Rock Your Strategy

Tag: business strategy

  • How to Cascade Your OGSM Across Your Organisation

    How to Cascade Your OGSM Across Your Organisation

    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.

  • Is OGSM Right for Your Scale-Up? A Practical Guide (With Worked Example)

    Is OGSM Right for Your Scale-Up? A Practical Guide (With Worked Example)

    Yes — if you’re between 30 and 200 people and your strategy is starting to slip through the cracks, OGSM is almost certainly the right framework for where you are right now.

    OGSM is a one-page strategic planning tool that forces alignment across a leadership team that can no longer hold the entire company direction in their heads. The OGSM framework perfectly suits small businesses for its simplicity, clarity, and ease of use.

    Here’s how to know for sure, and what building one looks like in practice.

    When does OGSM actually fit a scale-up?

    OGSM — Objective, Goals, Strategies, and Measures — is a one-page strategic planning framework originally developed at Procter & Gamble. It’s since become widely used across SMEs and multinationals that want every team member reading from the same page of strategy, literally.

    For scale-ups specifically, OGSM fits well when three conditions are true:

    You’re in the £5M–£50M revenue range (or roughly 30–200 people). Below this, the founder’s instincts and weekly all-hands meetings do the job. Above it, you typically need something more sophisticated. In the middle, OGSM’s single-page constraint forces clarity without adding bureaucratic weight.

    You’re transitioning from founder-led intuition to structured strategy. The classic scale-up inflection point is when the leadership team can no longer hold the entire strategy in their heads. Decisions start getting made in silos. Sales pursues a segment the product team isn’t building for. Marketing campaigns features that engineering has de-prioritised. OGSM gives you a shared document that every department head can point to when making trade-offs.

    You’re hiring fast enough that alignment is becoming a friction cost. Onboarding a new Head of Finance or VP of Sales is dramatically faster when you can hand them a single page that captures the company’s direction, the three or four strategies you’re betting on, and the specific numbers you’re tracking to know if it’s working.

    If you recognise your company in those three conditions, OGSM is worth a serious look.

    When do OKRs make more sense?

    I’m not anti-OKR. They’re the right tool for the right context, and it’s worth being clear about when that context applies.

    OKRs work best when:

    • You need fast iteration cycles. OKRs run quarterly, which suits product organisations that ship continuously and need to recalibrate every 90 days based on user feedback.
    • Teams are largely self-organising. OKRs push goal-setting downward. Individual contributors write their own Key Results and align them to company-level Objectives. That’s energising in a high-autonomy culture.
    • You want bottom-up accountability. The OKR model is built on transparency — everyone can see everyone else’s goals. That fosters peer accountability in flat organisations.

    Where OKRs can struggle at scale-up stage: the quarterly cadence can create a wall of sticky notes that no one looks at after week three. Without a longer-horizon strategy document anchoring the OKRs, teams can hit their quarterly numbers and still drift from the company’s three-year direction. OGSM doesn’t replace the quarterly rhythm — but it provides the strategic spine that OKRs hang from.

    Many scale-ups that thrive with OGSM use it to set the 12–18 month strategic frame, then run OKRs within each strategy pillar for quarterly execution. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

    What does a scale-up OGSM look like in practice?

    Company: Findr — a 35-person B2B SaaS business helping professional services firms track project profitability. Revenue: £8M ARR. Growing at 40% YoY. Headcount doubled in 18 months.

    The problem: Three VPs were making independent resourcing decisions. The Head of Engineering was building an enterprise SSO integration. The Head of Marketing was doubling down on SME content. Sales was pitching mid-market. Nobody was wrong — but the company was pulling in three directions.

    Two half-day sessions with the seven-person leadership team produced this:

    Objective: Become the go-to profitability tool for professional services firms in the UK, trusted by 500 firms within three years.

    Goals:

    1. Reach £15M ARR by end of FY26
    2. Achieve NPS of 45+ across the customer base by Q4
    3. Reduce average time-to-value for new customers from 45 days to 20 days by end of FY26

    Strategies (the specific choices about where and how to compete):

    1. Double down on accountancy and legal verticals — not generic SME, not enterprise
    2. Build a referral-first growth model via existing customer champions
    3. Invest in onboarding, not acquisition, until time-to-value hits target

    Measures (leading indicators for each strategy):

    • % of new ARR from accountancy + legal (target: 70% by Q4)
    • % of new pipeline sourced from referrals (target: 35% by Q3)
    • Average onboarding completion rate (target: 85%)

    It fit on one page. Every leadership decision since has been tested against it: Does this serve Strategy 1, 2, or 3? If not, why are we doing it?

    The SSO integration was deprioritised. The SME content was refocused on accountancy and legal pain points. Sales aligned its ICP to match.

    What are the most common scale-up OGSM mistakes?

    1. Too many Strategies. A five-strategy OGSM is not a strategy — it’s a list of things you plan to do. OGSM forces hard choices. If you can’t cut it to three or four strategies, you haven’t made the choices yet. Go back to the Objective and ask which two or three bets would most directly deliver it.

    2. Objectives that are still Goals. “Grow revenue by 40%” is a Goal, not an Objective. An Objective is directional and qualitative: what kind of company are you becoming? Goals are the measurable milestones that prove you’re getting there. Mixing the two is the most common first-draft error. See the 7 OGSM Mistakes guide for a full breakdown.

    3. Measures no one owns. A Measure without an owner is a wish, not a metric. Every Measure in your OGSM needs a named person who updates it at your monthly leadership review. Without ownership, Measures become decorative — and the OGSM stops being a live management tool and starts being a document that lives in a Notion page no one opens.

    How do you get started with OGSM this quarter?

    Step 1: Download a template and run a draft solo. Before you book a team session, write a rough draft of your OGSM yourself. It doesn’t need to be right — it needs to surface the assumptions and gaps that will fuel the real conversation. The free OGSM template gives you the structure to do this in under two hours.

    Step 2: Book two half-day sessions with your leadership team. Don’t try to do this in one four-hour block. End the first session at the Goals. Sleep on it. Return for Strategies and Measures with fresh eyes — the overnight gap changes the conversation quality significantly.

    Step 3: Pick your first monthly review date before you leave the room. The OGSM is not a set-and-forget document. It works because leadership teams use it to run monthly strategy reviews. Book the first one before the session ends, assign each Measure an owner, and commit to a 60-minute review cadence.

    For more context on whether OGSM suits your specific company stage, compare it with the OGSM for Small Business guide. If you’re already running OKRs and wondering whether to switch, the OGSM vs OKR comparison lays out the trade-offs side by side.

    The framework is simple. The discipline is in the choices.

    Rock on.

  • OGSM for Marketing Teams: How to Build a One-Page Marketing Strategy That Actually Connects to the Business

    OGSM for Marketing Teams: How to Build a One-Page Marketing Strategy That Actually Connects to the Business

    If your marketing team runs on OKRs, you’ve probably noticed the problem: the objectives are inspiring, the key results are measurable, but six months in nobody can explain how the marketing plan connects to what the CEO is trying to achieve. OGSM fixes this.

    OGSM for marketing teams is a one-page strategic framework that cascades your marketing plan directly from the company strategy, giving every campaign and KPI a clear line of sight to business-level goals.

    It’s the one planning framework designed to cascade directly from the company strategy — which means your marketing plan stops floating free and starts pulling its weight where it matters. This article explores what a Marketing OGSM looks like, how to translate company goals into marketing goals, and how to get started on yours.

    Why Marketing OKRs Often Float Free of Company Strategy

    OKRs are a great personal productivity tool. They’re less great as a strategy alignment tool — because they don’t have a built-in mechanism for connecting upward.

    When a marketing team sets OKRs, they typically start with what marketing wants to achieve: brand awareness, MQL volume, content reach, social followers. These are legitimate goals. But they’re built from the inside out — from what marketing can control — rather than from the outside in, starting with what the company needs.

    The result is a marketing plan that’s busy, measurable, and largely disconnected from the business priorities that actually matter to the CFO and CEO. OGSM solves this by starting with the company-level plan and working down. If you haven’t already, read what OGSM actually means — it’s the foundation everything else sits on.

    What a Marketing OGSM Looks Like vs. a Company OGSM

    A marketing OGSM has the same four elements as a company OGSM — Objective, Goals, Strategies, Measures — but scoped to the marketing function.

    The key difference: a company OGSM sets the direction for the whole business. A marketing OGSM is built in response to the company OGSM. It identifies which company-level Strategies marketing owns, and builds a plan that directly supports those priorities.

    Think of it as a nested structure. The marketing Objective should be traceable to at least one company Strategy. The marketing Goals should feed into the company Goals. The marketing Strategies are the specific choices marketing is making to hit those Goals — not a restatement of the company plan, but a genuine marketing response to it.

    This is the design principle that makes OGSM different from OKRs for marketing teams. Alignment is baked in, not bolted on.

    How to Translate Company Goals into Marketing Goals

    Before you write a single word of your marketing OGSM, you need the company OGSM in front of you. Specifically, you need the Strategies — because those are the choices the company has made about how it will grow. Marketing’s job is to execute the Strategies that fall in its domain.

    Here’s the translation process:

    Step 1: Identify which company Strategies marketing owns (fully or in part). Common examples: “Grow market share in the SME segment,” “Build brand recognition in new geographies,” “Reduce customer acquisition cost by 20%.” Marketing might own one of these outright or share ownership with Sales.

    Step 2: Identify which company Goals marketing directly influences. Revenue, customer acquisition, market share, NPS — whichever Goals have a marketing lever. Be honest about this. Marketing influences some Goals heavily and others barely at all.

    Step 3: Set marketing Goals that are upstream contributors to company Goals. If the company Goal is £40m ARR, and marketing is responsible for inbound pipeline, your marketing Goal might be “Generate £15m in marketing-sourced pipeline.” If the company Goal is 85% retention, and marketing runs the customer communications programme, your Goal might be “Deliver a quarterly customer newsletter with 30%+ open rate.”

