Strategic Goals – the Key to Strategic Execution

Put simply, strategic goals are high-level, measurable targets that translate vision and mission into clear priorities. They guide decision-making, align teams, and provide a framework for resource allocation, innovation, and accountability. Unlike projects or OKRs, strategic goals define the long-term “must-win” outcomes that shape an organization’s future.

An effective set of 5–7 goals should:

• Be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound)
• Cascade through the organization to align departments and portfolios
• Serve as the lens for prioritization, funding, and project selection
• Stay stable enough to build confidence, yet flexible to adapt to market change

This blog explains how to build strategic goals, connect them to project portfolios, and avoid common pitfalls like vagueness, weak buy-in, and misalignment with prioritization. It also includes 60 example goals across 15 categories - covering growth, customer impact, operations, people, risk, compliance, and sustainability - that organizations can adapt to their own strategy.

At their best, strategic goals provide a clear line of sight between mission, projects, and measurable outcomes - helping organizations to outperform competitors and deliver lasting value.

Please note that in this blog we’ll explore Strategic Goals with a focus on how to build them and then connect them to a portfolio of projects. They could equally be used to shape performance objectives.

What are Strategic Goals?

The best way to define Strategic Goals is to describe their role in an organization:

• Strategic goals are the high-level targets needed to achieve your strategic mission. Ideally this is about five key ambitions, where you can confidently say if we land all these then we succeed. They are the “must-win” battles.
• Strategic goals ideally flow from strategic analysis, as they help synthesize key learnings into actionable outcomes. Some organizations have a mature framework in place; others have less and leave a gap that the PMO will need to plug.
• Strategic goals should be measurable, but may require additional levels of detail underneath to clarify and quantify them. These lower level targets are strategic objectives.
• Strategic goals drive prioritization, so they must include all the main reasons for funding projects. This in turn means resource and management bandwidth should be aligned to them.
• At their best strategic goals are a focal point for driving alignment to help colleagues internalize the strategy in a simple, actionable, way.

What are NOT Strategic Goals?

Let’s also be clear about what strategic goals are not, with two common mistakes:

1. Strategic goals are not specific projects or programs. Goals define the outcomes we want to achieve; projects are the inputs we use to get there. Beware the ‘golden ticket’ mindset of assuming ‘Project Y is part of Program X, so it must be done.’ We need to be clear on why Program X matters and ensure Project Y genuinely contributes to its success. Loose associations risk masking pet projects and undermining focus.
2. Also, strategic goals are not the same as OKRs, though the two are connected. Strategic goals are high-level, long-term outcomes that provide the framework for selecting and prioritizing projects. OKRs are shorter-term targets, typically set quarterly or annually, that measure progress and benefits as those projects and initiatives go live. Think of it as the difference between looking at the road ahead and checking the map. Both perspectives are essential, but for this blog let’s keep it big picture.

How to Build Strategic Goals

Strategic goals should be one step in a flow of strategic intent that starts with mission and ends with measurable outcomes against which you will judge the success of that strategy. If you want to focus on the broader process, we have a Strategic Planning Ultimate Guide where you can explore this flow:

However, for the sake of this blog we’ll assume the broader process isn’t quite delivering perfectly, and that you need to work on defining your own strategic goals. This is often where we find a PMO starts; being asked to deliver a strategic mission which has not been documented into a set of strategic goals.

Sounds intimidating, but the basic truth is that fixing this gap is the single biggest lever a PMO has for boosting the value of the work they do. So it’s worth stepping out of the comfort zone, and asking leadership what they want to achieve.

If you have a strategy paper or documentation, then review it. Parse it through AI. From experience we’re looking to pull out the key themes, while cutting out the “nice to have” elements which are more for PR. Likewise look out for the issues which are keeping the CEO awake at night, but not always published for broader circulation.

Next, look at the most important projects your team is working on. For example, if Project X will help you enter the European market, then “Growing sales by entering the European market” might be one of your goals. Perhaps other projects might also drive this goal?

You can also use our 60 example goals below, and identify which ones resonate as things you know your leadership are expecting you to deliver from your portfolio.

Given that your objective is alignment, it’s important not to forget the final, most important step; talk to your key stakeholders. Share a draft for them to improve. Make sure the language is familiar. Give people the opportunity to be heard. These goals need to be stable, so make sure everyone is on board.

60 Examples of Strategic Goals

A project portfolio should typically include 5 to 7 high-level strategic goals. Larger portfolios may require more detailed objectives underneath, but simplicity should remain the guiding principle.

Use this collection of 60 goals as a base, editing to make them specific to your organization’s strategy:

In the realm of Decision Science, strategic goals can be referred to as criteria, added with sub-criteria for measurability. For additional insights into formulating them, download ourBuilding Criteria Ultimate Guide. This comprehensive free guide will provide a strong foundation as you begin to construct your strategic goals in a focused manner.

What Makes an Effective Strategic Goal?

Effective strategic goals are long-term, mission-aligned, and SMART. They cascade through the organization, break down into strategic objectives with accountable owners, guide resource prioritization, and remain flexible enough to adapt as markets and technology evolve.

