How do you build a strategic plan, when nothing goes to plan?
Business right now is anything but predictable with massive inflation, erratic supply chain bottlenecks, and one of the biggest work-life cultural shifts in generations. Throw in distributed, remote teams - and planning gets hectic.
“ Strategy in a time of crisis and change is essential"
We’ve cut through the noise to recommend our top choices for annual planning frameworks. These are our picks, why they work, when to use them and how you can use them to reinvent the rules in your favor.
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Ok… let’s get down to business with our top picks…
1. OKRs (Objectives, Key Results)
The tried and true gold standard, OKRs are simple, clear, and effective. Derived from Peter Drucker's MBO (Management by Objectives), they were widely popularized across tech and enterprise at Intel and Google by investors John Doerr and founder Sergei Brinn. Doerr famously talked about the important link between OKRs and aspirational goals by setting “the right goals for the right reasons.” We agree.
When OKRs work
OKRs are great when you need to:
- Focus teams around a singular moonshot. How ambitiously to shoot is up to you.
- Get hyper-specific on a narrow Objective, with laser focus in a singular area.
- Assign specific objectives to different positions or owners (ie. CRO, Group Leads, etc.)
When using OKRs for annual planning, we recommend writing them on an annual basis and evaluating performance monthly or quarterly. When OKRs are laser-focused on a specific area, they can be measured and evaluated more frequently.
Why we like OKRs
They provide specificity on the results needed, but leave the nuts and bolts of the “how” to the team themselves. The classic downside is that OKRs can lack clarity on a tactical level. On the upside, OKRs focus only on what matters most. You can reduce complexity and focus teams on specific results. The proof’s in the pudding.
How to reinvent the rules
We love bundling OKRs into other larger strategic frameworks. They’re great as a standalone but they can supercharge a variety of other organizational guiding documents. Some ways to use OKRs:
- With a “Brand House” or “Employee Value Proposition” framework. Enhance those frameworks by defining OKRs against the entire house framework or each individual pillar of your value prop.
- If you’ve got a pie in the sky strategy framework, OKRs are our favorite tool to make it actionable.
- Use OKRs to gather stakeholder feedback from teams outside marketing. Now you can use them to identify what their needs are and how marketing can serve them. Using OKRs to guide discussions with doubtful stakeholders is a simple step you can take right now to show them your function is listening and aligned for mutual success.
- Spice up your OKRs by adding Owners and Dependencies for an extra layer of specificity and responsibility. That way everyone walks out with clarity on who is doing what.
2. The House Framework
Everyone loves using a house framework. Let’s face it - they’re easy to understand and create a clear visual hierarchy:
- The baseline foundation
- Core supporting pillars holding the house together
- The top of the house (which often includes an organization's ultimate strategic goal or north star.)
House frameworks work great for rallying teams around an aspirational vision, like a brand strategy or business imperative. But they’re not just great for marketing. They’re often used to guide current state strategic initiatives or operating models. They give teams clear marching orders and identify how to draw from several capability areas to deliver against a unified objective. And that’s really useful.
When House Frameworks Work
House frameworks are effective when you need to articulate a plan that requires moderate flexibility. Teams may want to lean into different pillars in different scenarios, or the pillars can be a litmus test to determine whether activities are on or off strategy. But the pillar part of a house framework can be more prescriptive than using an OKR, so it’s often easier to use pillars to determine if teams are implementing a strategy as originally intended, or not.
How to Reinvent the Rules
Be specific about what each element in the house means and how to use it. There’s nothing more confusing than wondering what the intent is for a pillar, and getting sucked into a lengthy debate over it while trying to build the house with a group.
For example, if each pillar acts to outline the What, How, and Why for the overall strategic objective, state it clearly. If all the pillars are equally important for achieving the big objective, but they don’t all need to be used to determine if an activity is on-strategy, state that clearly as well.
We recommend thinking about when you’re using the different elements of the house. If certain parts are future-focused or for the present, call those out. Your framework should make planning crystal clear, not clear as mud.
Save your team the time wasted on rabbit holes and sort out your elements on the front end, so they don’t become unnecessary distractions.
3. OGSM (Objectives, Goals, Strategies, Measures)
When you need a healthy balance of “what” and “how” to manage many teams effectively, OGSM is a winning model.
Originally pioneered by Japanese auto manufacturers, OGSM was famously adopted at major consumer staples such as P&G and Coca Cola. By laying out the objectives, goals, strategies, and measures, it’s an effective framework to establish what you want to achieve, and how you’ll all get there, step by step.
When OGSMs Work
If you have large distributed or remote teams and you need to align them all with a high degree of consistency, OGSM is the model to use. For example, if multiple teams own distinct offering areas or sales channels, OGSM provides a framework to address their individual needs while getting very tactical and transparent. It also works well for startups, non-profits, and creative projects where the roadmap can feel murky or unclear.
OGSMs are great for distributed or remote teams
We recommend applying OGSM as a longer term strategic model that you can adapt annually or evaluate over the course of 18-24 months. Develop the overall plan first, then focus on implementation, with a regular cadence where you assess performance against the model. And of course, adapt.
How to Maximize OGSMs
OGSMs are more elaborate in describing, aligning and quantifying where the business is heading and how it aims to get there with the specific strategies and measures that will be employed. They allow different teams to execute different strategies in their respective areas with buy-in from leadership. This approach is typically applied top-down from the corporate or business level to individual divisions, product lines, or teams, who then report back on their directives. But we also suggest it as a way to gather feedback for leadership from the bottom up.
A word of warning: don’t spread your organization’s OGSM thin with too much unfiltered feedback across the org. Prioritize.
If team members aren’t trained in how to use an OGSM framework, or aren’t given specific instructions to help populate them in a planning exercise, you may dilute your work with too many strategies, or not enough good ones.
In this case, establishing criteria for prioritizing strategies can help determine the quality level of feedback and identify if more or less is needed.
Good ideas shouldn’t go unheard, but when gathering large amounts of input, keep it all in check with structured facilitation.
The gist...
These are commonly-used annual planning strategic frameworks for a reason. They work. And they’re critical first steps to get teams aligned and excited about the vision for an organization. It’s up to leadership to implement them successfully and create the right process for deploying them.
If planning is overwhelming you, fear not.
We will corral your troops, help set the vision, and get your teams working towards achieving your biggest goals yet.
Let’s get to it.