis.

A SWOT analysis helps identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, providing a clear picture of your business environment.

• Strengths: What does your business do well? Identify your unique selling points and core competencies.
• Weaknesses: Where can your business improve? Recognize areas of improvement to mitigate potential risks.
• Opportunities: What market opportunities can you capitalize on? Look for emerging trends and market needs that align with your strengths.
• Threats: What external factors could hinder your progress? Stay aware of competitive pressures, market shifts, and regulatory changes.

Step 2: Set Prioritized Goals

After completing a SWOT analysis, prioritize goals based on their potential impact and feasibility.

• Impact: Which goals will significantly drive business growth? Focus on goals that align with your strategic vision and offer substantial benefits.
• Feasibility: Do you have the resources and capability to achieve these goals? Ensure that you have adequate resources, skills, and time to meet your goals.

Step 3: Create an Action Plan

Develop a detailed action plan that outlines the steps, resources, and timelines needed to achieve each goal. An action plan serves as a roadmap, guiding your team through each phase of goal achievement.

• Action Steps: Break down each goal into manageable tasks. Clear, actionable steps make it easier to track progress and maintain momentum.
• Resources: Identify necessary resources such as budget, personnel, and tools. Ensure you have access to the required resources before executing your plan.
• Timeline: Set a realistic timeline with milestones for tracking progress. Milestones help in monitoring progress and making timely adjustments if needed.

Step 4: Monitor Progress and Adjust Strategies

Regularly monitor progress and be prepared to adjust strategies as needed based on the insights gained from tracking KPIs. Flexibility is key to adapting to changing circumstances and market conditions.

• Review Meetings: Hold regular meetings to discuss progress and roadblocks. These meetings serve as checkpoints for assessing progress and identifying areas needing improvement.
• Flexibility: Be open to adjusting goals and strategies as necessary based on performance data and market trends. Being adaptable helps in navigating challenges and seizing new opportunities.

Setting and achieving business goals is pivotal for organizational success. Clear, well-defined goals aligned with your vision and mission can significantly enhance focus, productivity, and team cohesion. Using frameworks like SMART goals, leveraging technology, and involving your team are essential strategies. Avoid common pitfalls by setting specific, prioritized, and achievable goals. With dedication and the right strategies, your business can transform goals into accomplishments, driving sustained growth and success. Ready to take the next step and set your business goals for success? Start with a thorough SWOT analysis and chart your course to achievement today.

By integrating these strategies, your organization will be better equipped to navigate the path to success, making your aspirations a reality. Let’s embark on this journey and turn those business goals into tangible achievements!

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More From Forbes

How To Start A Business Plan: A Step-By-Step Guide

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Creating a business plan is a critical first step for any entrepreneur. Knowing how to start a business plan will help you create a roadmap, guiding your business from startup to growth and beyond. Whether you're looking for investment, trying to set clear goals, or simply organizing your thoughts, a solid business plan can make all the difference.

Here is a guide to help you get started on your business plan:

1. executive summary.

What It Is: This section summarizes your business plan as a whole and outlines your company profile and goals.

What to Include:

• Business name and location
• Products or services offered
• Mission statement
• The purpose of the plan (e.g., seeking funding, guiding the startup process)

Tip: Keep it concise. Although it's the first section, it's often best to write it last, after you’ve detailed everything else.

2. Company Description

What It Is: This section provides detailed information about your company, including who you are, what you do, and what markets you serve.

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• Your business structure (e.g., sole proprietorship, LLC, corporation)
• The industry and marketplace needs your business meets
• Your business’s objectives and how you stand out from competitors

Tip: Use this section to highlight your company’s strengths and what makes you unique.

3. Market Research

What It Is: Market research demonstrates your understanding of the industry and target market.

• Market size and growth potential
• Target customer demographics
• Market trends and outlook
• Competitive analysis, including strengths and weaknesses of competitors

Tip: Include data and statistics to back up your findings and show that you’ve done your homework.

4. Organization and Management

What It Is: This section outlines your business’s organizational structure and management team.

• Organizational chart
• Information about the ownership of the company
• Backgrounds and qualifications of the management team
• Roles and responsibilities within the company

Tip: Highlight the skills and experiences of your team that will help the business succeed.

5. Products or Services Line

What It Is: Here, you detail the products or services you offer or plan to offer.

• A description of each product or service
• The lifecycle of products or services
• Research and development activities, if applicable
• Intellectual property, such as patents or trademarks

Tip: Focus on the benefits your products or services bring to your customers.

6. Marketing and Sales Strategy

What It Is: This section explains how you will attract and retain customers.