Here's a simple checklist to follow when assessing your strategic goals:

1. Reflects your Contribution to Mission and Vision. Focus on what is truly important; but be cognisant of what your portfolio or team are there to deliver. Not everyone needs to be a revenue driver.
2. Long-term & Stable. Spanning multiple years or decades to build a durable foundation. Limit U-turns which are disruptive and undermine confidence, so ideally only revisit every year at most.
3. S.M.A.R.T. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. As a rule of thumb, if you can’t measure it, then you need to drill deeper, adding in more specificity until it’s absolutely clear what needs to happen.
4. Embedded Within the Team. Supporting a cohesive aligned culture, where everyone knows what their goals are and commits to help deliver them. Leadership cascades are great, regular leadership updates even better.
5. Linked to Benefits. The work being done inside the portfolio needs to be relatable to strategic goals. If it’s not you have either the wrong goals or the wrong projects.
6. Aligned to Prioritization. Make sure resources are allocated to optimize the delivery of strategic goals, selecting an optimized portfolio with good strategic fit.
7. Flexible. Adaptable to changes in the market, technology, and customer preferences, although stable enough to build confidence and enable planning.

Prioritizing Strategic Goals

Put simply, effective strategy is as much about deciding what NOT to pursue as what TO prioritize. A "prize for everyone" approach dilutes focus. Pairwise comparisons help cut through bias, build consensus, and quantify trade-offs, especially when weighing very different goals, like risk vs. revenue or short- vs. long-term profitability.

Take Ryanair as an example, nobody's favourite airline. Despite criticism for its customer service, the airline's unwavering commitment to low-cost tickets reflects a strategic choice that resonates with its goals. If it tried to also shoehorn in customer service, choice and loyalty into its objectives then it would have to pay for them with higher prices.

Let's approach this from the point-of-view of our model. We have goals, but not all these goals are equal. But stakeholders are unlikely to agree on what matters most, as each sees the strategy with their own perspective. This means that one set of goals can spawn a series of unaligned priorities, as different leaders home in on the goals which align best with their own agenda.

So, we need to “weight” our goals, in a way that builds alignment between different stakeholders.

While this sounds like a simple task, it turns out that there are good ways and bad ways to do it. Simply grabbing a whiteboard and asking a room full of people to weight / rank your goals is typically not very effective, for example. That kind of process is open to decision biases creeping in, and tends to be poor at building real consensus and buy-in.

In practical terms this means asking a series of questions which ask people to judge the relative importance of two "competing" goals. This is called (rather unimaginatively) a pairwise review.

It has two key benefits. Firstly, we’re asking for relative importance, not an abstract value. This sounds like a trivial difference, but research shows that humans work far better with relative judgements.

Secondly, we are fostering debate within the group, so “competing” voices can appreciate that they have different perspectives. It’s also a chance for people to change their mind as they listen to others’ point of view.

So, we’ve taken our strategy, structured it into measurable goals, and then built a model to weight these goals. The PMO should feel pretty good right now, as they have a fantastic platform for driving alignment. Optimization, scheduling and reporting follow, but that’s a topic we’ll cover elsewhere...

Common Strategic Goal Mistakes to Avoid

Put simply, strategic goals are too important to get wrong. That's why it's critical to make sure you have a quality outcome from your review.

Here are some common mistakes to watch out for:

1. Being vague: Ambiguity in strategic goals allows individuals to interpret them through their own lens, either sub-consciously or cynically. This is why that second layer of detail to lock-in measurability might be needed.
2. Not getting buy-in: Strategic Goals are pointless is people don’t commit to them. This means leadership and delivery teams. If, as a PMO, you’re the one writing these down make sure you address this step, even if it feels uncomfortable.
3. Weak link to prioritization: Effective prioritization means making choices, including turning down seemingly appealing opportunities to concentrate on the more aligned projects. ROI should be a hygiene factor for investment, alignment to strategic goals should be the driver.
4. Disconnect from project benefits: Make sure your Business Cases connects Strategic Goals and specific outcomes of a project. Managing these benefits is then how to build value assurance into delivery.
5. Disconnect from reporting: Having a single well-defined dashboard to measure progress against strategic goals helps the organization stay focused and make value-based trade offs in governance. PMO reports that only focus on "on-time" and "on-budget" miss this opportunity.
6. Ignoring lack of data: Measurement is critical so we can see if our deliverables are moving the dial. That's why the goal needs to be grounded in what data is available. This can mean challenging BI to develop new data sources or adapting measures to use what exists already.

Next Steps

Building strategic goals is critical to successful strategy execution. If your portfolio does not have these goals agreed, then it’s in the best interests of the PMO to plug the gap. Do not be distracted by the jargon or ignore the problem until you have time to become an expert. Simply reach out, and we can support you with a tried and tested approach that's built into software and refined with many clients.

• Learn more with our Strategic Planning guide
• See how TransparentChoice software supports Strategic Planning
• Book a call to explore how we can help you build and deliver your strategic goals