OGSM
Objectives, Goals, Strategies, Measures
OGSM, short for Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures, is a way to fit a company’s plan on one page. You write one objective in words, the goals that put numbers on it, the few strategies that will reach those goals, and the measures that show each strategy is working. Each team then writes its own page that feeds the one above.
TL;DR
- What it is
- A plan on one page: an objective in words, goals in numbers, the strategies to reach them and a measure for each. It has no known single creator and is long tied to Procter & Gamble.
- Best for
- Getting a company or a brand to agree on one plan, then having each team write a page that feeds it.
- First cycle
- About a month: one or two days for the company page, then two or three weeks for the team pages.
- You leave with
- One page everyone can read: the year’s goals, three to five strategies, and a measure and an owner for each.
- Objective: the ambition, in words
- Goals: the numbers that define success
- Strategies: the choices that get you there
- Measures: proof each choice is working
OGSM fits a whole plan on one page: a qualitative Objective, the quantified Goals that define success, the Strategies that say how you will get there, and the Measures that track each strategy. The two halves mirror each other. Goals put numbers on the objective; measures put numbers on the strategies.
Its weak point is the S. On many OGSMs the strategy column holds a list of projects, not a choice. The version worth using, the one Procter & Gamble spent years pushing its teams toward, makes the strategies say where you will compete and how you will win there13.
The original OGSM, in brief
No founding document is known. Commonly traced to post-war Japanese management; in use at Procter & Gamble by the mid-1980s and long associated with it.
OGSM has no founding article or book. Its origin story is usually told without a source. Roger Martin, a longtime adviser to Procter & Gamble, wrote in 2023 that the tool is believed to come from post-war Japanese business, and that US companies took it up much as they took up Total Quality1. He also wrote that it was already built into P&G when he began working there in the mid-1980s, and that he had no part in creating it1. A 2007 memoir by John Pepper, a former P&G chief executive, is often cited on its history2. This page could not check that passage.
The clearest first-hand account of how P&G used it comes from A.G. Lafley, its former chief executive, and Martin. At P&G, they wrote, the OGSM for a brand, a category or the whole company was where leaders had to state where they would play and how they would win34.
The name spread beyond P&G through consultants. The best-known book is by Marc van Eck, Ellen Leenhouts and Judith Tielen of the Dutch firm Business Openers, published in English as One Page Business Strategy in 20145. The common form today is one qualitative objective, a few goals that put numbers on it, three to five strategies, and measures for each strategy, often split into a dashboard of numbers and a list of actions6.
Common misreadings
- "P&G invented it in the 1950s." Many guides say so, and some add that it came from Japanese car makers. The research for this page found no primary source for either date. What can be shown is that P&G was using it by the mid-1980s1.
- "Strategies means a list of projects." This is the misreading Martin spent years fighting. On most OGSMs, he wrote, the S box holds sensible initiatives, which makes it a plan: "A Plan is not a Strategy."1 He argued the box should hold one joined-up set of choices about where to compete and how to win1.
- "The objective and the goals say the same thing." The objective is words: the direction. The goals are numbers: how you will know you got there.
- "The page is the plan." The page is a summary. The actions, owners and dates that carry out each strategy sit under it, or it stays a poster6.
The OGSM template
Objective
A qualitative statement of what you want to achieve. The aim, in words, with no numbers.
Goals
The quantified targets that define success for the objective, each with a starting point, a target and a date.
Strategies
The few choices, often three to five, about how you will reach the goals. Each should say what you will do and what you will stop.
Measures
The numbers that show each strategy is working, with the actions and owners that carry it out listed underneath.
OGSM examples
A 40-person coffee roaster
Growing wholesale to cafes while a supermarket line eats roasting time.
A 150-person manufacturer
Late deliveries are costing it automotive customers.
A 60-person software company
Selling scheduling software to health clinics; growth has stalled.
When OGSM fits, where it struggles, and what it does not answer
Use it when
- Your leadership team agrees on the direction but has never written the plan down in one place.
- A company or a brand needs one plan that every team can read in a few minutes.
- You want each team’s plan to feed the company plan, with no loose ends between levels.
- You plan once a year and review a few numbers every month or quarter.
- Your company already speaks in goals and measures and needs a single format for them.
It struggles when
- It does not make you choose. The format accepts a list of projects in the strategy column as happily as a real choice. Martin said it took P&G about twenty years to get its OGSMs to hold real choices there1.
- It hides the thinking. One page shows the answers, not the options you turned down or why. New people see the plan but not the reasoning.
