States, Choices, Measures
A simple set of ideas to break through the endless pontificating about strategies, goals, and OKRs.
Good old Socrates once said ‘the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms’.
As facilitators, it’s difficult to disagree with that phrase because half of our job is to poke and prod at teams and say things like “are you absolutely sure you all mean the same thing when you say ‘value’”. However, it’s also a sentiment that can be abused to justify the most interminable, mind-numbingly dull, and counterproductive conversations imaginable.
One particular conversational merry-go-round that we often encounter comes from teams struggling with how to define goals, objectives, strategies, tactics and results. So rather than write a (long) piece on all the ways those could be defined, we thought we’d offer our opinionated way to talk about those things…
The Confusion
At the heart of these endless discussions, we typically see a fundamental confusion between states, choices, and measures…
States
What should the condition of the universe be as a result of the organization doing its thing? You can use the words ‘goal’ or ‘mission’ here if you’d like to. The cliche is that goals should be ‘attainable’ but most worthwhile goals require constant maintenance even once you’ve achieved them - they’re never truly ‘done’. So the language here should be enduring: “be the gold standard”, “make everyone’s data safe”, “eradicate child hunger”.
Choices
Goals tell you where you’re going but not how you’ll get there. Rather than argue endlessly about which things are big enough to call a ‘strategy’ and which things are mere ‘tactics’, we simply refer to the entire stack as ‘choices’ (albeit with different scopes).
Each choice is a deliberate commitment in the face of uncertainty and so, crucially, it excludes all the things you don’t currently plan to do.
The language here is often best framed as a trade-off: “pivot to a direct-to-consumer model”, “stick with existing infrastructure”, “bypass traditional retail channels”.
If you must still use the words ‘strategy’ and ‘tactic’, then we recommend calling anything that feels like an indivisible unit of value a ‘tactic’...
Strategy: “Pivot to a self-service model for all sales support activities”
Tactic: “Make refunds self-service”
Measures
If a goal is a destination, then a measure is just a fancy way of asking “are we there yet?”. The right language uses verbs that imply a changing state and (ideally) refers to concrete numbers: “increase retention to 95%”, “reduce overhead by 10%”, “capture 5k new leads”. You can’t ‘do’ a measure. “Increasing retention by 95%” is not a strategy, it’s just something you can track.
Cross-check Your Language
If your ‘strategy’ section is full of increasing or reducing things, you don’t have a strategy; you have a wishlist. You’ve identified what you want to happen, but not the choice you’re making to make it happen.
If your ‘goal’ is to build a new platform, you’ve mistaken a choice for a destination. What happens once the platform is built? The goal is the state the platform creates: “seamless user autonomy”.
The next time your leadership team is stuck in a semantic loop, don’t reach for a glossary. Instead, try drawing three buckets on a whiteboard and working together to identify your states, choices and measures. And, if you’d like some support, you know where to find us.