Defrag your strategy - goals

Is your strategy becoming fragmented? 

Successful strategy - and its implementation - depends on a leadership team that is aligned, communicates consistently, reinforces priorities and regularly measures progress, allowing for course correction when circumstances change. 

Yet, over the past few years, we’ve observed an increasing fragmentation of the elements of strategy: 

• Purpose becomes a marketing strapline. 

• Values become virtue signalling, hijacked by HR. 

• Vision becomes wishful thinking from internal communications. 

• Goals get hijacked by Finance. 

• Risk disappears into a sub-committee. 

• Priorities are absorbed and engulfed by BAU. 

The result? The organisation loses alignment, commitment and momentum. 

In this article, we're looking at goals; what they are, why they matter and how to develop them. 

What is a corporate goal? 

A corporate goal is a clear, organisation-wide statement of a significant outcome that a company intends to achieve over a defined period. 

It is not simply a financial target such as ‘double the business by 2030’ or ‘increase profitability by 50%’. 

Meaningful goals should be developed alongside your purpose, values and vision. These elements should reinforce one another, creating a coherent foundation for the organisation and a clear picture of what success looks like. 

What does a good goal look like? 

A good goal should be: 

• outcome-focused – describing what you want to achieve, not simply what you plan to do. 

• ambitious – looking beyond today's business and towards where you want to be in three or more years. 

• audacious – stretching and motivating people without drifting into fantasy. 

• time-bound – making clear when the outcome should be achieved. 

• measurable – providing tangible evidence of progress and success. 

How do you develop good goals? 

The process should be strategic before numerical. 

Don't start by asking: "What targets should we set?" Start by asking: "What must be true for our strategy to succeed?" 

Then: 

1. Clarify the ambition: where do we want to be? What do we want to be known for? What would represent a meaningful step-change from today? 

2. Identify the critical outcomes: if we achieved only five things over the next three years, what would have the greatest impact on our success? 

3. Prioritise: resist the temptation to create a long list. Three to six major corporate goals are often enough. 

4. Define success: for each goal, establish the desired outcome, why it matters, how success will be measured, by when, and the baseline you're starting from. 

5. Test for coherence: do the goals collectively deliver the strategy? Are there gaps? Do they reinforce one another? Do they balance short-term performance with long-term value creation? 

6. Engage the organisation: goals shouldn't simply be announced by the leadership team. They need to be understood, discussed and translated throughout the organisation. 

The cascade should be logical: 

Corporate goals → business-unit goals → functional goals → team objectives → individual priorities.

The key is to preserve the intent of the corporate goal, not create hundreds of disconnected targets. 

What should you avoid? 

• Too many goals. Twenty ‘strategic priorities’ is usually a disguised to-do list. 

• Confusing goals with activities. ‘Implement a CRM system’ is an initiative. ‘Build a data-driven, personalised customer experience’ is a strategic outcome. 

• Vague aspirations. ‘Be the best’, ‘drive excellence’, ‘put customers first’. These may be inspiring but are not specific enough to guide action. 

• Purely financial goals. Revenue and profit matter, but they are lagging indicators. They don't tell people what needs to change to achieve them. 

•  Unrealistic stretch goals. If nobody believes the goal is achievable, it is more likely to demotivate than inspire. 

• Conflicting goals. You can't demand a 15% cost reduction while dramatically improving service without addressing the trade-offs and investment required. 

Ultimately, a good corporate goal converts strategic ambition into a small number of clear, meaningful and measurable outcomes - aligning the organisation around what matters most. 

The next article in the defrag your strategy series will examine the fifth foundation of good strategy – risk stance.