    The test: if marketing hits all its Goals, does the company get meaningfully closer to its Goals? If yes, you’re aligned. If not, rebuild.

    What Are the 4 OGSM Elements for a Marketing Team?

    Objective The marketing Objective is an inspirational, qualitative statement of what marketing is here to achieve in the planning period. It should connect naturally to the company Objective — same ambition, marketing-specific scope.

    Example: If the company Objective is “Become the most recognised name in sustainable workplace furniture,” the Marketing Objective might be: “Make our brand the obvious choice for design-conscious office buyers who care where their furniture comes from.”

    Goals Goals are quantified milestones that measure whether you’re hitting the Objective. They should be ambitious but achievable, with a clear time horizon.

    Example:

    • Generate 3,500 MQLs per quarter by Q4
    • Grow organic website traffic to 80,000 sessions/month
    • Achieve brand recall of 35% in target segment (measured annually)
    • Deliver £18m in marketing-sourced pipeline

    Strategies Strategies are the choices marketing is making — what you will focus on and, implicitly, what you won’t. Three to five is the right number. If you have ten Strategies, you have none.

    Example:

    • Build a content hub targeting mid-funnel buyers in the design and facilities management community
    • Launch a referral programme for existing customers
    • Invest in ABM for the top 50 target accounts
    • Run a co-marketing programme with three complementary brands

    Measures Measures are the metrics you track to know whether your Strategies are working. Each Measure should have an owner, a baseline, and a target.

    Example:

    • Content hub: unique visitors, time-on-page, content-sourced leads
    • Referral programme: referrals generated, referral conversion rate
    • ABM: account engagement score, pipeline from target accounts
    • Co-marketing: partner-sourced leads, event attendance

    What Does a Marketing OGSM Look Like in Practice?

    Example 1: Brand Marketing OGSM (fictional — Greenleaf Office Interiors)

    Objective: Make Greenleaf the most trusted name in sustainable workplace design for UK businesses.

    Goals:

    • 40% aided brand awareness in target segment by year-end
    • 25,000 newsletter subscribers
    • Earned media coverage in 5 tier-1 publications per quarter

    Strategies:

    • Launch “The Sustainable Office” editorial series (long-form content + social)
    • Partner with leading architects and interior designers as brand advocates
    • Sponsor the UK Sustainability in Business Awards category

    Measures: Brand awareness survey (quarterly) | Newsletter subscriber growth | Press mentions | Share of voice in target publications

    Example 2: Demand Generation OGSM (fictional — Clova SaaS)

    Objective: Fill the sales pipeline with high-intent buyers who already understand the problem Clova solves.

    Goals:

    • 800 MQLs per month by Q3
    • SQL conversion rate above 25%
    • Cost per MQL below £45

    Strategies:

    • Build an SEO programme targeting high-intent product comparison and “best [category] software” queries
    • Launch a free ROI calculator to capture mid-funnel buyers
    • Run monthly live demos for warm leads with product team presenters

    Measures: MQL volume | SQL conversion rate | Cost per MQL | Demo attendance | Organic traffic from target keywords

    Example 3: Content Marketing OGSM (fictional — Porthaven Financial)

    Objective: Become the go-to educational resource for first-time business owners navigating financial decisions.

    Goals:

    • 50,000 monthly organic visitors by Q4
    • 10 articles ranking on page 1 for priority keywords
    • 20% of new client enquiries cite content as a discovery source

    Strategies:

    • Publish two in-depth guides per month on core business finance topics
    • Build a “First-Year Finance” email course for new business owners
    • Optimise the top 20 existing articles for featured snippets and people-also-ask

    Measures: Organic sessions | Keyword rankings | Email course subscribers | Content-attributed enquiries | Average position for target terms

    These examples are deliberately varied in scope and industry — but the structure is identical. That’s the point of using the OGSM template: the framework travels across any marketing function without losing coherence.

    How to Run Your Monthly Marketing Strategy Review Using Your OGSM

    Writing the marketing OGSM is the easy part. Using it to actually run marketing is where most teams fall short.

    Set a monthly review rhythm. In each review, work through your OGSM top to bottom:

    Objective check: Is the team’s work this month clearly oriented toward the Objective? If the answer is “sort of,” something is drifting.

    Goals check: Track each Goal against target. For any Goal that’s behind, name the cause — not the symptom. “MQL volume is down 15% because our paid channel underperformed, which is because we haven’t refreshed our ad creative since March” is a useful diagnosis. “MQL volume is down” is not.

    Strategies check: Are your Strategies still the right choices? Markets move. If a Strategy is no longer generating results after a fair trial, make the decision to change it — explicitly, in the OGSM — rather than quietly deprioritising it while it clutters the plan.

    Measures check: Is each Measure moving in the right direction? Which Measures are leading indicators of success, and are they pointing the right way? If your content strategy is working, organic traffic should be climbing before MQL volumes follow. The lag matters.

    For teams just getting started, the OGSM review also connects to how you cascade the marketing plan into team-level work. Read how to cascade OGSM through your organisation to see how the content team, demand gen team, and brand team each build their own OGSM from yours.

    OGSM for Marketing Teams: What to Do Next

    Building a marketing OGSM is a half-day exercise if you have the company OGSM in front of you. Here’s the sequence:

    1. Pull out the company Strategies that marketing owns
    2. Write the marketing Objective — one sentence, qualitative, ambitious
    3. Set 3–5 Goals with numbers and timelines
    4. Choose 3–5 Strategies — the real choices, not a laundry list of tactics
    5. Define Measures with owners, baselines, and targets
    6. Review monthly and update quarterly

    The one-page constraint is the discipline. If your marketing plan doesn’t fit on a single page, it’s not strategic — it’s operational. OGSM forces you to make choices, and choice is what strategy actually is.

    Rock on.

  • 20 OGSM Objectives Examples (And How to Write One That Actually Works)

    20 OGSM Objectives Examples (And How to Write One That Actually Works)

    The most important part of the OGSM to get right is the Objective statement. And that’s more difficult than you’d think.

    The Objective in an OGSM is the single qualitative statement at the top of your strategy — the directional, aspirational sentence that describes where your organization is going, without a number attached.

    Good OGSM objectives examples sound like: “Become the most trusted fitness brand in the US” or “Lead the shift from product supplier to solutions partner.” They’re inspiring, durable, and number-free. If yours has a percentage or a deadline in it, you’ve written a Goal, not an Objective.

    In this article we explore what makes a good Objective statement for OGSM, what mistakes to avoid, and provide you with 20 examples for inspiration.

    What Makes an OGSM Objective (And What Doesn’t)

    The Objective is the hardest line to write in an OGSM. Not because the thinking is complex — but because most leaders have been trained to make everything measurable, and an Objective is deliberately not measurable. That friction is where mistakes happen.

    A strong OGSM Objective has three characteristics:

    • Qualitative. No numbers, percentages, or time-bound targets. Those belong in your Goals row.
    • Directional. It points your organisation toward a specific destination — not a distance.
    • Durable. The best Objectives remain meaningful for three to five years, even as the Goals beneath them are refreshed annually.

    Think of the Objective as the answer to: “What kind of company are we becoming?” It’s not about what you’ll achieve by a date. It’s about what you’re building toward.

    The Number One OGSM Objective Mistake

    I’ve reviewed hundreds of OGSMs, from start-ups to global businesses. The error I see most often: writing a Goal in the Objective row.

    Here’s what that looks like:

    “Grow our customer base by 30% and achieve £50m revenue by 2027.”

    That’s two Goals masquerading as an Objective. The moment you attach a number, a percentage, or a deadline, you’ve left Objective territory.

    Here’s how that same strategic intent looks written correctly:

    “Become the first-choice brand for small business owners in our region.”

    The direction is identical. The inspiration is higher. And it gives your leadership team room to set stretching Goals beneath it — which is exactly how OGSM is supposed to work.

    If you find yourself reaching for a spreadsheet while writing your Objective, stop. Go qualitative. Save the measurement for the Goals row where it belongs.

    20 OGSM Objectives Examples by Industry

    These examples span seven sectors. Use them as inspiration — adapt the language to your market, your team, and your ambition. What matters is that each is directional, qualitative, and motivating. Not a single number in sight.

    Retail

    Retail Objectives tend to focus on brand position, customer loyalty, or market leadership. The challenge is avoiding vague mission-statement language and keeping genuine strategic direction.

    1. Become the destination of choice for sustainable everyday essentials in the UK.
    2. Transform from a transactional retailer into a trusted lifestyle brand that customers return to weekly.
    3. Establish ourselves as the most convenient and personalised shopping experience on the high street.

    SaaS / Technology

    In SaaS, Objectives often reflect a shift in how the product is perceived — from tool to platform, from feature to workflow anchor.

    1. Be the platform that growing teams trust to run their operations from day one.
    2. Shift from a point solution to the central nervous system of our customers’ workflows.
    3. Become the most recommended project management tool in the professional services sector.

    Professional Services

    Consultancies and agencies anchor Objectives in reputation and trust — because that’s ultimately what drives their pipeline.

    1. Be recognised as the go-to partner for mid-market companies navigating transformation.
    2. Build a reputation as the most trusted advisory firm in our niche — where clients come for the hard conversations.
    3. Become the consultancy that ambitious founders call first.

    Manufacturing

    Manufacturing Objectives frequently signal a strategic shift — from commodity supplier to valued partner, or from local player to category leader.

    1. Lead our category through a shift from product supplier to full-service solutions partner.
    2. Build a manufacturing operation that competitors benchmark themselves against.
    3. Establish our brand as synonymous with precision and reliability in European industrial markets.

    Non-Profit / Social Enterprise

    Non-profit Objectives should be grounded in mission — but ambitious. Avoid the trap of writing something that sounds like your existing service description.

    1. Become the most trusted voice for marginalised young people in our city.
    2. Transform from a service provider into a movement that changes how our community thinks about mental health.
    3. Build the most accessible and impactful financial literacy programme in our region.

