strategic objective – Thoughts on organisational performance

You are probably familiar with the famous acronym SMART, which summarises how management’s goals and objectives should be written. The “T” in SMART stands for “time-related,” meaning goals should specify when results can be achieved. With all due respect to George Doran, who proposed SMART, I strongly disagree with this idea. To explain why, let me revisit the story of Ignaz Semmelweis , the renowned Hungarian physician later called the “saviour of mothers”.

Ignaz Semmelweis discovered how to prevent childbed fever, a deadly disease affecting women after childbirth or miscarriage. With the introduction of pathological anatomy in maternity hospitals, maternal mortality due to childbed fever soared. Semmelweis linked the higher rates of childbed fever in public hospitals to poor hygiene among doctors and staff. He worked tirelessly to introduce hygiene rules. His 1847/48 study is now recognised as the first practical case of evidence-based medicine in Austria and a prime example of scientifically testing hypotheses.

Despite his efforts, most of Semmelweis’s colleagues rejected his statistical evidence, test results, and proposed solutions during his lifetime. This may seem absurd today, but at the time, people knew nothing about bacteria or viruses as causes of infections. Without a theoretical explanation, Semmelweis could not convince his peers. He died in 1865 without seeing his goal achieved. Only a few years later, the discoveries of Louis Pasteur (germ theory) and Joseph Lister (antiseptic surgery) proved him right.

Based on the work of Ignaz Semmelweis, a modern strategy professional might formulate this:

Strategic Goal: Medical staff manipulate women with clean, near-sterile hands.
Effective Action: Medical staff wash and disinfect their hands before any individual treatment.

Semmelweis could not predict how long it would take to replace outdated theories, accept his findings, and change the medical culture. Nevertheless, his strategic foresight was correct. He mastered effectiveness by “doing the right things”.

The Problem with Time-Bound Strategic Goals

Some argue that time-bound goals create a sense of urgency and emphasise importance. While urgency may be helpful for driving change , adding time limits to strategic goals is risky. What if the deadline is missed? Rescheduling might lead to disappointment, loss of trust, cynicism, or the belief that the goal is unrealistic. A genuine strategic goal can inspire and call for action without adding time pressure.

As Semmelweis’s story shows, relevant strategic objectives remain important regardless of time. Genuine strategic goals are timeless. It’s a mistake to consider a goal unrealistic simply because it takes longer than expected. Time elapsed since starting implementation is not a reliable measure of achievability. We should not change direction just because progress is slower than hoped.

Adding a time limit shifts the focus from effectiveness to efficiency. Instead of asking, “How much progress have we made toward this goal?” we focus on, “Are we meeting the deadline?” These are different questions and should not be confused.

Are Strategic Goals Always Long-Term?

There is a widespread opinion that strategic goals are inherently long-term goals. Yet, strategic goals do not always require many years to be realised. For example, acquiring new skills, hiring people with these skills, and integrating strategically relevant competencies into an organisation can often be achieved within a year.

Practical Tips for Strategic Planning

Distinguish Goals from Activities: If you feel the need to include dates in defining your strategic objectives, first check whether you are confusing objectives with activities. Deadlines are better suited for tasks or project milestones, which can be tracked in the strategy execution plan. In your strategic performance management system, highlight the alignment of time-bound activities and projects with the strategic goal.
Avoid Time-Labeled Strategies: Stop naming your strategic document “Strategy [year]”. Setting the same deadline for all strategic goals is even less appropriate than assigning a proper deadline to each one.
Use Lead Indicators: To monitor how fast you deliver the strategy, design and implement lead indicators measuring soft outputs or soft outcomes. These metrics help assess movement in the right direction without imposing artificial deadlines. (Stay tuned for another article on this topic!)
Consider Time in Target Setting: As Peter Ndaa says: “Time-bound is applicable to targets for the measures for our goals. They are the performance levels we aim to reach for our measures.”

Bottom line

Not having time-bound strategic goals is not a weakness—it’s a strength. Leaders and strategy professionals do not need to predict the future. Their role is to set the right direction, not to prove their ability to foresee exact timelines.

References

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Objective (goal), indicator and activity are basic terms in strategic performance management and measurement. Although they seem self-explanatory, it is amazing how often they are mixed up in organizations of all kinds, in politics, or in everyday private matters. This article outlines simple language rules that can help you properly formulate strategic objectives, indicators, and activities.

Objectives, indicators and activities are central elements of strategic planning and strategy execution. With them, an organization determines what it intends to achieve, how it wants to achieve it, and how well it achieves it. These three elements stand in a functional triangular relationship (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Management Triangle
(modified from Kaplan, R., Norton, D., 1996 and Barr, S., 2017)

An objective can be achieved with one or more activities. The degree of achievement of an objective can be measured or assessed by one or more metrics or indicators.

