Strategic goals are defined as planned objectives that an organization tries to achieve. Many senior managers usually take a lot of time to develop and articulate their business’s different strategic goals.
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What are the Strategic Goals?
Strategic goals are also known as the vision of your business. These goals are usually qualitative and measurable. The goal should be achievable, and you should be able to measure and track with the help of financial figures and numbers.
Arbitration and appropriation are avoided in the case of strategic goals. Strategy goals are usually formed to improve the productivity of the organization.
While some businesses have long-term strategic goals established for the organization, others do not have a specific approach. They only rely on the basic structure and the general direction in which the organization is heading.
The creation of strategic goals entirely depends on the level of accountability and organizational culture. Whichever plan is chosen, it must be part of strategic goals, and it should be completed.
Why are Strategic Goals Important?
The productivity of the organization and the team depends on the strategic goals. It has a direct impact on the organization as well as its employees.
Right from defining how to use the available resources, the team’s energy, the time frame in which the job is to be completed, all of it is influenced by strategic goals. They help the team with proper and concrete objectives, which will keep them motivated and focused.
Apart from keeping the employees motivated, strategic goals are crucial since they help the organization to achieve its objectives as well. Objectives like improving market share, beating the competition, increasing sales are a part of a strategic goal. Specific objectives like waste reduction, improving the sales volume, improving customer satisfaction, and increasing market penetration, all of these goals can be achieved with teamwork. Strategic goals help to define the priorities and guide resource allocation.
They are useful when it comes to directing the creation and maintaining budgets of the organization. It also influences the team formation and provides training, focus, and motivation for the employees. Strategic goals help provide comprehensive data that can be used to evaluate a team or a team member’s results.
Preparing Strategic Objectives
Two critical questions should be answered when it comes to forming actionable objectives. How much and when are the two questions which should be answered? You should be aware of the necessary level of improvement and the time required to achieve the objectives for the established targets. The strategy becomes less functional and less achievable if any of these elements are missing.
With the help of targets and baselines, the current and expected future performance can be defined. When you have a time-bound objective, you can determine the aggressiveness which needs to be in your strategy.
If you are unable to establish a baseline, then it is an indicator that your objectives are simply tactics, and they will not work as strategic objectives. The strategic objectives will not work if you do not know how to measure success.
The plan should be achievable, measurable, and quantifiable within the due date. The more quantified abilities, the easier visit is to execute and measure success.
However, you should also be aware that you will turn your objectives into strategies.
Examples of Strategic Goals for Finance
- Customer satisfaction
- Shareholders dividend
- Increase revenues
- Gain market position
- Return on assets
Examples of Strategic Goals for Learning and Growth
- Boost internal communications
- Open new locations
- Number of reporting tools
- Reduction In employee turnover
- Implement training programs
- Improve training programs
Examples of Strategic Goals for Business Processes
- Lower the production costs
- Increase the capacity for the future
- Find new volunteers
- RND development
- Per unit costs and yields
- Increase team size
- Restructure organisation
The time element is essential when designing strategic goals. For example, opening new locations is a strategic goal, but it cannot function properly without time. Therefore a proper time-bound strategic objective would be opening new locations within ten years.
Lower the production cost over the next five years, increase team size over the next five years. Case of finance, the measurable objective would be increasing the shareholder’s returns by 5%, reducing the cost by 7%.
Objective goals
As discussed above, the objective should be quantifiable and measurable. You have to inform which goals are to be met and by how much.
The progress is recorded regularly, and if the objectives are not measurable, they are not considered strategic objectives.
An example would be to improve customer satisfaction by 70% in the next two quarters.
Theme goals
A theme goal usually comprises two or three words that are used to organize strategic and operational plans. Companies that have strategic themes have an average of 4 to 5 different types of themes.
This type of theme is usually considered general, and individuals should have proper tasks to reach the goal.
Examples of these goals would be, optimize opportunities, customer service first, improve, and improvise.
Goal statements
A goal statement is a broad concept that interprets the vision or the mission of the organization. It is more time-sensitive and meaningful as compared to other types of strategic goals.
When it is used along with strategic themes, it translates into a strategic plan.
Following are a few of the Examples of Goal Statements
Increase web traffic, improve customer relations, increase team productivity, etc.
1. Financial Strategies
An excellent way to measure success is to understand the current situation and the expected situation. This is very important, especially in the case of financial strategies. A deadline is set to make achievements easier.
Entering new markets is an example of a strategic goal. Therefore you would usually set a goal of entering three different markets by a specific date. There could also be ten different regional markets by a specific date.
Few more examples of financial strategies would be a reduction in financial waste by 15% by the end of next year, a reduction in marketing budget by 25% by the next quarter.
2. Communication Goals
There are multiple goals when it comes to communication in business. It may be internal communication, which is done between the employees of the same organization within the office, or external communication, which is done with other vendors, customers, and strategic business partners but the organization. In both cases, transparency is essential.
It would be best if you informed your team about the progress of what is happening every day. This is why organizations have come up with reporting tools that will help anyone to see updates about anyone throughout the organization.
In some cases, a weekly newsletter is drafted so that it can reach all the teams.
Conclusion
Strategic goals are an essential part of the corporate culture. There are different types of goals based on the need of the employer and the employee.
Whatever the goals are, they should be quantitative, time-bound, and measurable because the success of the strategic goals is based entirely on measuring their success.
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