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Pass a driving test. Become a black belt in jiu-jitsu. Knit a frilly frock. These are all objectives. What do they have in common? Not much — except that they’re all aspirational. Objectives take many forms, and you’re probably more experienced in goal-setting than you realise. That being said, a little clarity never hurt anyone. In this article, we’ll define business objectives, list some key benefits and provide examples for a range of office departments to boot.
Let’s ease into it.
Objectives, goals, strategies — these words may seem interchangeable, but in the world of business, they have different meanings.
An objective is simply the answer to the question: What do you want to achieve? Whether that’s a pop shove-it or improving your business’ profits will depend on context (unless you’re Tony Hawk). For argument's sake, let’s assume you’re not and move on to defining company or business objectives.
In the corporate world, objectives are qualitative statements that outline where you want your business to go. The overarching strategy of the business guides them. Increasing profits is probably the most common for-profit business objective, but boosting market share, sales and expanding customer bases follow closely behind.
Businesses create objectives to:
There are many ways to develop and achieve effective business objectives — our favourite being OKRs — but the driving force behind their success is strategic goals or results. These measurable statements enable you to track your progress and adapt your approach.
But business objectives don’t only exist in the vague long-term. Organisations should develop short-term and long-term objectives that support each other. That’s where project objectives come in — they’re performance indicators specifically for short-term projects that work toward long-term goals.
In an organisation, strategic objectives implement a business’s goals. If your objective is your destination, your strategy is the road to get there. In simpler terms, your strategic plan is the steps you need to take — or the milestones you need to reach — to satisfy your broader business objectives.
For example, if a company’s broad objective is to improve sales, a more strategic objective may be to grow sales by 10% by the end of the quarter by implementing further training and offering incentives for hitting targets. In most cases, it’s also important to assign specific tasks to help you meet your objectives within a certain timeframe. In this example, a manager might give training to specific employees with deadlines for completion.
Don’t worry — they sound similar because they are! Strategic and business objectives operate side-by-side to propel a company forward. They’re both steps to bring you closer to your company’s mission. There is, however, one key difference:
A business objective is what you want to achieve broadly, and a strategic objective is what you want to achieve specifically (and how you’ll achieve it).
We’ve covered the what and the why — now let’s tackle the how. Rather than leaving things up to chance, we at Tability prefer to use a tried-and-tested approach — OKRs. The OKRs method helps your team set measurable goals and track their progress. It stands for Objectives and Key Results:
OKRs are written in three easy steps.
Define business objectives by describing the broad outcome you want your organisation to achieve without numerical values and over-specifying.
Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) key results to determine success. Here’s a simple equation to help you get started.
Increase/decrease [metric] from X to Y
Develop a strategy for meeting your key results by planning how you will achieve them. Assign initiatives to employees.
Confused? It may help to visualise what OKRs look like. Here are five examples of objectives in marketing, customer success, design, sales and HR teams.
Objective: Improve online presence
Objective: Increase customer satisfaction
Objective: Improve the UX of the checkout page
Objective: Boost sales revenue
Objective: Improve employee retention
Looking for more OKRs examples? Visit our OKRs library.
What’s the difference between an objective and a good objective? One’s a vision and the other’s reality.
So, how do you turn your OKRs into achievements? With outcomes, conversations and accountability. Tability is more than an OKRs platform — it’s a way to build empowered teams to push you toward your objectives.
Set up, track and report on your objectives in one place with OKRs software that’s easy for the whole team to use. Sign up for a free trial of Tability today.