Corporate Goals.

Goals are high-level statements about what you need to achieve in order to deliver against your vision. Goals tend to be long term and therefore set out the underlying elements of your vision.

They bring your vision statement to life by moving it towards a practical reality. Goals need to be structured to meet a set of criteria. I call these the 4 Rs:

Relevant : does it fit with your vision?

Resonating: does it fit with your business’s values and goals?

Responsive: is it adaptable and flexible so that it can change if needed?

Recognizable: is it easily understandable?

Some example goals are:

increase sales; improve profitability;provide best-in-class customer service; deliver a world-class digital experience;hire the best talent; become the thought leader.. etc
You should aim to set a limited number of goals that focus on the key aims of your strategy and fit with the strategic pillars of your business.

They also need to be integrated so that they fit together without any conflicting elements.

Your business strategy will have goals and each goal will have objectives, strategies and action plans below it.

Some of these strategies may in turn have goals that have their own objectives and so through a waterfall effect the goals of your organization are delivered.

For example, if we take the first goal above we could create a waterfall
of goals and strategies that looks something like the process shown below:

Your goals are unique in the planning process in that they require the least detail but the most thought.

If your goals are not thought through then the river will be flowing in the wrong direction.

How you go about meeting your goal of ‘increase sales’ is not something that the goal itself is concerned with. You do not need to focus on the ‘how’ at this stage, simply the ‘what’.

Your objectives and strategies will deal with how these goals are met, as we will see below.

Whilst goals should be grounded in reality they do not need to be specific or be the result of thorough research.

They therefore do not need to be entirely realistic.

It may sound counter-intuitive to have a goal that cannot be met, but an aspirational goal can drive your business forward faster than a realistic one.