Strategic goals are essential for any organization looking to achieve success. They provide direction and purpose, ensuring that everyone is working towards the same vision. However, it can be challenging to know where to start when it comes to setting strategic goals and identifying key performance indicators (KPIs). This article provides practical examples of strategic goals and KPIs to help businesses create a successful strategy.
What you need to know BEFORE you start setting strategic goals
A non-exhaustive list of strategic goal examples and KPI examples
Examples of strategic goals for finance
Examples of strategic goals for learning and growth
Examples of strategic goals for customers
Examples of potential areas to develop strategic goals for business processes
SMART Goals with Measurements and KPIs
As it has been famously said by management guru Peter Drucker: "What gets measured gets managed". Some important questions for you to consider include:
- How do you figure out what you need to measure and manage?
- How do you decide which KPIs you want to track?
To ensure the success of your organization's strategic planning process, it is crucial to go conduct stakeholder engagement sessions before selecting your strategic goals. Without the support of those who will carry out operational tasks, the implementation of your strategy may not be successful. Therefore, completing the strategic planning process in its entirety is vital.
After completing your offsite facilitation, it is important to have a clear understanding of your organization's desired direction in order to determine what should be tracked during the strategic planning process. It is crucial to align strategic goals with your organization's strategic priorities. Developing endless examples of strategic goals is not beneficial unless they significantly contribute to your mission or vision. Therefore, it is essential to focus on the goals that will have a substantial impact on your organization's mission or vision.
A non-exhaustive list of strategic goal examples and KPI examples:
If you use the Balanced Score Card in your organization (you should), then below you'll find sample "objectives" or strategic priorities. For each objective or strategic goal, you must have an accompanying measurement.
A rule of thumb for measurement is going from X (current state) to Y (desired future state) by date - Set a deadline for achieving your specified strategic goal.
For example, if one of your strategic priorities is to "Enter new markets", then you can use these different sample strategic goals to measure your progress:
- Enter X, Y, Z markets by date.
- 20 total regional markets by date.
- 20% market share in each new market by date.
They all technically fall under "Enter new markets", but they all have different measurements that will affect how you chose to implement your strategy.
Strategic Priorities:
You can sort the priorities themselves under whichever category makes sense to you. What matters is that you measure the progress and set targets.
Examples of strategic goals for finance:
- Create and launch a new product(s)
- Increase customer conversion
- Become market leader
- Sales: Company’s sales growth/Market sales Growth -> must be >1
- Customer satisfaction
- Gain market position
- Explore new customer segments
- Increase revenues
- Attract investment
- Return on Assets
- Shareholders dividend
- Diversified revenue streams
-
Number of products in portfolio (BCG matrix)
Related Content:
The Cost of Developing a Strategic Plan (3 Tiers)
Strategic Problems and How to address them
Achieving Your Strategic Goals: A Management Training Framework for Advancing Your Organization (Video)
Examples of strategic goals for learning and growth:
- Improve internal communications
- Number of Online and in-person team updates
- Number of Reporting tools
- Number of internal newsletters a week
- Communication skills training programs
- Surveying your teams (monthly survey?)
- Build on momentum
- Implement performance review and reward system
- Build culture and team alignment across the organization
- Open new locations
- Number of locations per city/region/country
- Going international
- Percentage of sales abroad/local
- Number of exported products
- Create and implement a training program
- Decrease employee turnover
- Improve employee satisfaction (Employee Engagement)
- Employee Net Promoter Score : eNPS = (promoters-detractors)/total respondents
- Balance employee utilization rate
- Improve training programs
Examples of strategic goals for customers:
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Decrease the number of product returns
- Increase net promoter score
- % of defaults on products
- Response time to complaints
- Number of followers/likes on social media
- Number of returning customers
- Improve our service approach for new and existing customers.
- Strategic partnerships
- Create impact measurement
- Customer Delivery time
- Increase in new customers
Examples of potential areas to develop strategic goals for business processes:
- Increase web traffic
- Number of publications
- Number of backlinks
- Vendor performance
- Restructure organization
- Implement software project
- Grow through acquisition
- Increase the value of projects and manage growth
- Lower production costs
- Build capacity for the future
- Decrease defects
- Improve supplier relationships
- Increase team size
- Find new volunteers
- Launch and complete special projects
- Per unit costs
- Per unit yield
- R&D development time
- Improve resource allocation
- Reduce financial waste
SMART Goals with Measurements and KPIs:
Some examples of how to measure the progress in these strategic priorities:
- Increase revenue per transaction: from X to Y by DATE
- Increase total revenue per customer: from X to Y by DATE
- Increase frequency of transactions: from X to Y by DATE
- Improve daily production from X to Y by DATE
- Enter X, Y, Z markets by Date
- 20 total regional markets by date.
- 20% market share in each new market.
- Acquire 2 companies with at least 5 million dollars in revenue by date.
- Reduce accounts receivable from 60 to 45 days within 6 months.
- Reduce customer wait times from 10 minutes to 5 minutes within 12 months.
- Increase the number of prospects in the pipeline from 100 to 200 in 6 weeks.
And so on...
Those are just a few strategic goal examples that you can use when outlining your strategic priorities and building your strategic plan.
Need a strategic planning facilitator to walk your team through the goal-setting process and Balanced Scorecard? Check out our service options
Learn how to set strategic goal examples on your own through our video course
SME Strategy is a strategy consulting firm that specializes in assisting organizations in aligning their teams and operations around a shared vision, mission, values, goals, and action plans. Our strategic planning services offer guidance on how a strategic planning facilitator can provide support in constructing an effective strategic plan that ensures your strategic goals are clear, measurable, and managed across your entire organization.