- It can harden. A yearly page can outlive the facts it was built on. Nothing in the format tells you when to rewrite a strategy rather than chase its measure.
- It can drown in numbers. When every line has a target, people can end up managing the numbers instead of the business.
What it does not answer
- Which strategy is right. It records the choice; it does not help you make it.
- What is happening outside the company: markets, competitors, customers.
- Whether your organization can carry the plan out.
- How work gets done week to week once the page is written.
Pair it with
- Playing to Win Fills the strategy column with a real choice. Its authors, Lafley and Martin, describe using it at P&G for exactly that3.
- OKR Turns a yearly OGSM into quarterly objectives and key results for each team.
- Hoshin Kanri A fuller way to cascade a plan level by level, with each level agreeing its part.
How to implement OGSM
- Write the objective. One sentence, in words, about where the company should be at the end of the period. If it has a number in it, the number belongs in the goals.
- Set the goals. Three to five numbers that would prove the objective is met. Give each a starting point, a target and a date.
- Choose the strategies. Three to five choices about how you will reach the goals: where you will compete, how you will win there, and what you will stop doing. A list of projects is not a strategy1.
- Give each strategy its measures and owner. Pick the numbers that show each strategy is working, and list the actions, owners and dates that carry it out.
- Cascade and review. Each team writes its own page, with its objective drawn from a strategy on the page above. Review the measures monthly and the strategies each quarter.
Adopting OGSM: the first cycle and the rhythm
First cycle. Plan on about a month. Spend one or two days with the leadership team on the company page: the objective, the goals, the strategies and their measures. Then give each team two or three weeks to write its own page, with its objective drawn from a strategy on the page above.
Rhythm. A cycle usually runs for a year, in step with the annual plan6. Review the measures every month and the strategies every quarter. Rewrite a strategy when the facts behind it change, not only when its number slips.
How long until it runs itself. Filling in the page is easy from the first year. Making the strategy column hold real choices is the slow part. At P&G, by Martin’s account, it took about twenty years of steady effort from its leaders1. Expect two or three annual cycles before teams write good pages without help.
What derails it. Strategies that are really projects. Goals with no starting number. Measures that track activity, not progress. A page written at the retreat and not opened again until the next one.
How to set OGSM at your leadership retreat
The decision the session has to produce: The objective, the goals and the three to five strategies the company will commit to for the year, each with a measure and an owner.
A half-day outline
- Agree where the company must be in a year, and draft the objective (30 minutes).
- Set the goals: a starting point, a target and a date for each (40 minutes).
- Break.
- Everyone writes candidate strategies alone, then the group sorts them (30 minutes).
- Test each one: what will you stop doing because of it? Cut to three to five (45 minutes).
- Give each strategy its measures and one owner (30 minutes).
- Agree who writes the team pages underneath, and by when (15 minutes).
Ask the team beforehand
- In one sentence, where should the company be in a year that it is not today?
- Which numbers would prove it got there?
- What should the company stop doing to make room for that?
Who should be in the room
The leadership team, plus anyone who will own a strategy. Teams write their own pages afterwards, each drawn from a strategy on the company page.
Make a full retreat agenda with the free agenda maker.
Common OGSM mistakes
- Strategies that are really projects. “Launch the new website” is an action. A strategy says where you will compete and how you will win. Martin called this the tool’s central weakness1.
- Goals with no starting point. “Grow revenue to $9M” means little until the page also says where revenue is today and by when.
- Too many strategies. Ten strategies is a to-do list. Three to five forces the trade-offs that make it a plan.
- Measures that count activity. Meetings held and emails sent show effort, not progress. Measure what should change if the strategy works.
- Writing the page once. A page opened only at the next retreat is a poster. Put the measures in front of the owners every month.
Does OGSM work? The evidence
OGSM has almost no independent research behind it. A search of Crossref, the index of scholarly publications, done for this page in September 2026, found no study that compares organizations using OGSM with similar ones that do not, or follows them over time. The case for it rests on practice, above all at P&G, told by people who worked there13.
The few papers that use it do not test it. One, in the Agroindustrial Journal in 2023, surveyed 100 employees at traditional herbal medicine makers in Indonesia and used OGSM as a frame to find gaps in their plans7. Another, in Jurnal Manajemen Bisnis in 2024, interviewed the head of human resources at one bank and called the method effective for handling conflict, without a before-and-after measure8.
