Aligning Planning with Strategic Objectives

The C-Suite of Sheila's company has a set of objective targets for the new fiscal year. One goal, for example, is to expand into the EMEA region. With the team, the CMO breaks down this corporate goal in objectives for the marketing department and its teams:

Example of Objective that can be entered into the 3 columns

Objectives are used to break down the company's goals into departmental and team goals. The CMO and her team enter the objectives in Uptempo for the company level, for the Marketing department and for the team level. The team members who manage the investments assign the team-level objectives to the investments. This records whether and how the investments contribute to the achievement of the objectives.
The CMO and their team specify KPIs for each objective, creating meaningfulness to the objectives. These KPIs are maintained throughout the year by the team members assigned as owners to the objectives.
To reflect the priority between the objectives, the team reorders them accordingly in the respective columns. For more informationen see Objectives.

Relationships map how objectives cascade from Company to Marketing to Team tier. Note that relationships can be made between Corporate and Marketing objectives, and Marketing to Team objectives, but not between Corporate and Team objectives. For more informationen see Relationships.

Strategic Planner is an optional feature that is not automatically active in your instance. Contact your Customer Success Manager to enable the feature.

With this step, you must also define those users who will have access to the Strategy tab. Discuss with your Customer Success Manager which users should edit objectives, relationship, and key results and which should have read-only access.

We recommend to inform the users who are to perform strategic planning in the future and pass on the information in the following chapters to these users. Also refer to the Best Practices paragraph.

In addition, the users who manage the line items must be informed. In order to recognize whether investments contribute to the achievement of objectives, they must be connected to the objectives.

Determining goals and objectives for success is a lofty task, so we have come up with some best practices tips to make the process a little simpler.

  1. Be Collaborative

    2. Strategic Planner is a collaborative solution where all users have access to the same investment plans. Book a meeting room and use Strategic Planner to guide your session just like an electronic whiteboard. This allows for quick collaboration and decision making.

    Note

    All users who have permission to access Strategic Planner share the same investment plans! Adding, modifying or deleting objectives at any level will cause a change for everyone.

  2. Make Time for Planning

    3. Planning takes time, don't underestimate the time it takes to think through what will make your business and teams successful. Initial brainstorming and research, collecting feedback and talking through big ideas are the first steps to crafting creative objectives that will filter through to all levels of your business.

  3. Think Top Down

    4. Setting a solid foundation at the corporate level will have a positive trickle-down effect, allowing marketing departments and smaller marketing teams to align. When objectives are clear and visible, individuals have the ability to align their individual goals.

  4. Plan for Measurable Results

    5. Set key results for objectives to ensure your goals are specific, measurable and easier to achieve. Setting relevant and timely goals that are quantifiable allows you to track progress, review and evaluate successful completion.

  5. Link Objectives at Every Tier

    6. Linking objectives and visually showing alignment, between columns allows individuals to see the big picture and feel part of the organization, knowing they are making a contribution to key initiatives. Use the view connections mode to make connections to see which objectives are connected.

Begin your strategic planning by entering your Objectives.