    Healthcare

    Healthcare Objectives often focus on patient experience, workforce quality, or the shift from reactive to proactive care models.

    1. Create a patient experience that people in our community actively recommend to each other.
    2. Lead the shift from reactive care to proactive health management in our practice network.
    3. Become the employer of choice for clinical talent in our county.

    Education

    Education Objectives focus on outcomes, access, and institutional reputation — the things that define an organisation’s identity over a generation.

    1. Build an institution where every student — regardless of background — believes they can succeed.
    2. Become the regional benchmark for innovative, employer-linked curriculum design.

    How to Stress-Test Your OGSM Objective

    Once you’ve written a draft, run it through these three questions before it gets locked into the framework:

    1. Is it qualitative?

    Remove every number and deadline. Does it still make sense? Does it still have direction? If yes, you’re in the right territory. If stripping the numbers leaves you with nothing, you’ve written a Goal, not an Objective.

    2. Does it have a three-to-five-year feel?

    Your Objective should be stable while your Goals evolve annually. If it would feel outdated in 12 months, it’s too tactical. If it could mean anything indefinitely, it’s too generic. Aim for the sweet spot: specific enough to have a point of view, broad enough to outlast your next planning cycle.

    3. Does it move your team?

    Read it aloud. Does it land? Would a new joiner immediately understand what kind of organisation this is trying to become? A great Objective creates a feeling, not just a direction. If you get blank stares, rewrite it.

    Most first drafts don’t pass all three. That’s normal — the Objective usually takes the longest to settle in any OGSM I’ve worked on.

    Objectives vs Goals: The One-Line Distinction

    An Objective tells you where you’re going. A Goal tells you whether you’ve arrived.

    “Become the most trusted brand in our market” is an Objective. “Achieve a Net Promoter Score of 72 by Q4 2027” is the Goal that proves it. They are two different instruments doing two different jobs, and conflating them is how strategies lose their structure.

    If your OGSM has numbers in the Objective row and aspirational language in the Goals row, you’ve flipped them. Swap them back and the whole framework will feel more coherent immediately.

    For a deeper look at how Goals and Measures work together — and the confusion that arises when they’re treated as the same thing — see OGSM Goals vs Measures: What’s the Difference?.

    Writing Your Own OGSM Objective

    Start with this prompt: “In three to five years, we want to be known as the company that ________.”

    Fill in the blank without using a number. Strip the jargon. Run it through the three stress-test questions above. Then check it against your complete OGSM guide to make sure your Goals, Strategies, and Measures build coherently beneath it.

    If you want to see complete OGSM examples across all four components in action, 30 OGSM Strategy Examples is a good next stop. And for the Measures row — the other notoriously tricky component — OGSM Measures Examples walks you through it in the same format.

    Rock on.

  • How to Cascade OGSM Through Your Organisation (Step by Step)

    How to Cascade OGSM Through Your Organisation (Step by Step)

    You created a strategy for your business but have the feeling that each team is pulling in a different direction? That’s where cascading comes in.

    Cascading OGSM means translating your company-level Objective, Goals, Strategies, and Measures into aligned plans at division, team, and sometimes individual level — so every part of the business is pulling in the same direction. You start at the top, lock in the corporate OGSM, then work downward: each team builds its own OGSM that directly supports the level above it.

    Done right, it’s the cleanest alignment tool in strategic planning. Done badly — or not done at all — it’s how ambitious strategies die quietly in middle management. This article provides you with the step-by-step approach to ensure you do it right.

    Why Most OGSM Implementations Stop at the Top (and Fail)

    Most organisations treat OGSM as a senior leadership exercise. The CEO and their direct reports gather, build a corporate OGSM, declare victory, and expect the strategy to somehow permeate through dozens of teams who’ve never seen the thing. It doesn’t work.

    I’ve seen this happen in companies of every size. The corporate plan looks brilliant. It gets presented at the all-hands with a nice deck. Then it lands on a department head’s desk with a one-line email: “Here’s the company strategy — please align your team.” Three months later, every team is still doing exactly what it always did.

    The problem isn’t the OGSM. The problem is that nobody built the next level down.

    A strategy that lives only at the top is a wish list. Cascade is what turns it into execution.

    What Does a Full OGSM Cascade Actually Look Like?

    A proper cascade doesn’t stop at the executive suite. It travels through the organisation in layers, each one more specific and operational than the last.

    Level 1 — Company OGSM: Set by the CEO and senior leadership team. This is the master plan — the 1–3 year Objective for the whole business, with ambitious but measurable Goals, three to five Strategies, and the Measures that prove it’s working. If you’re new to the framework, start with what OGSM actually means before cascading it.

    Level 2 — Division OGSM: Each division (Sales, Marketing, Operations, Finance, Product) builds its own OGSM. Every element must connect directly to the company-level OGSM. The division’s Objective usually picks up one of the company Strategies and makes it its own mandate.

    Level 3 — Team OGSM: Within each division, individual teams (demand gen, customer success, fulfilment, content) build their own OGSMs — connecting upward to the division plan. This is where strategy becomes day-to-day decision-making.

    Level 4 — Individual goals (optional): For smaller teams or high-accountability cultures, individual contributors can align their quarterly objectives to the team OGSM. This level works best in companies with mature performance review rhythms.

    Level Who owns it Connects to
    1 — Company CEO / Senior leadership team Board / shareholders
    2 — Division Divisional VP or Director Company OGSM
    3 — Team Team lead / Manager Division OGSM
    4 — Individual Contributor Team OGSM

    The rule is simple: every OGSM must be traceable upward. If you can’t draw a line from a team-level Strategy to a company-level priority, that Strategy doesn’t belong in the plan.

    Step-by-Step: How to Build a Department-Level OGSM from the Company Plan

    Once your company-level OGSM is set and signed off, here’s how to cascade it at each level below.

    Step 1: Share the company OGSM — all of it. Every team lead needs to read the full company OGSM before they build their own. Not a summary. Not a slide. The actual plan. The Strategies are the most important section: department-level OGSMs almost always find their focus there.

    Step 2: Identify which company Strategies your division owns. A Marketing division might own “Grow brand awareness in new markets” and “Increase lead volume by 40%.” Operations might own “Reduce cost-to-serve by 15%.” Each division takes ownership of the company Strategies that fall squarely within their sphere of influence. If a Strategy is shared across divisions, agree on who leads and who supports — before anyone starts writing.

    Step 3: Write the division Objective. The Objective is an inspirational, qualitative statement. It should feel like a natural child of the company Objective — same energy, narrower scope. If the company Objective is “Become the most trusted supplier in the UK market,” the Marketing Objective might be “Build a brand that makes us the obvious first call for procurement directors.”

    Step 4: Set Goals that feed the company scoreboard. Division Goals must connect to company Goals. If the company has a revenue Growth Goal of £50m, the Sales division’s Goal might be “Generate £60m in qualified pipeline.” The logic: if every division hits its Goals, the company hits its Goals. That line of sight has to be visible and tested, not assumed.

    Step 5: Define Strategies that are division-specific. Here’s where real thinking happens. Division Strategies are not paraphrases of company Strategies — they’re the specific choices that division is making to hit its Goals. “Expand into the NHS procurement channel” is a real Marketing Strategy. “Improve our deck” is not a Strategy; it’s a task.

    Step 6: Set Measures with clear ownership. Every Measure needs an owner, a baseline, and a target. If no one is responsible for tracking a Measure, it won’t get tracked. At division level, Measures often feed directly into the company-level scorecard.

    Step 7: Repeat for team level. Once the division OGSM is solid, each team lead runs the same process — connecting their OGSM to the division plan rather than the company plan. The cascade deepens without losing the thread.

    If you want a framework to work from as you go, the OGSM template at each level saves you from starting with a blank page.

    What Has to Line Up — and What Can Your Team Own?

    Cascade doesn’t mean copy-paste. Teams need room to build plans that reflect their operational reality. Here’s what’s non-negotiable and what isn’t.

    Must align (non-negotiable):

    • The Objective must support the level above — it should feel like a natural continuation of the parent plan’s ambition
    • At least one Strategy must directly address a company-level priority
    • Measures must include at least one metric that feeds the parent OGSM’s scoreboard

    Can flex:

    • The tone and framing of the Objective
    • Additional Strategies that address local issues (talent gaps, tooling, process debt) even if they’re not in the parent OGSM — as long as they don’t contradict it
    • Team-specific Measures that are supplementary, not replacements

    The alignment test: if a member of the senior leadership team read your team’s OGSM, could they trace a clear line from your plan up to the company plan within two minutes? If yes, you’re aligned. If they’d have to guess, rebuild.

    Worked Example: A Three-Level Cascade at Brindley & Co

    Let’s make this concrete. Meet Brindley & Co, a mid-sized B2B services business in the compliance sector.

    Company OGSM (Level 1)

    • Objective: Become the dominant provider of compliance services in the UK financial sector
    • Goals: £40m ARR by year 3 | 85% client retention | NPS above 65
    • Strategies: Deepen relationships with Tier 1 banks | Launch a digital self-service platform | Build thought leadership in FCA-regulated markets
    • Measures: Annual recurring revenue | Gross churn rate | Net Promoter Score | Content-sourced pipeline

    Marketing Division OGSM (Level 2)

    • Objective: Make Brindley & Co the go-to name in compliance content and community
    • Goals: Generate 250 MQLs per month | Drive 40% of pipeline from inbound | Grow email list to 25,000
    • Strategies: Publish weekly long-form compliance guides | Host quarterly roundtables for compliance directors | Build an SEO programme targeting FCA search terms
    • Measures: MQL volume | Content-attributed pipeline value | Email subscriber count | Organic traffic growth

    Notice: the Marketing Objective picks up the company Strategy “Build thought leadership in FCA-regulated markets” and makes it a division mandate. The Marketing Goals connect to the company pipeline and retention goals. Alignment visible, no guesswork required.

