H3. OGSM in 4 steps

Time to get to work on your plan. We introduce a practical 4-step approach for drawing up a sharp plan. We do not immediately use the OGSM model, because a good plan starts with good preparation. This is a brief summary of chapter 3 of the book 'OGSM in practice'.

Step 0: Preparation

A good start is half the work. During the preparation you answer the following questions:

Who owns the plan and which team is the plan for?

The OGSM owner is responsible for the results and therefore for the content of the plan. The team consists of the people who will soon implement the plan and manage the results.

What are the requirements and wishes we set for the content of the plan?

The essence of a good plan is to choose. But how will you make the right choices? The requirements and wishes help with this choice. Requirements are tough. These are points that your plan must meet. Ideas that do not meet the requirements are by definition discarded. You use the wishes to choose the best from all the good ideas.

What are the challenges our plan must address?

Think about the challenges you will have to overcome during the life of the plan. What questions should the OGSM actually answer? Challenges always have to do with the environment (external: opportunities and threats) or with the team or the organization (internal: strengths and vulnerabilities).

Always formulate challenges as questions. Start with “How can we…” or “How can I…” In this way you stimulate the creativity of yourself and the team in the next phase to search for answers.

You can probably name a lot of challenges, but these are the most important. Select up to five challenges.

Step 1: Ambition

We start with determining the objective. That is a difficult process. Especially making the right formulation can be time consuming. Start by determining the horizon, that is the moment when the objective must be realised.

Then you go to the content of the objective. Start with the three separate words that should not be missing in the objective. For example, the focus is on the content and not (yet) on the formulation.

Both the why and the how must be included in the formulation. In the book 'Business plan on 1 A4' the formulation '[GOAL] by [DOEN]' is introduced as an aid to put the two parts of the objective into one sentence. For example:

In 5 years' time Sunergie will be a successful internationally operating company by getting more return from solar panels for consumers and the climate.

Step 2: Objectives

The goals make the objective concrete and measurable. Determine the main components of the objective and set one or more goals for each component. The questions “How do we see that…?” or “What shows that…?” can help with this.

Step 3: Strategic choices

High time to determine the route. Which important choices do you have to make in order to realize the objective (and therefore also the goals)? You do this in two steps: coming up with ideas and making choices.

The challenge is to come up with lots of ideas first. The first idea is itself the best idea. You come up with ideas based on the objective and the challenges:

  • How can we realize our objective?
  • Challenge 1: How can we…?
  • Challenge 2: How can we…?
  • And so on.

Then come up with at least three good ideas for each challenge. Because you have formulated the challenges as a question, they form a good basis for the brainstorm to generate ideas.

You make choices by filtering the ideas based on the requirements and by scoring them on the requirements and wishes. This will give you a ranked list of ideas that you use to make up to five strategies.

Now formulate the strategies. Describe both the goal of the strategy and how you want to achieve this goal.

Step 3: Measures – Indicators and Actions

With the measures we look ahead at the implementation: how do you keep an eye on the progress and what are you going to do in concrete terms?

Indicators

Formulate at least one indicator for the why and one indicator for the how for each strategy. As with the goals, use the questions “How do we see that…” or “What shows that…” For each indicator, note the title, target date, target value and unit. Always consider whether an indicator will help you and your team to steer on the result. If not, remove the indicator from your OGSM.

Actions

Brainstorm for each strategy about the actions. What can you do to achieve the desired results? Often this is the simplest step. Avoid long to-do lists and make choices. It can help to score the actions on their added value and feasibility.

Make the action very concrete! For each action in the OGSM, clearly indicate what exactly must be done (an action always contains a verb) and preferably also what the purpose of the action is. Then you immediately see why a certain action is relevant.

Finally, determine the deadlines and owners of the actions, so that you are ready for implementation and check with each other whether the planning is feasible.

Three routes for setting up your OGSM

The step-by-step plan in this article follows the royal route through the OGSM. Step by step you go through the four letters: Objective (objective), Goals (goals), Strategies (strategies) and Measures (measures). However, that is not always the best route. We distinguish three routes from our practice:

  1. Start from the dream: objective
  2. Start from the potential: strategies
  3. Start from practice: actions

The preparation (step 0) is the same for all routes.

We have elaborated on these routes in the book.

OGSM in practice

This article is a summary of a chapter of the book 'OGSM in practice'. More information can be found at ogsmindepraktijk.nl

Or order the book directly from management book of bol.com.

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