What You Will Do in This Section

Develop and adopt a small set of strategic goals for each strategy area. These goals describe the most important outcomes your organization must achieve over the life of the plan to move toward your vision of great success.

Recommended FastTrack process

1. Start with your vision. Ask: “By the end of this planning period, what must be true for our vision to become reality?”
2. Work one strategy area at a time. Identify the most important outcomes that must be achieved through that area.
3. Use the AI draft option if helpful. Click Draft Goals with AI to generate draft goals for that strategy area. Treat them as draft options to review and improve, not as final answers.
4. Rate the draft goals. Review each proposed goal using the FastTrack criteria in this section before adopting it.
5. Adopt only the strongest goals. Keep the goals that best express the outcomes your organization truly needs to achieve.
6. Use your SWOT and Gaps & Remedies. Favor goals that build on strengths, address important weaknesses, seize meaningful opportunities, respond to major threats, and close priority gaps.
7. Consider future uncertainty when useful. If you completed Strategic Foresight work, prefer goals that position the organization well across multiple plausible futures.

How to write strong strategic goals

• Write goals as outcomes to be achieved, not actions to be taken.
• State the future result or condition you want, not the method.
• Make each goal clear, important, and substantial enough to matter over the term of the plan.
• Keep the number of adopted goals limited so they remain focused and strategic.

Examples of strong strategic goals

• Grow and diversify revenue streams to strengthen financial resilience.
• Expanded market reach through new partnerships and customer pathways.
• Enhanced operational efficiency that improves delivery and scalability.
• Strong organizational capacity to support long-term growth and innovation.

Objectives are the key outcomes your organization must achieve within each Strategy Area to realize your Strategic Goals and, ultimately, fulfill your Vision. They describe the important conditions or results that must exist if your strategy is working.

Objectives act as a vital bridge between your strategic thinking and execution. They translate your broader Strategic Goals into clear statements of achievement that define what success looks like within each Strategy Area.

These objectives will later guide the development of your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and form the building blocks of your Strategy Map (Logic Model), which helps you visualize how achieving your objectives leads to the strategic results you want.

Time Horizon of Objectives

Objectives can represent outcomes achieved over different time horizons within your strategic plan.

Some objectives describe end-state results that may be achieved by the end of the full planning horizon (for example, five years). Others describe intermediate achievements that represent important progress toward those results. Still others describe capabilities or conditions that enable success.

Examples:

• End-state objective: 200 active clients
• Intermediate objective: Strong referral pipeline producing consistent monthly leads
• Enabling objective: High-performing client acquisition system

All three types of objectives are valid and often work together. The Strategy Map will later help show how achieving enabling and intermediate objectives leads to your ultimate results.

KPIs will then measure shorter-term progress toward these objectives, typically over annual or quarterly periods.

Next Steps: For each of your defined Strategy Areas, identify its key objectives.

1. Review the Strategic Context:
   Carefully consider your organization's:
   • Vision
   • Adopted Strategic Goals for each Strategy Area
   • Adopted Strategies
   These elements provide the context and inspiration for your objectives.
2. Identify the Key Outcomes:
   Ask:
   • “Within this Strategy Area, what must be true or achieved for our Strategic Goals to be realized?”
   • “What critical outcomes will demonstrate meaningful progress toward our Vision through this area?”
3. Focus on Outcomes, Not Actions:
   Objectives describe what will be achieved or what condition will exist, not the activities used to achieve them.
   
   Example:
   Instead of: Implement a new outreach program
   Write: Expanded community engagement
4. State Objectives as Achieved Results:
   Write objectives as if the desired outcome already exists.
   
   Example:
   Instead of: To create a welcoming facility
   Write: A welcoming facility
5. Aim for Clarity and Impact:
   Define a focused set of powerful objectives.
   Recommended: 4–6 objectives per Strategy Area.
6. Consider an Initial Measure of Success:
   For each objective, briefly note how its achievement might be measured. This is only a preliminary thought that will later help you define one or more KPIs to track progress.
7. Save Your Objectives:
   Once your objectives and their preliminary measures are defined, save your plan. You can return at any time to edit, refine, or remove objectives as your thinking evolves.

Examples available in the guidance materials.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measures that help your organization track progress towards achieving its strategic objectives and, ultimately, its vision. Think of KPIs as signs or mileposts that tell you if you're on course and how far you have come.

