A structured plan with OGSM

In the last quarter of the year, many organisations make plans for the coming year. Sometimes these are plans for the whole business, sometimes for a specific part of it. Veth Automotive, a bodyworks manufacturer in Duiven, also wanted to get to work on a plan. Veth Automotive, which has been adjusting, modifying and fitting out bodyworks since 1837, wants to pay more attention over the coming years to complementing the standard body variants offered by car manufacturers. The management team chose OGSM to structure their ideas and asked Jester to support them.

The OGSM method comes from Japan and is now used by many large organisations. Honda, KPN, Coca-Cola, Procter and Gamble and Bol.com have all been using OGSM for years, for example. The abbreviation OGSM stands for Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures. The Objective is the objective of the organisation for a given planning period. It is the point on the horizon the organisation is heading for. The qualitative Objective is then translated into quantitative Goals. The Goals are the strategic goals of the organisation, the benchmarks by which the intended success can be measured at the end of the planning period. The Strategies are the concrete strategic choices the organisation makes to realise its Objective. Finally, the Measures are the set of performance indicators, actions and timing from which it can be seen whether the strategy is on course. With its clear structure, OGSM helps to turn strategy into concrete actions.

With its breakdown into Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures, and its distinction between quantitative and qualitative elements, OGSM offers a clear structure. Many organisations have a lot of ideas but find it hard to land these in a concrete and consistent plan. Because the OGSM effectively unrolls from back to front, coherence becomes clear and is safeguarded. Completing a set of actions leads to a realised strategy, and if all strategies have been completed, the objective should have been achieved. Performance indicators measure progress at the level of the strategies; the goals demonstrate that the objective has been realised. Alongside this, people often know which actions they should take, but it is not always clear how this contributes to the wider objective of the organisation. With OGSM, this is easy to trace.

Drawing up the OGSM gave Veth Automotive's management team several insights. First, they knew what needed to happen, but a structure like OGSM helps to make it concrete and demonstrable. The team spent quite a lot of time and attention on formulating the objective. It takes a while to formulate a sentence that explains both what Veth Automotive wants to achieve and why. Once the objective was set, it was fully endorsed by all team members and clearly energised them. It also became clear that many activities were starting next year and rested with a limited number of people. Although the team did not see this as a barrier, they did look at how the work could be arranged to remain realistic for everyone. All in all a successful use of OGSM by Veth Automotive.