A strategy that only lives at the top of the organisation isn’t really a strategy — it’s a set of senior leadership intentions that nobody else acts on.
Cascading your OGSM means translating the company-level Objective, Goals, Strategies, and Measures into department-level OGSMs that support the parent plan. Each department keeps the same Objective, then builds its own Goals, Strategies, and Measures that contribute directly to the company’s. Done well, every team member can trace their work back to the organisation’s direction.
Here’s how to cascade without losing alignment — or your team’s sanity.
Why Cascading Matters
Most strategy failures aren’t failures of planning. They’re failures of translation. The executive team agrees on an excellent strategy, it gets presented, and then people go back to their desks and continue doing more or less what they were already doing.
The OGSM cascade solves this by creating a direct line of sight between the company’s Objective and every team’s day-to-day work. When someone in operations can look at their team’s OGSM and see exactly how it connects to the company-level Goals, strategy stops being something that happens in boardrooms and starts being something that shapes how people prioritise their week.
The Structure of a Cascade
Think of it as a tree:
Level 1 — Company OGSM: The overall Objective, Goals, Strategies, and Measures for the organisation.
Level 2 — Division or Function OGSMs: HR, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Operations each build their own OGSM. Same Objective. Different Goals and Strategies that reflect what their function contributes.
Level 3 — Team or Project OGSMs (optional): In larger organisations, individual teams or major projects may have their own sub-OGSMs cascaded from the division level.
The cascade doesn’t require all three levels. Many organisations work well with just two. What matters is that every level’s Goals visibly contribute to the level above it.
How to Build the Cascade
Step 1: Lock the Company OGSM First
Don’t start building department OGSMs until the company-level plan is finalised. This sounds obvious, but cascading before the top-level plan is locked leads to department Goals that point in slightly different directions.
The company OGSM is the fixed point. Everything below it aligns to it — not the other way around.
Step 2: Identify Each Department’s Contribution
For each department, ask: which company Goals does this function directly influence?
Marketing influences awareness, traffic, and pipeline Goals. Sales influences revenue and customer acquisition Goals. Operations may influence quality, retention, and cost Goals. HR influences capability and culture Goals that underpin almost everything else.
A department doesn’t need to contribute to every company Goal — just the ones where it genuinely has influence. A cascaded OGSM with three relevant Goals is better than one with six watered-down contributions.
Step 3: Write the Department Goals
Department Goals should be outcomes that directly feed the company-level Goals above them.
If the company Goal is “Grow annual recurring revenue from €5M to €8M by December 2026,” the Sales department Goal might be “Close €2.4M in new ARR from inbound leads by December 2026.” The Marketing department Goal might be “Generate 1,200 qualified leads for the sales team by year-end.”
Both contribute to the same company Goal. Neither duplicates the other.
Step 4: Define Department Strategies
Department Strategies are the specific choices that department will make to hit their Goals. These are usually more operational and specific than the company-level Strategies.
Company Strategy: “Invest in content marketing to drive inbound demand.”
Marketing’s Strategy (cascaded): “Publish two SEO-targeted articles per week; run monthly LinkedIn campaigns to drive article traffic; build a lead magnet to convert organic visitors.”
Step 5: Set Department Measures
Department Measures track progress on the department’s Strategies — and should be reviewed at the same cadence as company Measures (usually monthly).
The head of the department owns the department OGSM review. The company-level review draws from these department inputs.
Making the Cascade Visible
One of the most powerful things you can do with a cascade is make the connections visible — literally. In your OGSM template, cross-reference department Goals back to the company Goal they support.
For example, in the Marketing OGSM, next to each Goal, note the company Goal it feeds: “Feeds: Company Goal 2 — Revenue €8M.” This keeps the alignment explicit rather than assumed, and it gives every review a natural “so what” test: if we hit this department Goal, which company Goal moves?
Common Cascade Mistakes
Building department OGSMs in silos. If departments build their own OGSMs without referencing the company-level plan, you get local optimisation rather than aligned execution. Heads of department should build their plans in a facilitated session, ideally with the company OGSM on the wall.
Allowing too much divergence. Some flexibility in department-level Goals is fine. But if a department’s Goals don’t clearly contribute to any company Goal, they’re not cascading — they’re operating a separate strategy.
Treating the cascade as a one-time exercise. The cascade is a living system. When the company OGSM changes mid-year because of market conditions, the department OGSMs need to update too. Build in a review trigger: whenever the company-level plan changes significantly, review department plans within the following month.
Cascading too deep too soon. For most organisations, two levels is enough. A third level of team-level OGSMs makes sense only when teams are large and distinct enough to genuinely need their own planning. Don’t create complexity for its own sake.
Cascade in a Small Business
Cascading isn’t only for large organisations. Even a three-person business benefits from making the connection explicit between the business-level strategy and each person’s role.
If your business OGSM has a Goal of growing revenue 40% this year, a simple cascade might mean:
- Person A’s individual plan focuses on sales and client relationships.
- Person B’s plan focuses on delivery quality and retention.
- Person C’s plan focuses on operations and cost efficiency.
Each person knows exactly how their work contributes to the shared Goal, and the monthly review becomes a two-level check: are we hitting our individual Measures, and is that moving the business Goal?
The Right Format for a Cascade
Cascading works best when all levels use the same template format. If the company OGSM is in PowerPoint, department OGSMs should be in the same template. If it’s in Excel, same. Consistency of format makes it easy to review across levels and keeps the visual alignment clear.
The OGSM Template for PowerPoint and OGSM Template for Excel are built for exactly this — you can use the same template at company and department level, adjust the Goals and Measures for each, and keep the whole cascade on the same page layout. That consistency makes cascade reviews much faster and alignment much more visible.