    Content Team OGSM (Level 3)

    • Objective: Own the digital conversation around FCA compliance for financial services professionals
    • Goals: Publish 4 long-form articles per month | Rank top 3 for 10 priority search terms | Achieve 25% email open rate
    • Strategies: Build a content calendar anchored to the FCA regulatory release schedule | Develop a “compliance explainer” series for senior decision-makers | Optimise existing content for featured snippets
    • Measures: Articles published per month | Keyword rankings | Email open rate | Time-on-page

    The Content Team’s SEO strategy exists because Marketing chose SEO as a division strategy, because the company chose thought leadership as a corporate strategy. That line of sight is cascade working. You can see it in real-world OGSM examples across different sectors — the logic is the same even when the context changes.

    What Are the Most Common Cascade Mistakes?

    I’ve watched smart leaders break cascade in the same ways, repeatedly. Here’s the full list.

    Building in isolation. Division heads disappear into a workshop and write their OGSMs without properly referencing the corporate plan. You end up with five impressive-looking documents that don’t connect. Always share the company OGSM before anyone starts writing at the next level down.

    Cascading Goals but not Strategies. Teams adopt the company’s revenue targets without making the strategic choices about how to hit them. Numbers without direction aren’t strategy — they’re pressure. Cascade the Strategies first; the Goals follow.

    Making lower-level OGSMs too granular. A team OGSM should look like a scaled-down version of the corporate plan, not a project plan. If you’re listing 40 tasks under Strategies, you’ve gone too far. Strategies in a team OGSM should still be big choices, not activities.

    Skipping the alignment conversation. Cascade is not just document creation — it’s dialogue. Division heads need to present their OGSMs to the CEO. Team leads need to present to their division heads. That conversation catches misalignment before it hardens into nine months of wasted effort.

    Treating cascade as a one-time event. OGSMs should be reviewed quarterly. If the company shifts a Strategy mid-year, the cascade needs to be refreshed. A stale cascade actively misleads teams — they’ll be executing against priorities that no longer exist.

    Measuring the wrong things at the wrong level. Each level of cascade should track leading indicators of the level above’s lagging indicators. If the company tracks ARR, Marketing should track pipeline. If Marketing tracks pipeline, the Content Team should track MQL quality. Align the metrics hierarchy as carefully as you align the strategy hierarchy.

    How Do You Stop the Cascade from Going Stale?

    Building the cascade is the hard work. Maintaining it is a discipline.

    Set a quarterly OGSM review rhythm at every level. Division heads review their OGSM with the CEO; team leads review with their division heads. Treat it like a board meeting — prepared data, honest assessment of what’s working, and clear decisions about what changes.

    When company Strategies shift (and they will — markets change, competitors move), communicate upward and downward. Team leads need to know when priorities have moved. Executive leadership needs to hear when team-level data is suggesting a Strategy isn’t working. Cascade isn’t a top-down broadcast; it’s a two-way alignment system.

    For the operational side, a structured OGSM template with built-in hierarchy links makes it easier to see alignment across levels without chasing documents across folders. At scale, that infrastructure matters.

    How to Cascade OGSM: The Summary

    Cascade OGSM through your organisation by:

    Locking in the company OGSM first — cascade can’t start with a draft

    Using the 4-level model: Company → Division → Team → Individual

    Following the step-by-step process at each level, starting with Strategies

    Applying the alignment rules: some elements must connect up, others can flex

    Running the alignment conversation before finalising each level’s plan

    Reviewing the full cascade quarterly — and refreshing it when the company plan changes

    The difference between a company that executes strategy and one that talks about it is almost always found at this level. The corporate OGSM is the easy part. Getting it into every team’s hands — and into their priorities — is where execution is actually won.

    Rock on.

  • How to Cascade an OGSM Across Departments (With Examples)

    How to Cascade an OGSM Across Departments (With Examples)

    Most organisations that struggle with strategy execution don’t have a problem with their top-level OGSM. They have a cascade problem.

    To cascade an OGSM across departments, each team builds their own sub-OGSM by taking one of the company’s Strategies as their Objective. Their Goals, Strategies, and Measures then flow down from that. Done right, every department’s OGSM is a direct expression of the corporate OGSM — not a separate plan bolted on the side.

    This article explores how to do it — and what to avoid.

    What Does It Mean to Cascade an OGSM?

    Cascading means taking a strategy from a higher level and making it the starting point for planning at the next level down. In OGSM terms, the company’s Strategies become department Objectives.

    Think about it this way. Your corporate OGSM has an Objective (where you’re going), Goals (the quantified targets that define success), and three to five Strategies (the choices about where to focus). Each Strategy is a statement of intent: “We will grow through new channel partnerships” or “We will reduce operating costs by automating manual fulfilment.”

    Each of those Strategies needs an owner. That owner — typically a department or business unit — then builds their own OGSM using the Strategy as their Objective. Their Goals quantify what success looks like for that department. Their Strategies describe how they’ll get there. Their Measures track progress.

    The result is a connected hierarchy of plans, each one directly traceable back to the corporate direction. No department is off doing their own thing. Every team can see exactly how their work connects to the overall strategy.

    What Are the Three Types of OGSM Cascade?

    Not every cascade is the same. I’ve seen three patterns used in practice, and the right one depends on your organisation’s structure and planning horizon.

    Vertical cascade (by department or business unit)

    This is the most common approach. You take the corporate OGSM and decompose it by function. Sales, Marketing, Operations, Product — each department takes ownership of the Strategy that most closely matches their remit and builds a sub-OGSM from there.

    Vertical cascade works well in functional organisations where departments have clear ownership of outcomes. If your corporate Strategy is “expand into enterprise accounts,” that becomes the Sales team’s Objective. Sales then sets its own Goals (number of enterprise accounts won, average contract value), its own Strategies (target industry verticals, invest in account-based marketing), and its own Measures.

    Horizontal cascade (across process chains)

    Sometimes a Strategy cuts across functions rather than sitting neatly within one. “Reduce customer onboarding time from 30 days to 7 days” is an Objective that involves Sales, Product, IT, and Customer Success simultaneously. No single department owns it outright.

    In this case, a horizontal cascade creates a cross-functional OGSM shared by all the teams involved. Each team’s contribution is captured in the Measures column, so accountability is visible and distributed. This is harder to manage — you need a clear process owner — but it’s essential for strategic priorities that don’t respect org chart lines.

    Time-based cascade (annual into quarterly)

    The third type isn’t structural, it’s temporal. You take your annual OGSM and break it into quarterly sub-OGSMs. The annual Goals become the targets; the quarterly OGSMs describe the specific actions and milestones that will get you there each quarter.

    I use this approach with leadership teams that find the annual OGSM too abstract for day-to-day decision-making. Quarterly OGSMs keep the team focused on near-term work while remaining anchored to the year’s Goals and Measures.

    What Does a Cascaded OGSM Look Like in Practice?

    Let me show you a worked example. I’ll keep it simple but realistic.

    Corporate OGSM (abbreviated)

    • Objective: Become the market-leading provider of sustainable packaging in Europe by 2028.
    • Goals: Revenue €150M by FY28; Net Promoter Score ≥ 65; >40% market share in key segments.
    • Strategies: S1: Grow through direct enterprise accounts in DACH and Benelux. S2: Launch a certified compostable product line by Q3. S3: Reduce production waste by 25% to fund investment.

    Three departments each take ownership of one Strategy.

    Sales OGSM (from S1)

    • Objective: Grow through direct enterprise accounts in DACH and Benelux.
    • Goals: 40 new enterprise contracts by FY27; €60M revenue from enterprise by FY27; 90% renewal rate.
    • Strategies: Focus outbound on manufacturing and food & beverage; build a partnership channel with two regional distributors; deploy account-based marketing for top 20 targets.
    • Measures: Pipeline value, contracts signed per quarter, renewal rate, partner revenue.

    Product OGSM (from S2)

    • Objective: Launch a certified compostable product line by Q3.
    • Goals: Four SKUs to market by Q3; 95% certification pass rate; COGS within 15% of existing line.
    • Strategies: Partner with two material suppliers already in certification pipelines; run a 90-day pilot with three beta customers; align packaging design to existing brand guidelines.
    • Measures: Certification milestone tracker, beta feedback scores, COGS per unit, Q3 launch date.

    Operations OGSM (from S3)

    • Objective: Reduce production waste by 25% to fund investment.
    • Goals: Waste down from 18% to 13.5% by end of FY27; €2M in savings reinvested into R&D.
    • Strategies: Implement lean production review at two main facilities; renegotiate supplier contracts to reduce off-spec deliveries; automate quality control on Line 4.
    • Measures: Waste % by facility, monthly cost savings, supplier defect rate, Line 4 throughput.

    You can see what’s happening here. Every department Objective is a direct lift from a corporate Strategy. Every department’s success contributes directly to the corporate Goals. The strategy is connected — not fragmented.

    For a structured template to build this out, our OGSM template walks you through each level step by step. And if you want a deeper grounding in how the framework works from first principles, the complete OGSM guide is the right place to start.

    What Are the Most Common Cascade Mistakes?

    I’ve helped organisations cascade OGSMs across dozens of departments. The same mistakes come up every time.

    Copying company Strategies verbatim

    When you ask a department to “just cascade their part,” the path of least resistance is to copy the corporate Strategies into their own OGSM and call it done. It feels compliant. It isn’t. Each department’s OGSM should reflect how they will deliver the higher-level Strategy — their own choices, their own approach. If the Sales OGSM’s Strategies look identical to the corporate Strategies, nobody has actually thought about execution.

    Turning cascade into a rubber-stamp exercise

    This happens when cascade is imposed top-down without real dialogue. Leadership hands down the corporate OGSM, departments fill in the template, and nobody questions whether the split makes sense. The cascade produces paper alignment, not real alignment. The better approach is a working session where departments discuss which corporate Strategy they’re best placed to own, where the overlaps are, and what they’ll need from other teams to succeed.

    No common review cadence

    A cascaded OGSM only works if the connected OGSMs are reviewed together. If the corporate OGSM is reviewed quarterly but department OGSMs are reviewed monthly — or never — the cascade breaks down. Misalignment creeps back in. Build a single review rhythm that runs from department to corporate level, so the connections stay live.