• Marketing strategies, including advertising, promotions, and public relations
• Sales strategies, including sales processes, channels, and tactics
• Pricing strategy and how it compares to competitors

Tip: Ensure your marketing and sales strategies are aligned with your market research findings.

7. Funding Request

What It Is: If you’re seeking funding , this section outlines your requirements.

• Your current funding needs
• Future funding requirements over the next five years
• How you intend to use the funds
• Potential future financial plans (e.g., selling the business, repaying debt)

Tip: Be specific and realistic about how much funding you need and how it will be used.

8. Financial Projections

What It Is: Financial projections provide a forecast of your business’s financial future.

• Income statements
• Cash flow statements
• Balance sheets
• Break-even analysis

Tip: Use realistic and conservative estimates. Consider hiring a financial professional to help with this section if needed.

9. Appendix

What It Is: The appendix includes any additional information that supports your business plan.

• Resumes of key management team members
• Permits and leases
• Legal documents
• Detailed market research data
• Product photos

Tip: Only include essential information that adds value to your business plan.

Final Tips for Creating a Business Plan

Creating a business plan requires clarity and precision. First and foremost, keep your business plan clear and concise. Avoid using jargon or complex language that could make the plan difficult to read or understand. Your aim should be to communicate your ideas effectively and efficiently.

Next, be realistic in your approach. Ensure that your goals and financial projections are attainable based on your research and understanding of the market. Overly ambitious projections can undermine your credibility and potentially lead to unrealistic expectations.

It's also essential to remember that a business plan is a dynamic document. As your business grows and market conditions change, you should revisit and revise your plan regularly. This helps you stay aligned with your goals and adapt to new challenges and opportunities.

Finally, seek feedback from experienced business professionals. Having someone with business experience review your plan can provide valuable insights and help identify any potential issues or areas for improvement. Their feedback can enhance the overall quality and effectiveness of your business plan.

By following these tips, you'll be better equipped to create a robust and effective business plan that can guide your business towards success.

The bottom line is that starting a business plan may seem challenging, but with careful planning and attention to detail, you can create a comprehensive guide to steer your business toward success. Use this step-by-step guide to ensure that all essential components are covered, giving your business the best possible start.

Melissa Houston, CPA is the author of Cash Confident: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating a Profitable Business and the founder of She Means Profit . As a Business Strategist for small business owners, Melissa helps women making mid-career shifts, to launch their dream businesses, and I also guide established business owners to grow their businesses to more profitably.

The opinions expressed in this article are not intended to replace any professional or expert accounting and/or tax advice whatsoever.

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Creating a Comprehensive Business Management Plan

Learn how to develop a thorough business management plan that covers strategic planning, organizational structure, financial projections, and implementation timelines.

A well-crafted business management plan is essential for guiding a company towards its objectives. It serves as a blueprint, detailing the strategies and actions necessary to achieve success. This document not only helps in aligning the team but also provides clarity on resource allocation and performance metrics.

In today’s competitive market, having a comprehensive plan can be the difference between thriving and merely surviving.

Key Components of a Management Plan

A robust management plan begins with a clear mission statement. This concise declaration encapsulates the company’s purpose and core values, serving as a guiding star for all strategic decisions. It is imperative that this mission resonates with both internal stakeholders and the broader market, ensuring that everyone is aligned with the company’s overarching goals.

Equally important is a thorough market analysis. Understanding the competitive landscape, customer demographics, and market trends provides invaluable insights that inform strategic choices. This analysis should be data-driven, utilizing tools like SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By doing so, businesses can position themselves more effectively and anticipate market shifts.

Risk management is another fundamental component. Identifying potential risks and developing mitigation strategies can safeguard the company against unforeseen challenges. This involves not only financial risks but also operational, reputational, and compliance-related risks. Utilizing risk assessment software can streamline this process, making it easier to monitor and manage potential issues.

Communication plans are also integral to a successful management plan. Clear, consistent communication ensures that all team members are informed and engaged. This includes both internal communication channels, such as team meetings and intranets, and external communication strategies, like public relations and social media outreach. Effective communication fosters a cohesive work environment and strengthens relationships with customers and partners.

Strategic Planning and Goals

Strategic planning is the backbone of any successful business management plan. It involves setting long-term objectives and determining the best course of action to achieve them. This process begins with a thorough understanding of the company’s vision and mission, which serve as the foundation for all strategic initiatives. By aligning goals with the company’s core values, businesses can ensure that their strategies are not only ambitious but also attainable and relevant.

One of the most effective tools for strategic planning is the Balanced Scorecard. This framework allows companies to translate their vision and strategy into a coherent set of performance measures. By focusing on four key perspectives—financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth—businesses can create a balanced approach to achieving their goals. This method not only helps in tracking progress but also in identifying areas that require improvement.

