Having a clear vision of the future is essential for any organization. Strategic objectives are the measurable, high-level goals that describe what an organization wants to achieve, with a clearly defined time frame. They help organizations create strategic roadmaps, initiatives, and projects that are aligned with the company's strategy and vision. The Balanced Scorecard has four perspectives: financial, customer, internal processes and people (learning and growth).
If you have 10 to 15 strategic objectives, they shouldn't all be included in just one of those perspectives. Instead, they should be distributed (at least to some extent) evenly across the four. In the Cascade strategic planning model, strategic objectives are part of the plan's focus areas and are very specific. While not all strategic objectives need to generate a high return on investment, it's best for you to calculate the expected ROI for each objective so that you can compare them.
The best way to start writing down your strategic objectives is to ask yourself these key questions: What do you want to achieve? What is the timeline for achieving it? What resources do you need? What are the risks involved? The strategic objective, in this case, could be to enter a new market segment, to which the creation of a new marketing strategy would contribute. If you lead with purpose, with a measurable and practical vision, and with an understanding of current events, you can set strategic objectives that are worth striving for. With Cascade's powerful strategy execution platform, you can take control of your objectives and monitor progress in real time. Following the Cascade model, you must align your strategic objectives with your strategic priorities, which are also called areas of focus.
Many more people will be involved in the implementation through a series of projects, key performance indicators and linked objectives. Each level of management described above has to develop a process and a scoring system around its “control time interval” to ensure that it has chosen the right tactics and is getting the expected results. This view of the strategic roadmap will help you plan, coordinate, and track progress on various strategic objectives over time. With this approach, you can ensure that your goals and objectives are strategic, measurable, achievable and relevant. To make sure that your objectives are 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 must also have a specific deadline to complete them. If there are no operational objectives that your team can meet to achieve the strategic objective, it is better for your organization to dedicate time and resources to other things. By following these steps and using Cascade's powerful strategy execution platform, you can ensure that your organization is on track towards achieving its long-term goals.
With a clear vision of the future and an understanding of current events, you can set achievable goals that will help your organization reach its full potential.