    Forgetting that some strategies are cross-functional

    Not every corporate Strategy belongs to one department. Treating a cross-functional priority as if it belongs to one team creates silos and finger-pointing when delivery falls short. Identify these upfront and build horizontal accountability into the Measures rather than hoping one team carries the load.

    Ready to Start Your OGSM Rollout Across Teams?

    How to cascade an OGSM is genuinely one of those things that sounds straightforward and trips people up in execution. The framework is simple: each department takes a corporate Strategy as their Objective and builds down from there. The hard part is the conversation — who owns what, how you handle cross-functional priorities, and how you build a review cadence that keeps the whole structure honest.

    Start at the top. Make sure your corporate OGSM is solid and your Strategies are clear and distinct. Then bring your department heads together and work through the OGSM cascade departments exercise as a team — not as a form-filling exercise. The difference shows.

    Working at a smaller scale? OGSM for small business covers how to apply the same cascade logic without the enterprise overhead.

    Rock on.

  • OGSM vs Hoshin Kanri: Same DNA, Different Operating System

    OGSM vs Hoshin Kanri: Same DNA, Different Operating System

    OGSM and Hoshin Kanri are both strategy-execution frameworks with Japanese roots, and both are built to align an entire organisation behind a shared strategic direction. The core difference is operating model.

    OGSM is a single-page, top-down document that prioritises speed and clarity; Hoshin Kanri is a more complex, bidirectional planning system built for large organisations with mature continuous improvement cultures. For most teams, OGSM gets you further, faster. For enterprise manufacturing environments already running Lean or Six Sigma, Hoshin Kanri may be the natural fit.

    In this article we introduce each strategy framework, describe their differences, and explore when to use either one.

    What Is Hoshin Kanri?

    Hoshin Kanri — sometimes called Policy Deployment — emerged in Japan in the 1960s, drawing on the quality management work of pioneers like Kaoru Ishikawa and Yoji Akao. The name roughly translates as “direction management” or “compass needle management.” Its purpose is to cascade strategic intent from the C-suite all the way to the shop floor, ensuring every level of the organisation is pulling in the same direction.

    The hallmark of Hoshin Kanri is the catchball process. Unlike top-down cascades, catchball is a dialogue: leadership throws a strategic objective down to the next level, that level responds with their capacity and constraints, and the objective is refined before being thrown again. It is iterative, consensus-building, and time-intensive — by design. Done well, catchball surfaces operational constraints that leadership teams simply cannot see from the boardroom.

    The X-matrix is Hoshin Kanri’s primary tool. It maps the relationships between long-term breakthrough objectives, annual priorities, improvement activities, and metrics on a single page. It is a powerful instrument in the right hands. In the wrong hands, it produces a complex document that nobody reads after January.

    What Is OGSM?

    For readers arriving from a Hoshin Kanri background: OGSM stands for Objective, Goals, Strategies, Measures. It originated in Procter & Gamble’s Japan operations in the 1980s — ironically, influenced by the same TQM tradition that shaped Hoshin Kanri — and was designed for speed and portability. The entire plan fits on one page. One Objective (the qualitative ambition), several Goals (the quantitative targets), Strategies (the choices you are making), and Measures (how you will track whether those choices are working). That is it.

    OGSM’s simplicity is not naivety — it is a deliberate constraint. You cannot hide strategic confusion in a one-page document.

    How Do OGSM and Hoshin Kanri Differ?

    Both frameworks are trying to answer the same question: how do we turn strategy into coordinated action at every level? They answer it very differently.

    Dimension OGSM Hoshin Kanri
    Structure One-page linear document (O -> G -> S -> M) X-matrix with cross-linked relationships
    Cascade method Top-down Bidirectional (catchball)
    Time to implement Days to weeks Months (first full cycle)
    Required expertise Low — any team can learn it High — Lean/Six Sigma facilitation typically needed
    Documentation Minimal Extensive
    Review cadence Flexible (quarterly is common) Structured monthly reviews built into the system

    The biggest practical difference is implementation friction. An SME leadership team can learn and run OGSM in a day. A full Hoshin Kanri deployment typically takes a full planning cycle to bed in, and it demands trained facilitators to keep the catchball process honest and productive. That is not a flaw in Hoshin Kanri — it is a design trade-off. The depth of engagement produces better cascade alignment. But it requires an organisation that is ready and resourced for it.

    When Should You Choose OGSM?

    OGSM is the right call when speed and simplicity matter more than elaborate cascade mechanics. Consider it if you are:

    • A small or mid-sized business building strategic discipline for the first time
    • A team or business unit that needs a fast alignment tool without organisational bureaucracy
    • An organisation that has tried and failed with overly complex planning frameworks
    • A leadership team that wants one document everyone can hold in their head

    The one-page constraint is OGSM’s greatest strength. It forces the clarity that most strategy processes never achieve. I have seen organisations spend six months on a Hoshin Kanri rollout and still not be able to articulate their strategy in a sentence. That does not happen with a well-built OGSM — the format will not let you hide behind vagueness.

    For a full walkthrough of the format, read our complete OGSM guide. If you are also evaluating OKRs, our OGSM vs OKRs breakdown covers that head-to-head in detail.

    When Should You Choose Hoshin Kanri?

    Hoshin Kanri earns its complexity premium in specific conditions. It is the right choice when:

    • You are running a large manufacturing or industrial organisation with established Lean or Six Sigma programmes already embedded in the culture
    • Frontline input into strategy is genuinely essential — the catchball process is superior at surfacing operational constraints that senior leaders cannot see from above
    • You have multi-year transformation programmes where annual cycles must stay explicitly locked to long-range breakthrough objectives
    • Your teams already speak the language of continuous improvement, A3 thinking, and structured review cadences

    In these contexts, the X-matrix’s ability to map the explicit relationships between long-term breakthroughs, annual priorities, process-level improvement activities, and metrics is genuinely valuable. Hoshin Kanri is not over-engineered for these environments — it is precisely engineered for them. The infrastructure it requires is justified by the cascade complexity it manages.

    If you are not in that environment, that infrastructure will cost more than it delivers.

    Can You Use OGSM and Hoshin Kanri Together?

    Yes — and some mature organisations do exactly this. The pattern that works is: use OGSM at the leadership level for the annual strategy document, then apply Hoshin Kanri principles for the cascade below it.

    Concretely: the leadership team aligns on the OGSM, then uses a catchball-style dialogue to translate the Strategies and Measures into departmental OGSMs. The X-matrix can serve as a cascade validation tool — mapping which departmental activities connect to which enterprise-level measures — without requiring a full Hoshin Kanri deployment from scratch.

    This hybrid approach gives you OGSM’s clarity at the top and Hoshin Kanri’s cascade rigour below. It is not officially sanctioned by either framework’s purists, but it works in practice. Several organisations I have encountered have landed here after initially trying each framework independently and finding that the extremes of each did not fully serve them.

    OGSM vs Hoshin Kanri: Which Framework Should You Choose?

    Both frameworks exist to solve the same fundamental problem: organisations that set strategy and then fail to execute it. They solve it differently, and neither is universally superior.

    If you want a lean, fast, flexible framework that any team can learn and run without specialist support, choose OGSM. If you are operating in a mature Lean environment and need a system specifically built for complex, multi-level cascade with deep frontline engagement, Hoshin Kanri has capabilities that OGSM does not replicate.

    When in doubt — and for most organisations reading this, doubt is appropriate — start with OGSM. You can always layer in Hoshin Kanri cascade mechanics later as your strategic operating maturity grows. The reverse — simplifying a full Hoshin Kanri deployment that has stalled — is considerably harder and more politically fraught.

    Rock on.

  • Why Most Strategies Fail (And Three Things You Can Do About It)

    Why Most Strategies Fail (And Three Things You Can Do About It)

    Most strategies fail not because leaders are not smart enough, but because they mistake aspiration for direction.

    Strategies fail because they leave room for ambiguity, mistake action for progress, and lack integration into operational processes.

    A strategy that cannot tell you what to say no to is not a strategy — it is a wish list dressed in a slide deck. I have spent years working with leadership teams across industries, from fast-scaling start-ups to established mid-market businesses, and the same three failure patterns show up every time. Not occasionally. Reliably. The good news: all three are fixable.

    What Is the Real Reason Why Most Strategies Fail?

    Ask most leadership teams what their strategy is and you will get a recitation of values, vision, and ambitions. “We want to be the most trusted provider in our market.” “We are committed to exceptional customer experience.” “We are focused on sustainable growth.”

    None of that is strategy.

    Strategy is a decision. Specifically, it is a decision about what you will do — and more importantly, what you will not do. When a strategy cannot tell you what to say no to, it cannot guide behaviour. Teams cannot prioritise. Middle managers make competing calls. Leaders wonder why execution keeps fragmenting.

    I sat in a room last year with a leadership team of twelve people. I asked them each to write down the top three strategic priorities for the year. I got eleven different answers. Nobody was lying. Nobody was being difficult. They had all attended the same strategy presentation six months earlier. But the strategy was written in a way that let every person hear something different — because it had been designed to inspire, not to decide.

    The real problem is not ambition. Ambition is useful. The problem is ambiguity disguised as direction. When everything feels strategic, nothing is.

    The fix: Force the trade-off. Take your current strategy statement and ask: “What does this require us to stop doing, reduce, or decline?” If you cannot answer that, you do not have a strategy — you have a preference. The OGSM framework is one of the most effective tools I know for translating aspiration into specific, testable decisions. It requires you to name Goals that can be measured and Strategies that are genuinely choices — not just activities dressed up as direction.

    Why Do Teams Confuse Busyness With Progress?

    The second failure is subtler — and far more common than most leaders want to admit.

    Teams are busy. Genuinely busy. Calendars are full. Projects are running. Slide decks are being built. And yet six months after the strategy was announced, nothing strategically significant has changed.

    This happens because organisations confuse activity with progress. There is no feedback loop connecting what people do day-to-day to the outcomes the strategy is supposed to achieve. No-one knows whether all that busyness is actually moving the needle — or just keeping people occupied and comfortable.

    I worked with a leadership team who were convinced their growth strategy was on track. Pipeline numbers were up. Sales activity was high. Everyone was running. When we mapped their KPIs back to strategic intent, we found they were measuring effort — calls made, proposals sent, meetings attended — rather than strategic outcome: revenue from new customer segments, retention in the target market, margin improvement. Their measurement system was accidentally tracking the wrong thing. It rewarded hustle and reported it as strategy.

    This is extraordinarily common. And it is lethal because it feels fine right up until the board asks for results — at which point twelve months of momentum turns out to have been motion, not progress.

    The fix: Build a feedback loop between action and outcome. For every strategic priority, define a leading indicator (something you can measure now that predicts the outcome you want) and a lagging indicator (the result you are ultimately trying to achieve). Review these regularly — not annually. If your strategy has measures that only tell you how you did last year, you are navigating with a rear-view mirror.

    This is exactly where a structured approach like OGSM earns its keep. It forces you to define Measures for every Strategy — not just hope that action translates to outcome. You can download the OGSM template to see how that structure works in practice. Having the right measures changes what conversations happen at the leadership level — which is where strategy either lives or quietly dies.

    Why Does Strategy Live in a Deck Instead of Driving Decisions?

    This third failure pattern is the one I find most frustrating — because it is almost entirely avoidable.

    Strategy gets announced, often with great fanfare. There is a leadership away-day, a well-designed presentation, a town-hall. People leave feeling energised. And then the deck lands in a SharePoint folder no-one opens, and the organisation goes back to doing what it has always done — because nothing about the operating system of the business has actually changed.

    Strategy only drives behaviour when it is integrated into the rhythm of how the business runs. Not referenced once a quarter. Not reviewed at the annual planning cycle. Integrated into how decisions get made every single week.

    When a team brings a resource request to a leadership meeting, does it get tested against strategic priorities? When a new partnership opportunity arrives, does the team have a clear framework for deciding whether it fits the strategy or distracts from it? When performance reviews happen, are people being measured against strategic contribution — or just output?

    If the answers to those questions are no, the strategy is not running the business. It is decorating a wall somewhere.

    The fix: Integrate strategy into your weekly and monthly operating cadences. The most effective leadership teams I have worked with have a standing item on their weekly meeting agenda: “What are we saying no to this week?” It takes five minutes. It keeps the strategy present. Over time, it reshapes culture — because the message lands clearly that strategy is not a document. It is a discipline.

    This is also where having a clean, one-page strategy summary matters. If your strategy fits on a single page in plain language, people can refer to it and hold each other to it. If it lives in a 40-slide deck with small print and executive summaries, it will not survive contact with operational reality.

    What Is the Common Thread Behind Every Strategy Failure?

    All three failure patterns share the same root: strategy is treated as a communication exercise rather than an operational system.

    Leaders create a strategy, communicate it, and expect behaviour to change. But behaviour changes when decisions change. Decisions change when there are clear criteria, feedback loops, and a rhythm of accountability woven into how the business actually operates.

    The leaders who execute strategy well share three habits:

    • They can articulate their strategy in a single sentence — and specifically what it rules out.
    • They review leading indicators weekly, not just lagging ones quarterly.
    • They use the strategy to make — and refuse — real decisions, not just to guide presentations.

    None of this is complicated. But all of it is harder than writing a slide deck. Which is why so few organisations actually do it.

    What Should You Do Next?

    If this resonates — the aspiration that never quite lands, the busyness that never quite becomes progress, the deck that quietly dies in a shared folder — I wrote more about it in The Strategy Lie, a business fable about exactly this pattern.

    It goes deeper on why most strategy fails at the execution layer, and what the leaders who get it right do differently.

    Follow The Strategy Lie’s progress →

    Rock on.

  • OGSM for Small Business: The Complete Strategic Planning Guide (With Real Examples)

    OGSM for Small Business: The Complete Strategic Planning Guide (With Real Examples)

    Most strategic planning frameworks were built for companies with dedicated strategy teams, quarterly board reviews, and the kind of budget that covers three-day off-sites. If you run a business with 5 to 200 people, that’s not your world.

    OGSM — Objective, Goals, Strategies, Measures — gives small businesses a one-page strategy framework that forces real prioritisation and runs on a monthly review habit, without the overhead of OKRs or a Balanced Scorecard. This guide covers everything you need to write your first OGSM: the framework explained in plain language, three real-world examples, a step-by-step build process for small businesses, and the review cadence to make it stick.

    OGSM for small business is different. This guide is the most complete practical resource you’ll find on using OGSM as a small business owner, founder, or general manager. By the time you finish reading, you’ll have everything you need to write your first OGSM — or fix the one that isn’t working.

    Table of Contents

    1. Why Do Small Businesses Need a One-Page Strategy?
    2. What Is OGSM, and How Does It Work for Small Business Owners?
    3. How Do You Build Your First OGSM Step by Step?
    4. What Do Real OGSM Examples for Small Businesses Look Like?
    5. How Do You Run an OGSM Review?
    6. What Tools and Templates Do You Need for OGSM?
    7. What Are the Most Common OGSM Mistakes Small Businesses Make?
    8. FAQ

    Why Do Small Businesses Need a One-Page Strategy?

    Here’s the strategy planning mistake I see most often in small businesses: the owner spends a weekend writing a 20-page strategic plan, presents it to the team on a Monday, and by Friday nobody can remember what was in it.

    The plan isn’t bad. The format is.

    Long documents don’t drive execution. They sit in a folder on Google Drive, opened maybe twice before the next planning cycle. Meanwhile, the business runs on gut feel, whatever’s urgent that week, and the priorities of whoever shouts loudest. That’s not a strategy — it’s organised chaos.

    Why Complex Frameworks Fail at Small Business Scale

    OKRs, Balanced Scorecards, and similar frameworks are genuinely powerful at the right scale. The problem is they’re expensive to run. OKRs require a dedicated quarterly cycle with cascading objectives through layers of the organisation. The Balanced Scorecard needs someone who understands the four perspectives, a way to measure leading indicators, and regular calibration across departments. When you have 12 people and everyone has a day job, that overhead kills adoption.

    I’ve watched founders burn out trying to implement OKRs as if they were running Google. The system becomes the work instead of supporting it.

    What OGSM Solves

    OGSM — Objectives, Goals, Strategies, Measures — was originally developed at Procter & Gamble as a way to fit an entire business strategy on a single page. That constraint is the feature, not the bug.

    For small businesses, that single page does three things frameworks like OKR can’t easily do at this scale:

    • Alignment at a glance. Every person in your business can see the whole strategy, understand where they fit, and hold themselves accountable without a manager explaining the cascade every quarter.
    • Honest prioritisation. When everything has to fit on one page, you’re forced to choose. Most small businesses don’t have a strategy problem — they have a prioritisation problem. OGSM fixes that.
    • Low-friction review. You don’t need a strategy function to run a monthly OGSM check-in. A 30-minute team meeting against a shared document is enough.

    If you want the deeper comparison between OGSM and other frameworks, read our OGSM vs OKR guide — but for most small businesses, OGSM is the right starting point.

    What Is OGSM, and How Does It Work for Small Business Owners?

    OGSM stands for Objective, Goals, Strategies, and Measures. If you’ve never used it before, here’s what each element actually means — and how they fit together.

    Objective

    Your Objective is a single sentence describing what your business is trying to achieve in the next 12 to 36 months. It’s qualitative, directional, and inspiring. It’s not a revenue target — that comes later.

    Think of it as your “why we’re pushing hard right now” statement. A good small business Objective sounds like:

    “Become the most trusted supplier of commercial kitchen equipment in the Pacific Northwest.”

    One sentence. No metrics. If your Objective needs a paragraph to explain, it’s too complicated.

    Goals

    Goals are the 3–5 measurable outcomes that define what success looks like for your Objective. This is where numbers enter the OGSM.

    Goals are specific, time-bound, and measurable. They make your Objective concrete. For the kitchen equipment business above:

    • Grow annual revenue to $4.2M by end of year
    • Achieve net promoter score of 60+ among commercial clients
    • Expand product range to cover 90% of commercial kitchen categories
    • Retain 85% of accounts year-over-year

    If you hit all four of those, you’re probably the most trusted supplier in the region. That’s the test: do your Goals prove your Objective was achieved?

    Strategies

    Strategies are how you’ll achieve your Goals. For each Goal, you identify 2–4 Strategies — the specific approaches, initiatives, or capabilities you’ll build.

    Strategies answer the question: “What are we actually going to do?” They’re more directional than to-do lists but more concrete than vague intentions.

    • Goal: Grow revenue to $4.2M → Strategies: Launch outbound sales programme targeting hospitality groups; build preferred supplier agreements with three commercial kitchen designers; expand service contract offering to existing accounts.

    Measures

    Measures are how you’ll know your Strategies are working. Each Strategy should have at least one lead indicator (a measure of activity you control) and ideally a lag indicator (a measure of outcome).

    This is where OGSM gets sharp. Most strategies fail not because they’re wrong but because nobody ever checks whether they’re working. Measures force that discipline.

    Strategy Lead Measure Lag Measure
    Outbound sales programme Calls made per week New accounts opened per quarter
    Preferred supplier agreements Agreements signed Revenue from partner channel

    For real-world examples of strong lead and lag Measures across different business types, our OGSM measures examples guide is worth bookmarking. For a deeper explanation of how Goals and Measures differ — and why confusing them is the most common OGSM mistake — read our OGSM Goals vs Measures guide.

    The Worked Example: Coastal Home Cleaning Co.

    Let me pull this together with a fictional small business so you can see how it looks in practice.

    Business: Coastal Home Cleaning Co. — 18-person residential cleaning service, 3 years old, founder wants to expand to a second city within two years.

