Your organization needs a strategy that will allow you to continue generating value in the face of business trends and economic hurdles. But the strategy that works for your competitor probably won’t work for your business. Every organization is different, and business leaders must align long-term ambitions with their unique risks and goals — especially in volatile landscapes. A strategic plan that employs the objectives and key results (OKRs) framework can future-proof your business so you’re able to adapt with evolving business environments no matter what’s thrown your way.

Three Steps for Planning Strategic Initiatives

Strategic planning and execution require many inputs. It takes understanding capabilities and objectives, an organization-wide commitment to leadership’s vision, ongoing evaluation and adaptation, and more. And if initiatives fail to consider larger business goals or are not adaptable to disruptions to business environments, they’re bound to fail.

With that in mind, here are three tips for creating strategies that ensure business initiatives — from remote work to ESG goals — provide resilience against headwinds and drive your business forward in 2023 and beyond:

1. Apply the OKR methodology 

Your strategic roadmap requires a starting point, an ending point, and a course of action that works for everyone at your company. In other words, you need to be strategic about creating your strategic plan. The OKR goal-setting framework generates organizational-wide alignment on company priorities, promotes engagement with broader objectives, and allows for adaptability to changing business conditions.

The OKR framework is simple — there’s the desired outcome (objective) and benchmarks that track progress toward achieving that outcome (key results). The methodology is highly scalable, flexible, and can be used for anything from organizational-wide initiatives down to individual team goals. Start with your organization’s overall strategic goals and encourage department heads to do the same for their teams. These smaller-scale OKRs act as building blocks to support larger objectives so everyone works toward common objectives, regardless of their roles or responsibilities.

For example, you can connect an ESG-based objective like “lower carbon emissions” with a different goal to increase your brand’s reputation. The OKR framework ensures progress toward the ESG objective functions in tandem with your work on brand reputation to support higher-level strategic priorities. That way, you’re integrating ESG work within growth-directed initiatives across the company. You’ll also ensure this initiative doesn’t fall by the wayside should any turmoil (such as economic deterioration) force a change in business priorities.

See More: How Remote Teams Benefit From OKRs

2. Make strategies actionable and mission-oriented

The best strategies are tangible and achievable within your resources and infrastructure limits. Many strategic plans fail because they aren’t connected to concrete actions, aren’t feasible outside of ideal conditions, or are too difficult for employees to get behind and achieve.

Before solidifying your OKRs, account for factors like implementation costs, hours employees will need to accomplish objectives, and how new goals stack up against existing business operations and strategies. Complications that may change your business’ priorities or capabilities are expected to arise in the coming months, so actionable strategies should also be adaptable. A mission statement can be helpful to guide changes to your plans and keep your organization focused on its high-level objectives.

Suppose your organization is planning to launch its first ESG initiative when a key project team member exits the organization. An effective business strategy will include full descriptions of roles and responsibilities so leadership can quickly reallocate tasks among remaining team members. If the scale of the project needs to change, a mission statement helps narrow the focus on the most important elements, making the best use of lean resources.

See More: The Impact of ESG Regulations

3. Maintain open communication

Action-oriented strategies won’t yield results if the people tasked with carrying out plans are unaware of the goals you’ve set. Your employees need to understand their roles and responsibilities and why the goals you have set are essential to the company’s success. Can you only generate buy-in to fuel motivated, efficient work from top to bottom?

Simply starting a dialogue won’t suffice — business conditions and objectives are dynamic and multi-faceted, so your exchanges with employees must also be. This means supporting purposeful, engaging, and frequent communication. Periodic all-company status meetings are a great platform for company leaders to share progress made toward goals and how employees’ roles support these initiatives. They’re also useful to maintain alignment on objectives if challenging circumstances create turbulence that shifts your organization’s strategic priorities.

Deliberate communication is even more important in the era of remote and hybrid work. Research shows inter-team communication has remained strong, but cross-team interactions and collaboration have dropped significantly. This raises the risk of uncoordinated goal-setting through the OKR framework, which can lead to misalignment. An explicit plan that calls for teams working together on OKR goals to meet regularly limits risks to strategic execution.

How Technology Can Help Implement Strategic Initiatives

Technology can help automate the steps above to save time, resources and money. Using an OKR software platform, business leaders will have accurate, up-to-date information readily available when deciding the next steps for their company. Not only does this reduce the risk of poor decision-making, it also ensures the entire organization uses the correct data to improve its strategy execution.

Let’s take ESG goals as an example. A business will likely have many ESG goals that need to be achieved — potentially upward of 20 or more. Managing that many goals manually at scale will challenge any organization. By using OKR software that easily incorporates your ESG goals into your overarching business initiatives, it will help your organization be more aligned and allow you to collect key performance data that ensures you’ll stay on track. 

Failing to Prepare Is Preparing to Fail

The rise of work-from-home and calls for corporate responsibility are just the latest trends to complicate business environments. And these changes may not even be the biggest obstacles your business will face in the coming months should the global economy fall into a recession. But these factors (or any factors, for that matter) don’t need to get in the way of your growth ambitions — not if you’re committed to bringing a well-planned strategy to life and have the OKR framework to execute it.

Which strategies should organizations implement to make the year smooth sailing? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!