To develop effective KPIs:

1. Review Your Objectives: Each KPI should directly support one of your strategic objectives for a Strategy Area. The objective and its preliminary measure (if defined) will be shown as context.
2. Define the KPI Details: For each objective you want to measure, define one or more KPIs by specifying:
   • KPI Name: A clear, descriptive name for the measure (e.g., "Monthly New Client Acquisition Rate," "Average Project Completion Time").
   • Type:Running total, level, or Non-Numeric/Project.Unit of Measure: How the KPI will be quantified (e.g., %, $, Number, Days, Score out of 10).
   • Target: The specific, desired level of performance you aim to achieve (e.g., "15%", "$50,000", "250 new clients").
   • Baseline: The historical level, level at the start of the measurement period, or the current performance level before improvements are made. This helps in setting realistic targets and measuring progress.
   • Benchmark: Optional. A reference point or standard used to compare your organization's performance against others—such as competitors, industry averages, or best-in-class performers (e.g., American Productivity & Quality Center - 15% or lower hospital readmission rate standard, Construction Industry Institute -top-quartile construction firms complete 80% or more of projects on or ahead of schedule.
   • Person Responsible: The individual or team accountable for this KPI's performance.
   • Data Source: Where the data to calculate the KPI will be obtained (e.g., "CRM System," "Financial Statements," "Customer Surveys").
   • Reporting Frequency: How often the KPI will be tracked and reported (e.g., "Monthly," "Quarterly," "Annually").
3. Consider KPI Target Time Periods: Effective management of your KPIs requires setting appropriate target time periods and establishing clear cycles for resetting those targets. This ensures your KPIs remain relevant and actionable throughout the plan's lifecycle.
   • Annual targets work best for strategic, high-level metrics (revenue growth, market share, profitability) and goals tied to budgeting and strategic planning cycles. They suit metrics that need time to show meaningful change.
   • Quarterly targets are ideal for many operational KPIs, sales and marketing metrics, and product development milestones, allowing for course correction while maintaining momentum.
   • Monthly targets suit fast-moving operational metrics, customer service levels, digital marketing performance, and cash flow metrics.
   • Weekly/Daily targets are only for highly operational metrics (call center volume, production output) and real-time performance management, metrics that are influenced day-to-day.
4. Focus on What Matters: Don't create too many KPIs. Focus on the critical few that truly indicate success for each objective. Consider "leading indicators" (which measure activities driving future success) where possible, not just "lagging indicators" (which measure past results).
5. Adopt Your KPIs: Once a KPI is defined and you're satisfied with it, "Adopt" it to include it in your plan. You can edit or unadopt KPIs later.

These KPIs will form the basis of your implementation dashboard and regular progress reviews, helping you stay on track and make informed decisions.

Examples available in the guidance materials.

Turn Each Adopted Strategy into Well-Designed 12-Month Action Steps

This section helps you convert each adopted strategy into clear, practical action steps for the next 12 months. The goal is not just to list activity, but to define action steps that move each specific strategy forward in a focused, measurable way.

How this section works:

• Each Strategy Area shows your adopted strategies.
• Action steps are created by strategy, not in one mixed list for the whole area.
• You can draft action steps manually for a strategy or use AI to generate options for that specific strategy.
• AI generates multiple action step options for each strategy so you can review, improve, and adopt the best ones.

What makes a strong 12-Month Action Step:

1. Specific: It clearly states what will be done.
2. Measurable: It defines a result, deliverable, milestone, or completion point.
3. Achievable: It is realistic given your organization's capacity and constraints.
4. Relevant: It directly advances its parent strategy and supports your overall plan.
5. Time-bound: It can reasonably be accomplished within the next 12 months and may include a target timeframe.

Using AI well in this section:

• The AI prompt uses the selected strategy as the main source material.
• The Examples of Action Steps in this section are used as formatting guidance so suggestions come back in the right style.
• AI suggestions should come back as concise, one-sentence action steps rather than vague ideas, broad goals, or long explanations.

Recommended process:

• Review the adopted strategies shown in each strategy area.
• For any strategy where you want help, click Draft Action Steps with AI for that strategy, or click + Add Action Step to draft one manually.
• Review each draft and strengthen it as needed.
• Use the SMART checkboxes to evaluate each draft. Aim for a strong SMART rating.
• Adopt the action steps you want to keep. Adopted steps appear at the top of the section under their related strategy.
• After adopting action steps, assign an owner and select start and end timelines. Then drag and drop steps within each strategy to reflect the right execution order.

Examples available in the guidance materials.