Worksheet

Goal Core

What are we trying to achieve, by when, and how would we know?

How to use it

Each area of the Goal Core gets its own page. Its working parts are set out as prompts — not a form to complete, but the things worth having a view on. The last part of each page lists what the area touches in the other cores, because a position taken here usually commits something there.

Read about the Goal Core

The Omnigoal · Goal Core · What are we trying to achieve, by when, and how would we know?

Purpose

The reason the organisation exists, stated from the inside. Purpose sits at the centre of the Goal Core, and through it at the centre of the whole framework — the point every other core turns around.

ForDate

  1. Reason for being

    The articulation itself — one sentence that would remain true if the product changed entirely.

  2. Core values

    The small set of commitments the organisation will not trade, even when trading them would be profitable.

  3. Stakeholder rationale

    Whom the purpose is for, and what each of them gets from it — employees, customers, owners, suppliers, the surrounding community.

  4. Alignment

    How the purpose is actually used: which decisions are tested against it, at what points, and by whom.

  5. Integrity

    The distance between the purpose as stated and the purpose as enacted.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Culture (Vision Core) — Core values are the stated commitments; culture is what is actually lived, and the distance between the two is evidence for Integrity.

  • Vision Core — Vision and mission are built on purpose and should be readable as consequences of it.

  • Brand Core — Purpose made external: the promise has to be operationally keepable, and the core values have an outward form as brand values.

  • Business Core — A purpose the monetisation model cannot sustain is a purpose the company will quietly abandon.

  • Data Core — Purpose itself is not measurable; the goals beneath it are, and that is where measurement belongs.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Goal Core · What are we trying to achieve, by when, and how would we know?

Short term goals

The near horizon: what has to be true within weeks or a quarter. Short term goals exist to produce movement and evidence early, while there is still time to act on what they reveal.

ForDate

  1. Quarterly objectives

    The rhythm most organisations settle on: a small number of specific, demanding commitments set for a quarter and reviewed at its end.

  2. Milestones

    Dated checkpoints inside longer work, each one a moment where progress becomes visible and a decision to continue is genuinely available.

  3. Quick wins

    Results chosen deliberately because they will be seen — unambiguous, attributable to the effort, and early.

  4. Leading indicators

    Measures that move before the outcome does, and therefore give you time.

What this touches elsewhere

  • KPI management (Data Core) — Leading indicators are chosen here, against a goal; they are defined operationally, given thresholds and reviewed in KPI management.

  • Time Core — Quarters, milestones and the year wheel are where these goals are sequenced.

  • Business Core — Most short term goals land on an operational object, and that is who has to deliver them.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Goal Core · What are we trying to achieve, by when, and how would we know?

Long term goals

The far horizon: where the organisation intends to be in years, not quarters. Long term goals give the short ones a direction to point in, and are the first thing to go missing when a company is busy.

ForDate

  1. Long-range ambition

    The single stated destination: specific enough to recognise on arrival, distant enough that the route is not yet designed.

  2. Growth horizons

    Separating what defends today’s business from what builds the next one and what merely keeps an option open.

  3. Direction of growth

    Whether the ambition is reached through existing markets and offers, new offers, new markets, or genuinely new ground.

  4. Build, buy or ally

    How the business as a whole pursues a chosen direction of growth: expanding organically, acquiring other companies, or growing through alliances and joint ventures.

  5. Assumptions and scenarios

    What has to remain true for the goal to make sense, written down where it can be checked.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Partners (Business Core) — An alliance chosen as the mode of growth is selected and run under Partners; an acquisition is valued under Finance.

  • Vision Core — The vision describes the future state; long term goals are the measurable steps into it.

  • Market Opportunities (Market Core) — Direction of growth is the organisation’s choice; the market’s own movement, which the choice is checked against, is read under Growth and direction.

  • Time Core — Market timing and golden opportunities decide when a long goal becomes reachable.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Goal Core · What are we trying to achieve, by when, and how would we know?

Tactical goals

The layer where strategy becomes somebody’s work. Tactical goals translate a strategic intention into named commitments with owners, resources and a way of telling whether they worked.

ForDate

  1. Cascade and catchball

    Carrying a strategic goal down into commitments, and letting the answers come back up and change it.

  2. Initiatives

    The named, finishable pieces of work a tactical goal resolves into.

  3. Ownership

    One named person accountable for each goal, distinct from the people doing the work and from those merely informed.

  4. Resourcing

    What the goal costs in money, people and attention, agreed before it is committed to.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Business Core — Where most tactical goals land — systems, people, finance, partners.

  • Time Core — Project management and the year wheel decide sequence and load.

  • Data Core — The measures that show whether a tactic worked, not merely whether it happened.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Goal Core · What are we trying to achieve, by when, and how would we know?

Strategic goals

The few goals that decide direction. A strategic goal is not simply a large goal — it is one that answers a diagnosed problem and commits the organisation to some paths at the cost of others.

ForDate

  1. Diagnosis

    A plain statement of the challenge the goal exists to answer — what is in the way, and why it matters now.

  2. Strategic themes

    The few coherent lines of effort the goals group into, so that separate goals reinforce one another instead of competing for the same people.

  3. Trade-offs

    What is deliberately not being pursued, recorded alongside what is.

  4. Horizon and measures

    When the goal is expected to land, and what would count as having landed.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Governance (Business Core) — The board approves strategy and sets the risk appetite the strategic goals have to sit within.

  • Vision Core — Strategic goals should be readable as steps towards the stated vision.

  • Market Core — Diagnosis usually begins here — with competitors, audience and opportunity.

  • Brand Core — Positioning is a strategic choice and belongs among these goals, not after them.

  • Data Core — Where the outcome measures are defined, collected and reported.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen