You are creating your one-page strategic plan using the OGSM methodology but get stuck at Measures? Look no further.
OGSM Measures are the quantitative indicators that tell you whether your Strategies are working. Each measure needs a baseline, a target, and a named owner — without those three elements, you don’t have a Measure, you have a wish.
Here are 20+ real KPI examples across four categories to help you build a Measures row that actually holds teams accountable.
What Are Measures in an OGSM?
In the OGSM framework, the Measures row sits at the bottom of your one-page plan. It answers one question: how will we know if our Strategies are working?
Measures are not the same as Goals. Goals are outcome-level — revenue, market share, customer numbers. Measures are process-level: they track the leading indicators that predict whether you’ll hit those goals. If your Goal is £10M revenue by year-end, your Measures might include pipeline value, monthly win rate, and average deal size. The Measures row is where strategy becomes science — or falls apart. Most OGSM plans I review have weak Goals and weaker Measures. Fix the Measures row and the whole plan sharpens up.
What Are the 3 Rules for a Good OGSM Measure?
I’ve reviewed hundreds of OGSM plans, and most weak Measures fail on one of three criteria. Get these right and everything else falls into place.
1. Specific. “Customer satisfaction” is not a Measure. “NPS score” is. “NPS score ≥ 45 by Q4” is a great Measure. The more precisely you define what you’re tracking and how you’re measuring it, the less room there is for debate at quarterly review time. Ambiguity is the enemy of accountability.
2. Owned. Every Measure needs a single name against it. Not a team, not a department — one person. That person is responsible for tracking the number, surfacing early warnings, and driving corrective action when you drift off course. Shared ownership is no ownership.
3. Time-bound. Your Measure must produce a result within your planning horizon. A metric you can only evaluate in three years doesn’t help you this year. Build in quarterly checkpoints so the number informs decisions in real time — not as a post-mortem after the planning cycle is over.
What Are Some Strong OGSM Measures Examples?
Financial Measures
| Measure | Baseline | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) | £420K | £600K |
| Gross margin % | 58% | 65% |
| Operating cost per unit | £12.40 | £10.00 |
| Revenue from new customers | 22% of total | 35% of total |
| Debtor days | 48 days | 30 days |
Financial measures are the easiest to define but often the least useful as leading indicators. By the time a revenue number moves, your window for intervention has closed. Use financial measures alongside operational measures — not instead of them.
Customer and Market Measures
| Measure | Baseline | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Net Promoter Score (NPS) | 31 | 48 |
| Customer churn rate (monthly) | 3.2% | 1.8% |
| Customer lifetime value (CLV) | £1,800 | £2,400 |
| Brand awareness (unaided, target segment) | 14% | 22% |
| Time to first value (onboarding) | 18 days | 7 days |
“Time to first value” is one I recommend to almost every SaaS or service business going through an OGSM exercise. It’s a genuine leading indicator for retention — customers who don’t get an early win leave early. If one of your Strategies involves customer experience or onboarding, this metric belongs in your Measures row.
Operational and Process Measures
| Measure | Baseline | Target |
|---|---|---|
| On-time delivery rate | 84% | 96% |
| Lead time (order to ship) | 11 days | 5 days |
| First-call resolution rate | 62% | 80% |
| System uptime | 99.1% | 99.9% |
| Production defect rate | 2.4% | 0.8% |
Operational measures are the engine room of your OGSM. If any of your Strategies are about improving how work gets done — faster, cheaper, more reliably — these are the metrics that prove it. They also tend to be the most actionable: when an operational measure goes off track, it’s usually clear why and who needs to act.
People and Capability Measures
| Measure | Baseline | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Employee engagement score | 62% | 74% |
| Voluntary attrition rate | 18% | 10% |
| Training hours per employee (annual) | 12 hrs | 24 hrs |
| Internal promotion rate | 23% | 40% |
| Time to hire (open to offer) | 47 days | 25 days |
People measures are the most neglected category in every OGSM plan I review. If one of your Strategies involves building capability, retaining talent, or shifting culture, you need at least one people measure in the row — otherwise accountability evaporates entirely and the strategy becomes an aspiration you revisit once a year and apologise for.
What Does a Weak OGSM Measure Look Like vs a Strong One?
Most teams write vague intentions into the Measures row and call it done. Here’s what that looks like — and what to do instead.
Example 1
- Weak: Improve customer satisfaction
- Strong: NPS score ≥ 48 by Q4, measured quarterly — Owner: Head of CX
Example 2
- Weak: Grow the team
- Strong: Hire 6 engineers by 30 September, with time-to-hire ≤ 30 days — Owner: Head of People
Example 3
- Weak: Reduce costs
- Strong: Operating cost per unit reduced from £12.40 to £10.00 by year-end — Owner: Operations Director
The pattern is the same every time: add a number, add a deadline, add a name. Those three elements transform a vague aspiration into something you can actually track — and something a person will actually feel accountable for.
What Are the Most Common OGSM Measures Mistakes?
- Too many measures. If you have 20 measures for a single strategy, you have no priorities. Aim for 3–5 per Strategy, maximum. More than that and you’re building a dashboard, not a plan.
- Measures that lag too far. Annual revenue is a lagging measure — by the time it moves, the year is over. You need monthly or quarterly indicators that tell you now whether you’re on track. Aim for a Measures row that’s at least 60% leading indicators.
- No owner assigned. I’ve said this twice because it’s the most common failure mode. Every Measure gets one name. Full stop.
How to Set Your Baseline and Target
Before you write a target, you need a baseline. You cannot set a meaningful improvement target if you don’t know where you’re starting. If you genuinely don’t have a baseline yet, your first Measure for that metric should be: “Establish baseline by [date]” — then set the improvement target in your next planning cycle.
Once you have a baseline, use one of three approaches:
Benchmark against industry or sector standards — useful for measures like NPS, delivery time, or attrition where comparable data exists.
Apply a percentage improvement — a 20% reduction in lead time, a 15% uplift in conversion rate. Straightforward, widely understood, easy to communicate.
Back-calculate from your Goal — if your Goal requires £600K MRR, what conversion rate, pipeline volume, and average contract value do you need to get there? Work backwards from the outcome to the inputs. This is the most rigorous approach and the one I use in every workshop.
Whichever method you use, sense-check the target: is it genuinely achievable within the planning horizon? Is there a named owner who has accepted responsibility for it? If you can’t answer yes to both, you’re not done yet.
For a full walkthrough of how Measures fit into the broader one-page plan, see our complete OGSM guide. And if you want to check whether your plan is ready to execute, the OGSM common mistakes article covers the errors that derail most teams before their first quarterly review.
Rock on.