Objectives and Strategy

Objectives
Make your goals and objectives specific, realistic and rewarding
Avoid being too global with your goals and objectives; you want your employees to clearly understand what's expected of them.
Unrealistic goals and objectives are never motivating. The successful plan consider just goals and objectives that are challenging and attainable within a realistic timeframe. The Board of Directors should keep in mind that people are motivated to attain the company goals with a reward in sight.
The goals and objectives section should consider four fundamental key elements:
1. First is about what the company wants to attain.
2. The second is about what the company wants to keep and sustain.
3. The third is about what the company wants to prevent
4. Naturally the fourth key element is what the company wants to reduce and if possible to remove.
To have success a plan should have reliable financial goals and projections that can be analyzed in detail. Also a strategic plan should discover and reveal the probable threads and state the best strategies for surmounting them.
Strategy
The strategy defines the rules and procedures that will achieve the strategic mission and the strategic goals. The strategy must cover the entire business, all the key development areas, merger or acquisition plans, new products and diversification plans.
Corporate businesses have to define strategic plans for each important level:
1. At Corporate level the strategic plan is defined for CEO and Board of Directors that specifies the structural changes, global policies, the resources and the plans to achieve the strategic goals and objectives.
2. At Business unit or at Strategic Profit Unit level : the competitive strategy thru product differentiation , cost advantage or niche focus.
3. At Functional level for all strategic corporate functions: Marketing, Research, Product Development, Sales, Finance, Legal aspects, Supply and Delivery Management and IT Management.
An important instrument for developing the Corporate strategy is the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis can help to discover and develop promising strategies by conquering using the strengths, repairing and treating weaknesses, take advantage of all opportunities and preventing threads or even surpassing them.

The Values and the Goals

The Values
Values represent the foundation priorities in the company’s culture and concepts. The Values are governing the operation of the company and its relationship not just with customers or suppliers, but also with employees and community. These Values will drive company CEO and Board of Directors priorities and the way they will act in managing the company to reach the goals.
This is why Values are increasingly important in strategic planning.
Articulating values provides company members with an essential guide about distinctive ways of choosing among competing priorities and the course of action about how people will work together for success.

The Goals
The goals should be measurable. A strategic plan should provide the measures of the progress and the feedback mechanism.
The goals must be specific in order to determine if the company is progressing effectively for successfully reaching the goals. The goals should be consistent. Multiple goals of the different departments should be similar and compatible.
Goals should be realistic and achievable. It should be known that unrealistic goals and objectives could be a factor of poor performance. If goals are challenging and achievable in a realistic period of time, employees will be stronger motivated.

The Vision and the Mission statement

The Vision
A vision is a statement about what the company wants to become.
The message of the CEO and the board of directors : "That is the view of our company’s future."
Vision is a long term view and creating a vision is an important step in an organizational development process.
A vision shared by all staff of the company helps people to set goals to advance and is an important key for motivation.
The vision reflect the values, knowledge and the philosophy of the company.

The Mission
The company's mission statement reveal the essential undertaking of the company. It should be a steady reminder to employees and stakeholders of the reason of company’s foundation and existence.
Audience: The management team, stakeholders and employees.
Function:
1. To define the company’s reason for existence,
2. To identify the competitive advantages and the distinctive features for the company’s success.
The original founders’ dreams and objectives - when they put their fame and fortune at risk to start the company - must be reexamined and refreshed periodically if the company wants to remain dynamic and competitive.