For lecturers and supervisors

For educators

Material for teaching with The Omnigoal: what it can and cannot carry in a course, a six-session outline, two assignment briefs with assessment criteria, and the practical matters of citation, licence and print. Everything here may be used, adapted and handed out.

Suits
Undergraduate and master’s courses in strategy and business development
Licence
CC BY 4.0 — free to teach, adapt and share with attribution
Cost
None. No account is needed for anything on this page
See the course outlineAssignment briefs

Before you use it

What the framework is, and what it is not

The Omnigoal is an organising framework: eight cores and fifty-five objects that between them describe a whole business, with the established models placed at the addresses where they do their work. It is descriptive, not predictive — it generates no hypotheses and says nothing about whether a strategy will succeed. It has not been empirically validated, and should be cited as a structure for reasoning rather than as evidence for a claim. The boundaries between cores are conventions rather than natural divisions, and students who argue that an object belongs elsewhere are using it well. What it offers a course is a shared map on which scope, omissions and connections become visible, which is a modest contribution and, in teaching, often the one that is missing. The philosophy page sets out the position it rests on.

In teaching

Three ways it is used in a course

They combine well, and none of them requires students to adopt the framework uncritically. Each links to the guide that sets out the method in full.

As an advance organiser

Introduced before the content of a course, the eight cores give students somewhere to attach each new concept rather than filing it provisionally. It works best when the map is taught in the first session and returned to in the last, so students can see how much of it they now fill.

As a delimitation tool

For project work the map’s main use is negative: it shows what a project leaves out, so the exclusions can be argued one by one instead of apologised for in a single sentence. Supervisors can use the same map as a review sheet — a chapter that cannot be placed on it usually has no settled role in the argument.

As a case structure

A case read core by core, with every finding marked as documented, inferred or unknown, gives a class a shared structure to disagree within. The worked example shows the full sequence on a fictional company and can be used as it is, or as a model for writing your own cases.

A course outline

Six sessions

Written for sessions of about three hours, with the reading done beforehand. It follows the order of the strategy guide, compresses the eight cores into four middle sessions, and ends on delimitation rather than on coverage. Shorten, reorder or replace the company as your course requires.

  1. Session 1: The map before the detail

    Aim
    Students can name the eight cores, say what each is responsible for, and explain why the framework treats them as parts of one system rather than as eight departments.
    Reading
    Why · The philosophy · Learning
    In class
    In pairs, place twenty business terms written on cards — pricing, churn, mission, a supplier contract, a trade fair, a dashboard — on a printed canvas. Collect the placements the pairs disagree on and discuss them in plenary.
    Output
    A one-page map with each disputed placement and the argument for where it went. The disagreements are the useful part: they show that the boundaries are conventions.

  2. Session 2: Purpose, goals and horizon

    Aim
    Students can distinguish purpose from vision and mission, and strategic from tactical goals, and can test whether a stated value rules anything out.
    Reading
    Goal Core · Purpose · Strategic goals · Vision Core
    In class
    Take one listed company’s latest annual report. Extract its purpose, vision, mission and stated goals, and for each value name one thing it would make the company decline.
    Output
    A goal hierarchy with a horizon on every goal, each entry marked documented, inferred or unknown.

  3. Session 3: Reading outward: market and brand

    Aim
    Students can place the established models they already know on the map, and say what each one does not reach.
    Reading
    Market Core · Brand Core · Brand promise · The model library
    In class
    Groups take three models from earlier courses — Five Forces, PESTEL and STP, for example — and place each at its address. Each group then names one object none of its three models examines.
    Output
    A table: model, address, what it covers, what it leaves out.

  4. Session 4: The operating business and the experience

    Aim
    Students can trace a single change through at least three cores and say what it does at each one.
    Reading
    Business Core · Omni Core · Worked example, passes 4 to 6
    In class
    Start from one change — a new brand promise, a price increase, a new sales channel — and follow it through three cores, naming the object at each step and the consequence there in one sentence.
    Output
    A traced chain of three addresses, each with its consequence. Assessed on the mechanism at each step, not on the length of the chain.

  5. Session 5: Evidence and time

    Aim
    Students can write an action line that has an owner, a single measure and a stop condition agreed in advance, and can sequence actions on dependency.
    Reading
    Data Core · Time Core · Action planning
    In class
    Write three to five action lines for the company used in session two, using the seven fields. Pairs then review each other’s lines and concentrate on the stop conditions.
    Output
    Three to five action lines in the seven-field anatomy, revised after review.

  6. Session 6: Delimitation and synthesis

    Aim
    Students can narrow a case to the cores that matter for one question and argue each exclusion separately.
    Reading
    School projects · The worked example, including its limits
    In class
    Groups present their company map and propose a problem statement. The rest of the class acts as examiners and asks the question examiners reliably ask: why these cores and not the others?
    Output
    A delimitation paragraph that names the excluded cores, with a separate reason for each, and notes where an excluded core might have changed the answer.

Assessment

Two assignment briefs

Both reward argued delimitation and traced connections rather than coverage. A submission that fills every object and connects none of them should not pass on volume. The weights are a suggestion; adjust them to your programme’s learning outcomes.

Assignment A · Case-based

Advising the board of Tovmark Møbler

Students take the role of an adviser to the board in the worked example. The company is fictional and fully described on that page, which keeps every student on the same evidence and makes the quality of the reasoning the only variable.

