Strategic objectives are one of the fundamental building blocks of your strategic plan. For all intents and purpose of this post, we’ve put together below a short list of common strategic objectives.

As a quick refresher, remember that strategic objectives are long-term and should be aligned with your organization’s mission and vision. If you need an in-depth explanation of strategic objectives and how to identify and create them, click here to watch the video.

We prefer to organize these objectives into these four buckets and have provided some examples of each:

Financial Strategic Objectives

• Financial Growth: To exceed $10 million in the next 10 years.
• Financial Growth: To increase revenue by 10% annually.
• Financial Efficiency: To decrease expenses by 5%.
• Financial Efficiency: To increase net profit by 10% annually.

Customer/Constituent Strategic Objectives

• Current Customers: Expand sales to existing customers.
• Current Customers: Increase customer retention.
• Current Customers: Achieve and maintain outstanding customer service.
• Current Customers: Develop and use a customer database.
• New Customers: Introduce existing products into a new market.
• New Customers: Introduce new products to new and existing markets.
• New Customers: To expand sales to the global marketplace.
• Customer Services: Improve our service approach for new and existing customers.

Build your strategic objectives fast

Use the OnStrategy Solution to build your strategic objective framework and move it into execution.

GET STARTED

Internal/Operational Strategic Objectives

• Product/Service/Program Management: To have all product meet standard of excellence guidelines. (Some businesses prefer to list their individual products or services as separate objectives.)
• Operations Management: Capitalize on physical facilities (location, capacity, etc.).
• Operations Management: Increase community outreach.
• Technology Management: Increase efficiencies through use of wireless or virtual technology.
• Communication Management: Improve internal communications.
• Customer Management: To execute and maintain a CRM process that is producing results.
• Marketing Management: Develop and implement a promotional plan to drive increased business.
• Alliance Management: Establish one new strategic alliance annually.
• Channel Management: Improve distributor and/or supplier relationships.

People/Learning Strategic Objectives

• People: Employ professionals who create success for customers.
• Training: To develop the leadership abilities and potential of our team.
• Culture: To align incentives and staff rewards with performance.
• Knowledge: To continually learn and adopt current best practices.

Remember, these are just examples of strategic objectives. Sometimes seeing an example makes understanding the process easier.

Erica Olsen

Erica Olsen is the COO and a co-founder of OnStrategy. She has developed the format and the user interface for the award-winning OnStrategy on-line strategic management system. In addition, she is the author of Strategic Planning Kit for Dummies, 2nd Edition. Erica has developed and reviewed hundreds of strategic plans for public and private entities across the country and around the world. She is a lecturer at University of Nevada Reno and University of Phoenix. She holds a BA in Communications and an MBA in International Management.