What is OGSM?
The acronym OGSM stands for objective, goals, strategies and measures. It is a strategic planning framework that allows you to translate your organisation’s long-term goals into a series of attainable targets and actions. Essentially, it is a way of taking complex ideas, such as values and strategies, and turning them into easy-to-understand words and numbers. This allows stakeholders at every level to understand their roles and responsibilities in helping to achieve the organisation’s objectives.
The four elements of OGSM
Objective: Your objective outlines your long-term vision for your business. It provides a defining and clear picture of what your organisation is trying to achieve. Having a strong objective can help to organise and inspire your team to turn your shared vision into reality.
Goals: Your goals provide a roadmap to achieving your objective. They are the specific targets and measurable metrics that turn your broad vision into a practical project. By setting a series of measurable targets, you can see when your objective has been achieved.
Strategies: These are the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of achieving your goals and objective. Strategies help everyone to understand their responsibilities and expectations. These generally fall into one of three categories: growth, productivity and people. Growth includes customer or innovation strategies, productivity strategies may focus on, for example, manufacturing or quality and people strategies may include talent management or culture.
Measures: These help you to assess whether your strategies are working. They are metrics, such as key performance indicators, that track the progress and measure the results of each of your strategies. Assessing performance metrics helps you to understand what is working well and what needs improvement.
How to implement OGSM
Here are six practical steps you can follow to implement the OGSM framework in your strategic planning:
1. Assess the current state of your organisation
A good strategic planning process should start with an assessment of the current state of your organisation. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation can help you to make informed decisions. In addition to analysing your own business, it’s also helpful to understand the broader market, so consider conducting both internal and external research. Areas you may want to focus on include your organisation’s current performance, revenue growth potential, internal capabilities and the availability of resources.
2. Develop an objective statement
Your objective statement is an extension of your mission – it outlines a specific vision and future strategic direction of your organisation. This helps to ensure that everyone is clear about what they are trying to achieve. All of the other steps in the OGSM framework follow on from your objective statement. An effective objective statement is clear, concise and based on business reality. It should resonate with and engage your entire team.
3. Set goals that align with your objectives
By setting goals, you establish clear benchmarks that allow everyone to work together towards your shared objective. It’s a good idea to have a brainstorming session with your whole team and other stakeholders, as this will help you to set attainable and realistic goals. It’s best to avoid choosing too many goals – three to six is a manageable amount. Also make sure that your goals are effective by using the SMART method:
- Specific: The goals should be clear about what needs to be achieved, who is responsible and which steps need to be taken to achieve the goal.
- Measurable: You should be able to measure and track the progress of your goals.
- Achievable: Effective goals are realistic. Make sure that your team can achieve the goals you set.
- Relevant: It’s important to think about the big picture and why you’re setting the goals. They should be relevant to your objective.
- Time-bound: Everyone should be clear about the timeframe in which you are aiming to achieve the goals.
4. Develop your strategies
Your strategies are the specific projects, initiatives and actions that allow you to achieve your goals and overall objective. This step is where you should clearly define what you intend to do, as well as not do. For example, perhaps you are planning to develop particular products, implement cost reduction strategies or employ new customer acquisitions methods. To maintain focus, it’s a good idea to select no more than three to five strategies per goal.
5. Define your measures
Measures are quantitative metrics that allow you to evaluate how well your strategies are working. This then gives you an indication of whether the strategies are helping to achieve the stated goals and overall company objective. Aim for three measures per strategy. In recent years, the ‘measures’ step of the OGSM model has been refined and divided into two elements:
- Measures: This typically involves using dashboards to track performance and progress and get data to inform your decision-making.
- Action plan: Once you have this data, you can implement specific actions to address performance gaps and outline how each strategy will be executed.
A measure could be, for example, a customer satisfaction score and the corresponding action would be improving customer service by training sales staff on product and technical knowledge.
6. Evaluate the effectiveness of the plan
It’s important to continually monitor how well the overall OGSM process is working for your organisation. Rather than setting and forgetting, it’s best to revise your strategic plan regularly, as strategic goals can change over time. It’s a good idea to hold regular meetings with key stakeholders to get performance updates and review the results of quantitative measures. If you discover that your goals turned out to be unrealistic, you may consider adjusting your strategies or committing more resources.
OGSM example
To help you execute your strategy effectively, here’s a fictional scenario showing you how a small business owner might use the OGSM framework:
A small pizzeria, Mario’s Pizza, is known in the local area for having the best pizza at the best prices. Mario, the owner, currently has two shops in the local area. He sees an opportunity to grow the business by expanding beyond selling only pizza and becoming an Italian family restaurant. Mario decides to use the OGSM framework to help him with his expansion plans.
Objective
To expand the menu and become a trusted Italian family restaurant that offers authentic and delicious Italian meals.
Goals
- Be perceived as a family friendly and homely restaurant that serves delicious, fresh Italian food.
- Increase awareness of the restaurant’s new format in the local area by 25%.
- Achieve a repeat customer rate of 65%.
Strategies
Strategies for goal 1:
- Develop a menu that caters to the whole family with authentic Italian dishes, including classics and seasonal specialities.
- Serve delicious, fresh food by sourcing most ingredients fresh from the local area.
- Hire and train experienced cooks and chefs who specialise in Italian cuisine.
Strategies for goal 2:
- Create a professional website and ensure that it is SEO optimised.
- Ask customers to leave reviews on the restaurant’s website.
- Build the restaurant’s social media following.
Strategies for goal 3:
- Hire and train experienced wait staff who make customers feel at home.
- Implement a loyalty program.
- Host a weekly trivia night.
Measures
Measures for the first goal’s strategies:
- Number of items of the menu for kids and number of new items per season.
- Percentage of ingredients that are locally sourced.
- Percentage of employees with more than two years of experience.
Measures for the second goal’s strategies:
- Amount of organic traffic and keyword ranking.
- Ratio of positive to negative feedback on the restaurant’s website.
- Number of new social media followers each week.
Measures for the third goal’s strategies:
- Percentage of respondents to a customer satisfaction survey who say they dine at the restaurant twice a month or more.
- Percentage of customers using the loyalty program compared to total customers.
- Percentage of repeat customers who attend the trivia night.
Key takeaways
OGSM stands for objective, goals, strategies and measures. Often, companies struggle to execute their strategies effectively. That’s where the OGSM framework comes in: it helps to bridge the gap between strategy and execution. It breaks down strategies into manageable steps and helps to ensure that everyone in the organisation is working towards the same goal.