    OGSM:

    Objective: Become the premium home cleaning brand in our region, known for reliability and trust, ready to scale to a second market.

    Goals:

    1. Reach $1.8M annual revenue by end of Year 1
    2. Maintain 4.8+ star average across all review platforms
    3. Build a waitlist of 50+ qualified residential clients in Target City B
    4. Reduce staff turnover to below 20% annually

    Strategies (selected):

    • For Revenue Goal: Launch referral programme targeting existing 5-star accounts; introduce quarterly deep-clean packages at premium price point
    • For Expansion Goal: Hire city lead for Target City B by Q2; run localised digital ads in Target City B from Q3
    • For Retention Goal: Introduce team lead structure and performance bonus tied to client satisfaction scores

    Measures:

    • Weekly: referral sign-ups; new bookings from ads
    • Monthly: revenue vs. target; review score; staff turnover YTD

    That’s a complete OGSM. It fits on one page, every team member can understand it, and you can review it in 20 minutes.

    How Do You Build Your First OGSM Step by Step?

    Building your first OGSM takes longer than maintaining one, but even a first attempt shouldn’t take more than a few focused hours — or a single 90-minute workshop. Here’s the process.

    Step 1: Write Your Objective

    Start here. Don’t try to write Goals first or you’ll anchor too quickly on today’s numbers and miss the bigger picture.

    Ask yourself: what does winning look like for this business in the next 12–24 months? Write a sentence that captures that ambition. It should be inspiring enough to motivate people but honest enough to be credible.

    Avoid objectives that are really Goals in disguise. “Reach £2M revenue” is a Goal. “Be the go-to accountancy firm for tech startups in London” is an Objective.

    If you get stuck, try the formula: [Verb] + [Who/What] + [Qualifier].

    • “Become the most recommended [category] in [geography]”
    • “Build [business type] that [distinctive position]”

    Step 2: Write 3–5 Goals

    Now make it measurable. For each dimension of your Objective, identify one concrete Goal. Most small businesses need Goals in three to five areas:

    • Revenue / financial performance
    • Customer satisfaction / retention
    • Operational capability
    • Team / people
    • Market position / growth

    Don’t write more than five. Five Goals means five things you’re truly committed to. More than that and you don’t have priorities — you have a wish list.

    Each Goal needs a number and a timeframe. “Grow revenue” isn’t a Goal. “Grow revenue to $2.5M by December 31” is.

    Step 3: Identify 2–4 Strategies Per Goal

    For each Goal, ask: what do we need to do differently to achieve this? Strategies are not business-as-usual activities — they’re the moves that make the difference.

    A useful stress-test: if you kept doing everything you’re currently doing but added nothing new, would you hit this Goal? If yes, you don’t need a Strategy there — just execution. Strategy is for the gaps.

    Write each Strategy as a clear action phrase: “Launch X,” “Build Y,” “Partner with Z,” “Discontinue A.”

    Limit yourself to 2–4 Strategies per Goal. Small businesses don’t have the bandwidth for more.

    Step 4: Assign Measures With Owners

    For each Strategy, set a lead and lag measure, and put someone’s name next to it. Unowned Measures don’t get tracked.

    Lead measures matter more than most people think. Revenue is a lag measure — by the time it moves, the ship has already turned. Your lead measures tell you whether the ship is turning now. For a sales strategy, the lead might be “number of discovery calls per week.” For a retention strategy, it might be “NPS survey sent and response rate.”

    Name the owner. In a small business, this is usually straightforward: the founder, a team lead, or a manager who will stand up in the review meeting and report the number.

    The 90-Minute OGSM Workshop Agenda

    If you want to build your OGSM with your team (recommended), here’s a workshop format that works:

    Time Activity
    0–15 min Framing: where we are now, what’s changed, what’s at stake
    15–30 min Draft Objective: each person writes one, group votes and refines
    30–50 min Goals: generate candidates, pressure-test with “does this prove the Objective?”
    50–70 min Strategies: breakout by Goal owner, rapid-fire, filter to 2–4 each
    70–85 min Measures: assign lead/lag for each Strategy, name owners
    85–90 min Review the full OGSM on one page: does it hang together?

    You don’t need a facilitator. You need a shared document, a timer, and someone willing to kill ideas that don’t belong on the page.

    What Do Real OGSM Examples for Small Businesses Look Like?

    Three complete examples across different sectors. These are fictional businesses, but the numbers and strategies reflect what I’ve seen in real-world small business planning contexts.

    Example 1: Thornwood Partners (Professional Services — Management Consulting, 12 staff)

    Objective: Become the consulting partner of choice for founder-led businesses going through their first significant growth transition.

    Goals:

    1. Grow fee income to £1.4M by year-end
    2. Achieve 70%+ revenue from repeat or referred clients
    3. Launch signature 90-day growth accelerator programme by Q2
    4. Build a team capable of running two parallel engagements without founder involvement

    Strategies:

    • Fee income: Increase average engagement value by tiering service offering; pursue 6 new logo clients per quarter
    • Repeat/referral: Introduce structured client review at 30/60/90 days; launch referral incentive for active clients
    • Programme launch: Develop IP and deliver beta cohort with 5 clients; collect case studies for launch marketing
    • Team capability: Hire senior consultant H1; build delivery playbook for top 3 service lines

    Measures (selected): Weekly pipeline review; monthly revenue; NPS post-engagement; programme NPS; senior hire date.

    Example 2: Drift & Co. (E-commerce — Sustainable Activewear, 6 staff + contractors)

    Objective: Build a profitable direct-to-consumer brand with a loyal community of customers who buy more than once.

    Goals:

    1. Reach $900K annual revenue with 30% gross margin
    2. Grow repeat purchase rate to 35%
    3. Build email list to 25,000 active subscribers
    4. Launch in two new product categories without compromising hero line margin

    Strategies:

    • Revenue/margin: Reduce reliance on paid social by 20%; negotiate better COGS through bulk order commitments
    • Repeat purchase: Build post-purchase email sequence; launch loyalty programme with early access perk
    • Email list: Run quarterly lead magnet campaigns; partner with 10 micro-influencers on co-created content
    • New categories: Test two categories with limited drops before committing to stock; gate expansion on hero margin holding above 32%

    Measures (selected): Weekly: email sign-ups, ad ROAS, inventory turns. Monthly: revenue, GM%, repeat rate, list size.

    Example 3: The Salt Room (Hospitality — Boutique Hotel, 22 staff)

    Objective: Position The Salt Room as the destination coastal stay in our region, with strong direct booking and a reputation that outlasts any single review platform.

    Goals:

    1. Achieve 80% average annual occupancy (up from 67%)
    2. Grow direct bookings to 60% of total (currently 38%)
    3. Maintain TripAdvisor and Google rating at 4.7+
    4. Launch events programme generating £80K incremental annual revenue

    Strategies:

    • Occupancy: Target shoulder season with “slow travel” packages; build corporate retreat offering
    • Direct bookings: Launch loyalty programme; invest in SEO and email capture on website; reduce OTA commission by shifting incentives
    • Rating: Introduce guest experience check-in call at 24 hours; empower front desk to resolve issues on the spot up to £50
    • Events: Partner with local food/drink producers for quarterly events; test monthly supper club format

    Measures: Weekly: bookings by channel, occupancy forecast. Monthly: occupancy, direct booking %, review scores, events revenue.

    How Do You Run an OGSM Review?

    The OGSM you write in January is only as good as the reviews you run in February, March, and beyond. The review rhythm is where most small businesses fall down — not the planning.

    The Monthly OGSM Check-In (30 minutes)

    Once a month, bring together whoever owns the Measures and run through the numbers. Keep it short. The agenda:

    1. RAG status (5 min): For each Goal, is it green (on track), amber (risk), or red (off track)?
    2. Lead measure review (10 min): Are activity levels where they should be? If a lag measure is red, check the leads first.
    3. Blockers (10 min): What’s preventing progress? Who needs to make a decision?
    4. Next 30 days (5 min): Confirm priority actions per Strategy.

    No presentations. Pull up the OGSM document, go row by row. If something is amber or red, talk about it. If it’s green, move on.

    The Quarterly Review (90–120 minutes)

    Every quarter, do a proper review. This is where you decide whether your Strategies are still the right ones — not just whether you’re executing them.

    The monthly tells you how fast you’re running. The quarterly tells you whether you’re running in the right direction.

    Agenda additions vs. monthly:

    • Is each Strategy still valid, or has the market shifted?
    • Do Goals need adjusting based on what you’ve learned?
    • Any new Strategies to add? Any to retire?

    This is also the moment to celebrate wins. Small businesses underdo recognition. If a Goal was hit, mark it.

    The Annual Reset

    Once a year, start fresh. Don’t just roll your existing OGSM forward. Ask the harder question: is the Objective still right?

    Markets change. Businesses evolve. The Objective you wrote 12 months ago may no longer be the right ambition — or you may have achieved it and need a new one.

    The annual reset is a full workshop. Bring your full leadership team (even if that’s just you and two others), block a half-day, and rebuild from the Objective down.

    What Tools and Templates Do You Need for OGSM?

    You don’t need software to run OGSM. A shared Google Doc or spreadsheet works perfectly for most small businesses with fewer than 50 people.

    That said, the right template makes a real difference to first-time adoption. We have a free OGSM template designed specifically for small businesses — structured so your team can fill it in during the workshop, with built-in Measures tracking for monthly reviews. Download the free OGSM template here.

    When You Don’t Need Software

    If you have fewer than 30 people, a shared document and a monthly meeting is enough. Don’t buy strategy software to run a one-page framework. The overhead will kill the habit before it forms.

    When Software Starts to Help

    Once you have multiple teams or departments, each with their own strategies and measures, a dedicated tool makes alignment easier. You can cascade the top-level OGSM into team-level plans, link Measures to dashboards, and run reviews asynchronously.

    At that point, you’re moving toward the enterprise OGSM model — and our main OGSM guide has what you need.

    What Are the Most Common OGSM Mistakes Small Businesses Make?