The task

  • Identify the two findings you consider most consequential and trace each through at least three cores, naming the address at every step.
  • Challenge one decision the team made, using a finding it marked as inferred or unknown.
  • Propose how the open question — whether 2030 is the company’s horizon or the investor’s — should be settled, and by whom.
  • Rewrite one action line you consider weak, and say what was wrong with it.
  • Do not add facts about the company. Where you need one, state it as an assumption and mark it.

Deliverable

A memo to the board of about 2,500 words, plus a one-page appendix of traced connections.

Assessment criteria

Argued delimitation25 %
Strong: Says what the memo concentrates on and why, and names what it deliberately leaves aside.
Weak: Covers every core evenly, or narrows without saying so.
Traced connections30 %
Strong: Each chain names the object at every step and the mechanism by which one change produces the next.
Weak: Asserts that something “affects marketing” or “has implications” without an address or a mechanism.
Handling of evidence20 %
Strong: Respects the documented, inferred and unknown marks, and says when an argument rests on an inference.
Weak: Treats inferred findings as facts, or fills an unknown with assumption.
The challenge and the rewritten action15 %
Strong: The challenge is specific and could change the decision; the action line has all seven fields and a stop condition that could actually be invoked.
Weak: Disagrees in general terms; the action line has no owner, several measures or no stop condition.
Honesty about limits10 %
Strong: States what the memo cannot know and what the framework does not decide.
Weak: Presents the recommendation as following from the framework rather than from judgement.

Coverage is not rewarded. A memo that works two connections thoroughly should score above one that mentions all eight cores.

Assignment B · Public sources

A listed company, mapped and narrowed

Students choose a listed company that has published an annual report in the last eighteen months, and work from public sources only: filings, the company’s own material, trade press and published interviews. The method follows the school-projects guide.

The task

  • Map the company at object level across all eight cores, marking every entry documented, inferred or unknown, with its source.
  • Let the blanks suggest one strategic question, and state which objects it concerns and what evidence would answer it.
  • Delimit to two or three cores, giving each exclusion a separate reason.
  • Place at least two established models at their addresses and say what each leaves out.
  • Trace at least two connections from the analysed cores into cores outside the delimitation.
  • End with three action lines in the seven-field anatomy that the company could plausibly adopt.

Deliverable

A report of about 4,000 words. The full map goes in an appendix and is not assessed for completeness.

Assessment criteria

Problem statement and delimitation25 %
Strong: The question names an object; exclusions are argued one at a time; the report notes where an excluded core might have changed the answer.
Weak: The question names a topic; exclusions are covered by a single sentence about scope.
Traced connections25 %
Strong: Connections are traced to specific objects, including outside the delimitation, with the mechanism stated.
Weak: Connections are listed rather than traced, or stay inside one core.
Evidence and sources20 %
Strong: Every entry is traceable; the company’s claims are kept distinct from its observed behaviour; unknowns are left unknown.
Weak: Claims from the annual report are treated as findings; unknowns are filled in to make the map look complete.
Use of established models15 %
Strong: Each model is placed at its address and used again in the analysis; its limits are stated.
Weak: Models are introduced and not used, or presented as competing with the framework.
Action lines and stated limits15 %
Strong: Each action has an address, one owner role, one measure and a stop condition; the report says what public sources cannot show.
Weak: Recommendations are general, unmeasured, or presented with more certainty than the evidence allows.

Expect many honest unknowns. Public sources rarely show decision rights, culture or the real state of internal systems, and a map that admits this is stronger than one that does not. A student who argues that an object belongs in a different core for their company, and says why, should be credited for it.

Citation

How to cite it

The forms to use, in APA, Harvard and BibTeX, are on the citation page, and it is worth sending students there rather than copying them into a handout, since they carry the framework’s version. The framework as a whole, in APA:

Baggesen, A. (2026). The Omnigoal: A holistic framework for business strategy (Version 1.0). https://theomnigoal.com

Where a student refers to a particular object or module, the citation page asks for its address and URL as well — for example:

Baggesen, A. (2026). Market timing [Time Core · Market Timing]. In The Omnigoal (Version 1.0). https://theomnigoal.com/what/time-core/market-timing

Licence

The licence, in plain words

The written model and its diagrams are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. You may use them, teach them, adapt them and share them — in slides, handouts, course readers and commercial courses alike — without asking.

In return: name The Omnigoal and Andreas Baggesen, link to the licence, and say if you changed anything. Renaming a core or leaving one out for your course is fine; say that you did.

The licence covers the model, not the website: its photography, design and code are not included, and the established models placed in the framework belong to their originators and should be cited from their own sources. The terms page sets this out in full.

For the classroom

Printable material

Designed to be printed and written on. All of it falls under the same licence.

The canvas

All eight cores on one sheet — for a first mapping exercise or a workshop wall.

One canvas per core

A sheet for each core with its objects, for the sessions that go deeper into one.

The check

The eight questions as a short self-assessment. Useful at the start of a case, and again at the end to see which answers moved.

Corrections and suggestions

If something does not hold in your classroom

Errors, objects that seem to be in the wrong place, a session that did not work, a case your students built that others could use — all of it is welcome through the contribute page. Reports of where the framework failed in teaching are as useful as reports of where it worked, and usually more so.