Goals and Strategies – Do You Know the Difference?
If you have worked on development of goal and strategy statements you know the challenge of distinguishing between the two. The definitions are deceptively simple (and I rely on the classic work of Eden and Ackermann, Making Strategy to guide me). A goal is what you intend to do, and a strategy is how you intend to do it. If you are working toward a performance-based culture, you know that goals and strategies (or similar constructs) inform what measurements you will establish. Often organizations blur the two or completely disregard the second [I will address that issue in an upcoming post about performance measurements].
By way of example, in meeting with a client recently, the team arrived at a draft goal of building institutional knowledge for long term sustainability. Although this was not something emphasized in their mission and values, it certainly was tangential to their aspirations expressed in part by, “enhance livability and economic vitality. “ Eventually, as the team becomes clear about what they mean by their goal statement, they will go back and re-visit their mission and vision statement to see if it needs refinement to better express the goal aspiration. This leads to another important point about the process; work on mission and vision statements feeds into work goals and strategies, and vice versa. The process is iterative, not linear.
Once the team began looking at strategies to achieve the goal of building institutional knowledge, the team came up with “break down department silos through open information” and here they met the conundrum. Although we were working on strategies, this felt and sounded to the team like a goal. Certainly this statement supports the goal, but it also feels and sounds pretty potent by itself.
And here is the key point: In fact, when groups generate goals and strategies, it is not always possible to distinguish between the two until the group constructs a hierarchy of goals. Some statements will be core, or central to the mission and vision. Other statements will be subordinate, or supporting, but may still be goals in their own right. Only by distinguishing how goal and strategy statements relate to the mission and to each other does it become possible to develop a system of goals and strategy that reach both horizontally and vertically within the organization.
So, here are some tips for differentiating between goals and strategies that may be helpful in your quest:
GOALS
- Think of goals in terms of hierarchy; some are super-ordinate to others and each goal sustains higher order goals.
- Goals have outcomes in their own right, and are not seen as a means to other ends.
- The team may begin with as many as 50-70 goals but the task of the group is to arrive at fewer, maybe 15-20 goals. Some of these goals become strategies and others will merge into an inclusive goal statement.
- Goals are inter-related; goals support other goals; goals relate to different parts of the organization and work together as a system to support each other.
- The meaning of a goal arises from context, for instance, the issues and emergent themes that might have been surfaced in a SWOT analysis.
- Organizations typically have 5 -12 goals as a primary focus .
STRATEGIES
- Strategies are the means of achieving the goals. Some are usually related to resolving key strategic issues; others address future concerns and new aspirations, or the development of new distinctive competencies.
- Strategies are considered in light of the goals they are trying to achieve.
- Potential (initial) strategies may number 30-60, but eventually are reduced to somewhere around 10 – 20.
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