In practice, it seems easiest to formulate activities. It is enough to ask the question “What should we do …?” to trigger the thinking process and come up with numerous ideas. Formulating objectives and indicators, on the other hand, does not seem to be so simple and trivial. There is a risk of confusing objectives with activities or with indicators. In the worst case, the Management Triangle then becomes the Bermuda Triangle, in which one gets lost, or a single management point: activities or indicators become an end in themselves. Implementing activities or hitting targets is often perceived as a success. However, organizational success is neither one nor the other. It is exclusively the achievement of strategic goals.

In this article, I would like to provide answers and possible solutions to the following questions:

How can strategic objectives be properly defined?
What standards can be applied when formulating strategic objectives?
How can objectives, activities and indicators be distinguished from each other?

Strategic objectives and organizational performance

A strategic objective is a description of a desired future state which an organization is aiming for. Future states are to be formulated at different strategic levels (such as vision, stakeholders, processes, resources, and values) and concerning different strategic elements (such as society, customers, capabilities, intangible resources, or organizational culture). To represent the way organizational performance has been created, or, in other words, to visualize the strategic objectives with their cause-effect relationships can in theory and practice be done with various mapping tools such as Business Model Canvas, Strategy Map, Value Creation Map, Success Map (German: “Erfolgslogik”), Results Map, Logic Model (German: Wirkungslogik) etc. The best way to describe, understand and communicate it is by means of a story (value narrative).

Standards for properly formulating strategic objectives

From my practical experience, I would make the following recommendations for formulating strategic objectives:

Use specific nouns and adjectives

Avoid generic management terms such as product, service, efficiency, market share, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, etc. Instead, look for the appropriate, specific noun. Adjectives are used to describe characteristics. These characteristics will be the basis for building key performance indicators (KPIs) in a further step of the strategy process. Therefore, avoid general, non-specific adjectives such as good/bad, high/low, etc. Look for the adjective that best describes the essential characteristic (see example).

Use stative verbs instead of dynamic (fientive) verbs

Dynamic verbs are appropriate for expressing activities. Use stative verbs instead – those that describe a static, unchanging state, such as be, have, become, possess, remain, live, can, arise, rule, etc.

Avoid verbal nouns (gerunds) and their synonyms

The use of verbal nouns (gerunds) and their synonyms such as developing/development, introduction, etc., is a disguised way of expressing actions and, in turn, of formulating activities instead of objectives (see example).

Do not use numbers

Numbers are clearly the target values of indicators. Therefore, it is imperative to avoid them when formulating strategic objectives.

Examples

Here is an example of poor objective formulation:
“Construction of a refugee camp with 300 houses in one year.”

Here a verbal noun of an activity verb (“construct”) has been used. Thus, an activity has been formulated. The actual objective remains unspoken. Further, using numbers is a hidden way of formulating operational performance indicators (related to time, cost, or quality).

An example of a properly formulated objective is:
“The refugees have decent shelter.”

Here, a stative verb has been used. The state that is aimed for – “decent/humane shelter” – has an essential property: “humane” which can serve as a basis for a KPI. The objective leaves open all activities to achieve it, such as camps with houses, barracks or tents, bunkers, accommodation with private families, or converted public buildings.

Operational objectives versus strategic objectives

The term “operational objectives” appears time and again in management literature. But what does it actually mean?

“Operational objective” is just a synonym for “result of an activity”. “Operational objectives” and operational metrics are indeed linked to a direct result of organizational activities. When an activity has been completed, there is usually a result. The operational objective prescribes or reflects to what extent a task has been completed (output) and what resources (costs, hours) have been invested in its implementation. Here, we talk about the activities’ efficiency. Strategic objectives and strategic indicators, for their part, are related to the mostly indirect and long-term consequences (effect, added value) of organizational activities (outcome and impact). Here, we talk about the activities’ effectiveness (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Operative versus strategic objectives

Conclusion

Strategic objectives can be properly formulated using simple and clear language standards. Management professionals should invest as much time as needed in this exercise. The investment is worthwhile. The better strategic objectives are formulated, the more self-evident they are, at all levels of the organization. Properly formulated objectives require less communication effort because they provide explicit or implicit answers to the question “Why?”. Properly formulated strategic objectives enable the creation of high-quality KPIs and save half of the effort for this. The uncompromising adherence to language standards when formulating strategic objectives is the key to clearly distinguishing between strategic objectives, activities, and indicators. And also the key to escape from the Bermuda Triangle in strategic performance management.

Thoughts on organisational performance

Collecting and sharing little pieces of experience

Tag: strategic objective

Why Should Strategic Objectives Not Be Time-Bound