    These are the mistakes I see specifically in small business OGSM attempts — different from the errors enterprise teams make.

    1. Writing the Objective Last

    Most small business founders start with Goals (because they’ve been thinking about revenue targets for months) and then reverse-engineer an Objective. The result is an Objective that’s really just a restatement of the Goals in vague language.

    Start with the Objective. It should be hard to write. If it comes easily, it’s probably not ambitious enough.

    2. Confusing Strategies With Tasks

    “Update the website” is not a Strategy. “Build direct booking capability to reduce OTA dependency” is. Strategies describe the approach — the how-we-win logic. Tasks sit inside Strategies. If your OGSM looks like a project plan, you’ve gone one level too deep.

    3. Not Assigning Measure Owners

    “We’ll track revenue monthly” is not a Measure with an owner. “Maria tracks revenue monthly, reports in team standup by the 5th” is. Without ownership, Measures don’t get reported, which means Strategies don’t get reviewed, which means the OGSM is just a document.

    4. Too Many Goals

    I’ve seen small business OGSMs with 9 Goals. That’s not a strategy — it’s a bucket list. With 9 Goals, you have no priorities. Everything is equally important, which means nothing is. Three to five Goals is the discipline that gives OGSM its power.

    5. Treating the OGSM as a Once-a-Year Exercise

    Writing the OGSM is not the work. Running the reviews is the work. A perfect OGSM that’s reviewed twice a year is less valuable than a decent OGSM that gets reviewed monthly by an engaged team. Build the review habit before you worry about OGSM perfection.

    6. Hiding the OGSM From the Team

    Some founders treat the OGSM as a leadership document and share a watered-down version with the team. That kills the alignment benefit entirely. If you’re worried about a Goal being sensitive (e.g. acquisition planning), leave it off the shared version — but share as much as you can. The team has to know what winning looks like to help you win.

    Frequently Asked Questions About OGSM for Small Business

    How long does it take to build an OGSM for the first time? Budget 90 minutes with your team for the first draft, plus 30 minutes of solo refinement after. Don’t try to make it perfect on day one. A 70% OGSM reviewed monthly beats a 100% OGSM that sits in a drawer.

    How often should I update my OGSM? Review monthly. Adjust Strategies and Measures quarterly if needed. Reset the Objective and Goals annually, or when something significant changes in the business or market.

    What’s the difference between OGSM Goals and KPIs? Goals are the finite outcomes that prove your Objective was achieved — you set them once per cycle and they don’t change month to month. KPIs (or Measures, in OGSM language) are the ongoing tracking metrics that tell you whether your Strategies are working. One Goal may have multiple Measures. For more on this distinction, see our OGSM Goals vs Measures guide.

    Can I use OGSM for just one department or team? Yes. Team-level OGSMs work well when they cascade from a company-level OGSM. The team’s Objective should support one or more of the company’s Goals. If your team’s OGSM has nothing to do with the company’s Objectives, you’re not aligned — you’re just busy.

    What if I’m a solo founder — is OGSM still useful? Yes, but simplify the format. You don’t need 5 Goals and 4 Strategies each. One page with a clear Objective, 3 Goals, and 2–3 Strategies per Goal is enough. The value is still the forced prioritisation and monthly review habit.

    Is OGSM better than OKRs for small businesses? For most small businesses with fewer than 50 people, yes — OGSM is simpler to implement and easier to sustain. OKRs require quarterly cycles and often a dedicated champion to avoid drifting. If you want a detailed comparison, read our OGSM vs OKR guide.

    Your strategy doesn’t need to be complex to be good. It needs to be clear, owned, and reviewed. OGSM gives small businesses exactly that — a one-page framework that fits how you actually work, forces real prioritisation, and builds the review habit that turns planning into execution.

    Start with the Objective. Make it honest. Then build from there.

    Rock on.

  • How to Use OGSM for a 90-Day Sprint Plan

    How to Use OGSM for a 90-Day Sprint Plan

    Annual strategies are great on paper. The problem is that most people don’t look at them again until it’s too late to change anything.

    To use OGSM for a 90-day sprint plan, take your annual Objective and Goals and break them into a focused sub-OGSM for the quarter: keep the Objective, select the one or two Goals most critical this quarter, define the Strategies you’ll run in this period only, and set Measures with 90-day targets. Review progress every two weeks.

    The 90-day OGSM sits inside your annual strategy, not instead of it. Here’s how to build one that actually works.

    Why 90 Days Is the Right Unit for Execution

    A year is long enough to lose focus, change direction, and still feel like you have time. A week is too short to see any meaningful movement on strategic priorities. Ninety days is the sweet spot — long enough to make real progress, short enough to keep urgency high.

    The 90-day sprint model works just as well with OGSM — and arguably better, because OGSM naturally scales from annual to quarterly without requiring a different framework.

    The Difference Between an Annual OGSM and a 90-Day OGSM

    Your annual OGSM sets the year’s direction. Your 90-day OGSM answers: what do we actually work on in the next three months to move toward that direction?

    Annual OGSM — 3–5 Goals, multiple Strategies, Measures tracked monthly or quarterly.

    90-Day OGSM — 1–2 Goals (the ones where you need the most progress this quarter), 2–3 Strategies (the specific campaigns or initiatives running right now), Measures tracked weekly or bi-weekly.

    You’re not rebuilding your strategy every 90 days. You’re focusing it.

    How to Build Your 90-Day OGSM

    Step 1: Start With Your Annual Objective

    Your 90-day Objective is the same as your annual Objective. Don’t rewrite it. The purpose of the sprint is to make progress toward the annual direction — you don’t need a new destination every quarter.

    If your annual Objective is “Become the go-to provider of OGSM training for European mid-market businesses,” that’s also your 90-day Objective. The sprint just defines what “progress” means for this quarter.

    Step 2: Select Your 90-Day Focus Goals

    Look at your annual Goals and ask: which one or two of these are most important to make progress on right now?

    In Q1, you might focus on building awareness and pipeline. In Q3, you might focus on revenue conversion and retention. Not all Goals are equally urgent in all quarters.

    Choose a maximum of two Goals for the sprint. For each, set a 90-day sub-target — a milestone rather than the full-year figure.

    For example, if your annual Goal is “Grow organic website traffic from 4,000 to 10,000 monthly sessions by December,” your Q2 sub-target might be “Reach 6,500 monthly sessions by 30 June.”

    Step 3: Define Your Strategies for This Quarter

    Your 90-day Strategies are the specific initiatives you’ll run during this sprint. Be more specific here than in your annual OGSM.

    Annual Strategy: “Build thought-leadership content to drive inbound traffic.”

    90-Day Strategy: “Publish eight SEO-optimised blog articles targeting OGSM search terms; promote each via LinkedIn and email list.”

    The more specific your 90-day Strategies, the easier it is to assign work and track progress.

    Step 4: Set Weekly or Bi-Weekly Measures

    Your 90-day Measures should update every one to two weeks — not monthly. At 90 days, you don’t have time for monthly check-ins to reveal you’re off-track.

    For a content-focused sprint, your Measures might be:

    • Articles published per week: target 2
    • LinkedIn post reach per article: target 800 impressions
    • Email open rate for content newsletter: target 35%
    • Organic sessions: tracking weekly against the 6,500 target

    These aren’t big strategic questions — they’re operational metrics that tell you whether the engine is running. If one drops, you address it quickly rather than discovering the problem at month three.

    Step 5: Review Every Two Weeks

    Block a 30–45 minute review every two weeks for the duration of the sprint. Use the same structure as a full strategy review: Measures first, Goals second, actions third.

    At the end of the 90 days, run a proper sprint retrospective: what worked, what didn’t, and what should inform next quarter’s sprint plan.

    A 90-Day OGSM Example

    Objective: Become the go-to provider of OGSM templates and training for European business strategists.

    90-Day Focus Goals (Q2):

    • Grow organic monthly website traffic to 6,500 sessions by 30 June (from 4,000).
    • Generate €8,000 in template sales by 30 June (from €4,500 in Q1).

    90-Day Strategies:

    • Publish eight SEO-targeted articles focused on OGSM search terms.
    • Run a LinkedIn content series (three posts per week) highlighting OGSM use cases.
    • Launch a promotional campaign to the email list for the Excel template.

    Measures (bi-weekly):

    • Articles published: target 1 per week
    • LinkedIn engagement rate: target 4%+
    • Email click-through rate: target 3%+
    • Weekly organic sessions: tracking toward 6,500 by end of June
    • Weekly shop revenue: tracking toward €8,000 by end of June

    When to Use a 90-Day OGSM

    A 90-day sprint plan works best when:

    You need to rebuild momentum. If a strategy has been dormant or underdelivering, a focused 90-day sprint with a clear end date is better than a vague renewal of commitment to the annual plan.

    You’re in a period of rapid change. If market conditions are shifting fast, a 90-day planning horizon keeps you responsive without abandoning strategic direction.

    Your team needs focus. Annual strategies can feel overwhelming. A 90-day sprint with two goals and three strategies gives people something concrete to work toward.

    You’re testing a new Strategy. If you want to know whether a new approach works before committing to it for the year, run it as a 90-day experiment with clear Measures.

    What to Avoid

    Treating every quarter as a blank slate. Your annual OGSM is the constant. Sprint plans should build on each other, not restart the strategy from scratch every 90 days.

    Adding too many Goals. If you’re trying to make significant progress on four or five Goals in 90 days, you’ll make marginal progress on all of them. Pick two, go deep.

    Setting Measures that update monthly. Monthly Measures in a 90-day sprint leave you with only three data points. Weekly or bi-weekly is the right cadence.

    The Template Makes It Simple

    The cleanest way to run a 90-day OGSM sprint is with a template that lets you work at both levels — annual and quarterly — without juggling two separate documents. The OGSM Template for PowerPoint and OGSM Template for Excel are structured so you can use the same layout for your annual plan and your quarterly sprint, keeping your strategic logic consistent while your operational focus sharpens every 90 days.