Strategic objectives to move your business forward
When anyone reads your strategic objectives they know what you are trying to achieve
What are objectives?
Objectives are in reality collective terms and can be compounded by a variety of elements within a strategic plan. The term “objective” includes goals, time, strategic actions and key performance indicators.
Basically, anything within a strategic plan that has a clear and well defined outcome and the actions to reach that outcome could be considered an “objective”. There are no specific rules as to how many objectives your strategic plan should have, but a good baseline is to have 3 to 4 for each business strategy. This is directly correlated to the scope and breadth of the strategic plan and the number of strategies that it includes. 12 objectives for a small company is a good number.
Objectives help to keep the company’s focus in the actions to achieve a business strategy.
Creating strategic objectives
Each objective should be specific, measurable, relevant and time bound. The most important thing while drafting your strategic objectives is to keep it simple. They should be easy to remember and resonate with everyone within your company. This means that they must include the core elements mentioned before and we should be able to easily understand what the company is trying to achieve. When anyone reads your strategic objectives they know what you’re trying to achieve.
Example: Increase the number of customers by a 5% within the next three months.
How to draft strategic objectives.
To make it easy to draft your objectives in a way that they support your business strategy, we recommend you to follow the following format:
A verb + action area + key performance indicator + time bound
An example on how to draft your objective:
Verb: Reduce
+ Action area: operative cost
+ Key performance indicator: by a 5%
+ Time bound: by the end of this semester
Some examples of objectives:
- Reduce operative cost by a 5% by the end of this semester
- Release 3 new products and/or services by December 2020
- Acquire 3 national customers by August 2020
- Reduce employee absenteeism to less than 10% a year by the end of 2020
- Achieve customer satisfaction of a 90% each month throughout this year.
- Reduce returned orders due to incorrect deliveries by 1% a month.
- Reduce by a 100% missing products from inventory for medical supply.
- Our customers perceive us as the best place to buy food products (includes implicit elements).
The objectives are written with verbiage that helps to create a clear image of what your company is trying to achieve.
Remember, strategic objectives should communicate aspirations that are aligned with your business strategy (we will talk about alignment in another article). They should also be memorable, in a way that everyone within your company can easily understand them and refer to them.
Finally, it’s important to mention that from your objectives we should be able to identify actions or “projects”. Without tangible actions, our strategic objectives will not be achievable.
Jesús Gaxiola
@jesusgaxiola
jesusgaxiola.com
