OGSM (who, what, why, when, how)
What is OGSM?
OGSM is a business planning and execution communication canvas.
Objective, Goals, Strategies and Measures (OGSM) helps you make choices and achieve more goals. It’s primarily a strategic change tool that works at board level, department and program level when specific goals need to be achieved. Organisation that do not have sophisticated business intelligence reporting tools for operational KPI’s also use OGSM as a “run the business” monitoring framework.
but works very well as a at department and program
Known as “business plan on a page”, when combined with the right process it will help you define and create strategic choices to deliver more goals. Once you have a first version of Objective, Goals and Strategy you will find it much easy to select what you are going to do in the coming period ⇓
Objective
What you are trying to achieve, or better still what is your customer is trying to achieve. Should be “inspiring”, represent your purpose, repeatable (your team should easily be able to remember the text) and in a “what by how” format. (achieve measurable “stretch” goal by “strategy” preferably you have an unfair advantage over your competitors in this strategy)
Goals
What represents success. Or what must be true for your objective to be reached. These are KPIs (Key performance indicators) that represent progress over time. If these are achieved then your objective is also achieved.
Strategy
Your first breakdown of your objective into different areas that need a strategic choice on how they will contribute. If in doubt start with “Staff”, “Customer”, “Product”, “Process”, “Sustainability”
Measures
In “Business Plan on a page” measure are split into “measuring progress” (which again are KPI’s) and “actions” which are generally projects
Why OGSM?
It Works
Large and small companies are successfully growing by managing change. ⇓
Compact
Fits on one page
Planning and execution
Traditional business plans are multi page text documents that are written once then often end up in the bottom drawer. OGSMs are in a convenient format and often discussed during management meetings.
Compare
OGSM is different from other planning and execution canvases and frameworks, it has a heavier focus on “how” and helps you make strategic choices. Think about this…. If I want to end up in Rome (starting in Amsterdam), then I can choose to walk, cycle, drive, train, fly or even combine these. These “choices” in “how” have a big impact on time, money and my team.
Cascades
Like OKR, OGSM is able to be broken down into smaller and smaller pieces of work, strategies and progress measures. This is often exactly what an organisation needs to facilitate communication down to the team level. You start with an objective and then keep breaking it down until you reach the level of doing so that everyone is understanding what has to be done, why it has to be done and agrees that it can be done.
AgileOGSM™ allows your OGSM, KPI’s and Actions all to be linked within the cascading so that you can be sure the numbers add up correctly.
One language
When you are discussing change in your team (or across departments), it is important to use common terminology that everyone understands. Team members can struggle with the difference between “do (actions)”, “strategies”, “progress measures” and “goals”. AgileOGSM™ also introduces the term “step” to describe the “steps”, “phases”, “milestones” or tasks within an action.
Framework
OGSM is more than just a text canvas, there is a proven process that you can follow surrounded by tools like SWOT, Porter’s 5 forces, business model canvas, planning gantt, kanban etc
Cheap
OGSM can be used on a A4 or letter paper which is as good as free. If you want to use software to help share your goals and progress then it costs as little as 10 euros or dollars per month
Supports run and change
1sec status
Time is always at a premium…. meaning…. no one has enough time, everyone would like more time. OGSM with correctly filled in status gives you immediate information on what needs to be discussed and what should be celebrated
Prioritise
It can be difficult for teams to understand priorities within organisations, OGSM makes this easy by allowing you to set the highest priority strategy block on the top and the highest priority action within a strategy at the top of the actions block. AgileOGSM improves this further by showing when actions or steps are approaching or past their due date. It’s simple, red needs action now, yellow should be discussed and green shows it’s on track and does not need discussion right now.
Promotes discussion
The power of OGSM is in it’s simplicity, there are some basic visual prompts that help management teams to get an understanding how their change program is progressing.
1. if your action measures are green (on track), but your dashboard measure are red (off track), then it’s clear you are not executing the right actions to impact your measures.
2. if your action measures are red then you know it’s only a matter of time before your goals and dashboard measures will start changing to be red also.
3. It’s easy to read if strategies will work together or if they will rub against each other.
Who should use OGSM?
OGSM is all about communication
Board members
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When do I use OGSM?
During business / organisation planning:
Startup: after business model canvas
Disruption: when you need to change or dramatically improve your operating model
Quarterly (at least) strategy review: check assumptions, review action progress
Investor / Stakeholder meetings:
The difference between run the business and change the business. (see article)
How do I use OGSM?
Handy rules when designing your business plan
Why should OGSM fit on a page?
Use the below rules of thumb:
- 3-5 strategies
- no more than 5 actions per strategy
- use 2-3 goal KPI’s per goal heading
- in measure dashboard use measures (kpi’s) to track action progress (results)
- in measure dashboard use lagging kpi’s to measure goal progress
- make action names in the form of what by how.
Board room
Board room discussions should have a number of topics. These should be measurable in the OGSM.
- Are our current clients happy with our product / service?
- Are we known in the marketplace to potential customers
- Is it clear what our differentiator is compared to our competitors
- Does the market understand our value proposition
- Our our actions contributing measurable improvements
Department heads
- Are other departments understanding what and why we are doing these change projects
- Are the change projects aligned with other department projects with timing, dependencies, resourcing
- Are my teams motivated to complete these actions
Program managers
- Are the projects contributing to our program goals.
- Can we setup our program to deliver measurable results earlier than end of project
- Are my teams accepting, and understanding what they have to do
- Do the teams see the workload as possible but challenging
- Do they understand why they are doing this project (purpose)
The AgileOGSM process to creating a winning team.
Creating a believable, readable, understandable, achievable, story is at the core of what an OGSM is.
- Meetings / ceremonies
Define Clear Objectives
Begin and End on Time
Relevancy with the Sprint Goals
- motivation
- team with right skills
- culture
- progress
- celebration
Example OGSM's
- Change the business
- Service organisation
- product organisation
- government
- Run the business
- Product sales company
- startup
OGSM Template excel and powerpoint
(coming soon!)
OGSM Software
Running more than 5 projects, 10 measures and a team of more than 5 requires constant steering and collaboration, using OGSM makes this easier than using your memory or excel with email.