Goal setting is another critical aspect of strategic planning. Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). This approach ensures that objectives are clear and attainable, providing a roadmap for the team to follow. For instance, instead of setting a vague goal like “increase sales,” a SMART goal would be “increase sales by 15% within the next fiscal year.” This specificity helps in creating actionable plans and measuring success accurately.

To support these goals, businesses often employ strategic initiatives. These are targeted actions designed to drive the company towards its objectives. For example, a company aiming to enhance customer satisfaction might implement a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. This initiative would involve training staff, integrating the software with existing systems, and continuously monitoring its effectiveness. By breaking down larger goals into manageable initiatives, companies can make steady progress towards their strategic objectives.

Organizational Structure and Roles

A well-defined organizational structure is the backbone of any effective business management plan. It delineates the hierarchy within the company, clarifying roles, responsibilities, and reporting lines. This clarity not only streamlines decision-making processes but also enhances accountability and efficiency. By establishing a clear chain of command, businesses can ensure that tasks are delegated appropriately and that employees understand their specific duties and how they contribute to the company’s overall objectives.

The choice of organizational structure—whether it be functional, divisional, matrix, or flat—depends largely on the company’s size, industry, and strategic goals. For instance, a functional structure, which groups employees based on their specialized roles, is often suitable for smaller companies or those with a narrow product focus. On the other hand, a divisional structure, which segments the organization based on product lines or geographic regions, can be more effective for larger companies with diverse offerings. Each structure has its own set of advantages and challenges, and the key is to select one that aligns with the company’s operational needs and strategic vision.

Roles within the organization must be clearly defined to avoid overlap and ensure that all critical functions are covered. Job descriptions should be detailed, outlining not only the tasks and responsibilities but also the skills and qualifications required. This helps in recruiting the right talent and setting clear expectations for performance. Additionally, defining roles facilitates better collaboration, as employees understand who to turn to for specific expertise or support. For example, in a marketing department, roles might include content creators, social media managers, and market analysts, each with distinct but complementary responsibilities.

Leadership plays a pivotal role in shaping the organizational structure and ensuring its effectiveness. Strong leaders not only provide direction but also foster a culture of open communication and continuous improvement. They are responsible for aligning the team’s efforts with the company’s strategic goals and for creating an environment where employees feel valued and motivated. Leadership development programs can be instrumental in nurturing future leaders within the organization, ensuring a steady pipeline of talent ready to take on higher responsibilities.

Financial Projections and Budgeting

Financial projections and budgeting are indispensable components of a comprehensive business management plan. They provide a roadmap for the company’s financial future, offering insights into expected revenues, expenses, and profitability. Accurate financial projections enable businesses to make informed decisions, secure funding, and allocate resources effectively. By forecasting future financial performance, companies can identify potential challenges and opportunities, allowing them to adjust their strategies proactively.

Creating financial projections involves analyzing historical data, market trends, and economic indicators. This process often requires the use of sophisticated financial modeling software, which can simulate various scenarios and their potential impact on the company’s financial health. For instance, tools like QuickBooks and Microsoft Excel are commonly used to create detailed financial models that project income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. These projections serve as a benchmark against which actual performance can be measured, helping businesses stay on track and make necessary adjustments.

Budgeting, on the other hand, is the process of allocating financial resources to different departments and projects. A well-structured budget ensures that funds are used efficiently and that spending aligns with the company’s strategic goals. This involves setting spending limits, prioritizing investments, and monitoring expenditures regularly. Budgeting software like PlanGuru and Adaptive Insights can streamline this process, providing real-time insights and facilitating better financial management. By maintaining a disciplined approach to budgeting, companies can avoid overspending and ensure that they have the financial flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges.

Implementation Timeline and Milestones

An implementation timeline is a crucial element of a business management plan, serving as a roadmap for executing strategic initiatives. This timeline outlines the sequence of activities, deadlines, and key milestones that need to be achieved to ensure the plan’s success. By breaking down the overall strategy into manageable phases, businesses can maintain momentum and track progress effectively. Gantt charts and project management software like Asana or Trello are invaluable tools for visualizing timelines and ensuring that all team members are aligned with the project schedule.

Milestones are specific, measurable achievements that mark significant progress points within the implementation timeline. These can include the completion of major projects, the attainment of financial targets, or the launch of new products. Setting clear milestones helps in maintaining focus and motivation, as they provide tangible goals for the team to work towards. Regularly reviewing and celebrating these milestones can also foster a sense of accomplishment and encourage continued effort. For instance, a tech startup might set milestones for product development stages, such as prototype completion, beta testing, and final launch, each with its own set of deliverables and deadlines.

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