Strategy 101: Defining strategic goals in a structured manner: examples

Defining strategic goals

Strategic Goals for a company regarding customer relationships could be:

Improve customer loyalty
Develop 3 customer segments by 2024
Increase customer loyalty by 3% annually

But these goals are still unstructured. So, let's give the goals a certain structure.

Strategic goals have a structure that can be determined by the following elements: (verb, attribute,KPI, data object,timing) where KPI and timing could also be omitted. Of course, my recommendation is to always specify these two elements as well.

Improve customer loyalty therefore becomes : Increase (verb) Loyalty(attribute) in the Customer of the target (data object). KPI and Timing have been omitted.

With the help of this structuring, an automation of subtasks of strategic planning is simplified, as outlined above. The automatic augmentation of strategic planning with figures from data sources that support the planning is now possible without manual intervention. In addition, the strategic goal data can be matched to augment data from ERP systems inside the company to create a dashboard for strategic planning.

Read more in my upcoming book on M&A strategy

Examples for Strategic Goals and their formal structure

update our sales profile to generate 50% of revenue from international sales by 2026:

Verb(Generate), Attribute(Share of international sales), KPI-Text(reached) in the Object(Sales of the target) by Numeric KPI(2026).

Increase total sales by 10 million euros over the next three years.:

Verb(Increase), Attribute(total sales ), KPI-Text( of Quantification(10.000.000) ) in the Object(Sales of the target) Generic KPI(over the next three years).

Improve employee retention by 2 percent next year :

Verb(Reduce), Attribute(Retention), KPI-Text( of Quantification(0.02) ) in the Object(Target employees) Generic KPI(next year).

increase overall people engagement by 7% in 2023 :

Verb(increase ), Attribute(Engagement ), KPI-Text( of Quantification(0.07) ) in the Object(Target employees) by Numeric KPI(2023).

expand the team by 20 new members over the next four years:

Verb(Increase), Attribute(Number of people), KPI-Text( of Quantification(20) ) in the Object(Target employees) Generic KPI(over the next four years).

Increase target locations by 12 within the next four years:

Verb(Increase), Attribute(Number ), KPI-Text( of Quantification(12) ) in the Object(Target locations) Generic KPI(within the next four years).

Open 12 new locations by 2025:

Verb(Open), Attribute(Number ), KPI-Text( of Quantification(12) ) in the Object(Target locations) by Numeric KPI(2025).

Increase the profit margin by 3 percent in 2024 :

Verb(Increase), Attribute(EbIT Margin), KPI-Text(increased) in the Object(Target EbIT) by Numeric KPI(2024).

Improvement of product quality by 3 percent by 2023 :

Verb(Improve), Attribute(Quality of production), KPI-Text( of Quantification(0.03) ) in the Object(Quality of Production) by Numeric KPI(2023).

Diversify the sources of income :

Verb(Increase), Attribute(Number of sources of income), KPI-Text(increased) in the Object(Revenue streams of the target) .

Reach a stronger market presence in USA by 2030:

Verb(Reach), Attribute(Presence in the USA market), KPI-Text(stronger ) in the Object(Market of the buyer) by Numeric KPI(2030).

Secure 23% market share by 2026:

Verb(Secure), Attribute(Marketshare), KPI-Text( of Quantification(0.23) ) in the Object(Market of the buyer) by Numeric KPI(2026).

Reduce the production costs by 10 percent until 2024:

Verb(Reduce), Attribute(Total cost of production), KPI-Text(reduced) in the Object(Production costs of the target company) by Numeric KPI(2024).

Decrease customer churn by 10 percent :

Verb(Decrease ), Attribute(Churn), KPI-Text( of Quantification(0.1) ) in the Object(Customer of the target) .

Deliver the best customer experience in the marketplace as measured by customer feedback:

Verb(Deliver), Attribute(Customer feedback), KPI-Text(best) in the Object(Customer of the target) .

Develop 3 customer segments by 2024:

Verb(Develop), Attribute(Number of customer segments), KPI-Text(3) in the Object(Customer segment of the target) by Numeric KPI(2024).

Improve employee retention by 2 percent next year :

Verb(Reduce), Attribute(number of returned products), KPI-Text( of Quantification(0.02) ) in the Object(Product of the target) Generic KPI(next year).

Read more in my upcoming book on M&A strategy