Two of its four parts rest on better-tested ideas. In a 2002 review in American Psychologist, Edwin Locke and Gary Latham summarized decades of studies showing that specific, hard goals lead to better performance than vague goals such as "do your best"9. That supports the G and the M. Nothing comparable tests the S, which is where Martin located the tool’s weakness1.
There is also a warning. In a 2009 paper in Academy of Management Perspectives, Lisa Ordóñez and colleagues argued that goals that are too narrow or too many can lead people to ignore what is not measured, take bigger risks and cut ethical corners10. A page with a number on every line carries that risk. Read OGSM as a sensible, widely used format, not as a proven method.
OGSM compared
| OGSM | OKR | Hoshin Kanri | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | One page: an aim, its numbers, the strategies and their measures | A few objectives, each with measurable key results | A few breakthrough objectives, cascaded down through every level |
| Horizon | Usually a year | Usually a quarter | A year, tied to a longer plan |
| Where strategy sits | Its own column: the S | Not named; implied by the objectives | In the plan each level agrees with the one above |
| Rhythm | Monthly or quarterly review of the measures | Weekly or fortnightly check-ins | Regular reviews at each level, often monthly |
After the retreat: OGSM in Throughline
What it holds. Each strategy becomes a priority with an owner, a date and a measure, and the goals it serves sit above it. Owners check in from an email in one click; a missed check-in counts as off track and their manager is told.
What it doesn’t. Throughline does not store the one-page OGSM itself or mark which line is a goal and which is a strategy, so keep the page as your reference. Whether the strategies are real choices is a judgment your team makes.
OGSM glossary
- Objective
- The ambition, in words and without numbers. Usually one per page.
- Goals
- The numbers that show the objective has been met, each with a starting point, a target and a date.
- Strategies
- The few choices about how you will reach the goals. Some teams write it as one "Strategy" to stress that the choices must fit together1.
- Measures
- The numbers that show each strategy is working. Some versions write "Measurements."
- Dashboard
- In many versions, the measures you watch, gathered in one place6.
- Actions
- The projects, owners and dates that carry out each strategy, listed under the page6.
- Cascade
- Each team writes its own OGSM whose objective comes from a strategy on the page above.
- Where to play, how to win
- P&G’s test of a real strategy: the market you choose, and why you will beat others there3.
Free tools that help
OGSM: frequently asked questions
- What is OGSM?
- A way to fit a plan on one page: one objective in words, the goals that put numbers on it, the strategies that will reach them, and the measures that track each strategy.
- What does OGSM stand for?
- Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures. Some write Measurements, and some write Strategy, singular, to stress that the choices must fit together.
- What is the difference between Objectives and Goals in OGSM?
- The Objective is qualitative: the direction. Goals are the quantified targets that make the objective measurable. One Objective usually has several Goals.
- Who created OGSM?
- No one can say for sure. It is often traced to post-war Japanese management, and it was in use at Procter & Gamble by the mid-1980s. The claim that P&G invented it in the 1950s is widely repeated but not documented.
- How many strategies should an OGSM have?
- Three to five is the common advice. More than that usually means projects have crept into the strategy column.
- How is OGSM different from OKRs?
- OGSM adds an explicit Strategies layer, the choices about how you will win, between the goals and the measures. OKRs go straight from objective to key results. Many teams set a yearly OGSM and run the quarter with OKRs.
- Why keep OGSM to one page?
- The one-page limit forces priorities. If everything fits on a page, everyone can hold the whole plan in their head.
Sources
- Roger L. Martin, "Strategy is Singular," Roger Martin on Strategy (Substack), January 9, 2023. rogerlmartin.substack.com
- John Pepper, What Really Matters: Service, Leadership, People, and Values, Yale University Press, 2007.
- A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin, "Instituting a company-wide strategic conversation at Procter & Gamble," Strategy & Leadership 41(4), 2013, pp. 4 to 9. doi.org
- A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.
- Marc van Eck, Ellen Leenhouts and Judith Tielen, One Page Business Strategy: Streamline Your Business Plan in Four Simple Steps, Pearson, 2014.
- OGSM.com, "OGSM model: what is it? A complete guide," accessed September 2026. ogsm.com
- N. C. Irawan and colleagues, "Eco-Innovation for Sustainability in Traditional Herbal (Jamu) Agroindustry: OGSM-Gap Analysis Based on Employee Perception," Agroindustrial Journal 10(2), 2023. doi.org
- S. H. Munawwarah, A. A. Tarigan and B. Dharma, "HR Management Strategy in Overcoming Conflicts Due to Differences of Opinion Between Bank Sumut Employees Using the OGSM Method," Jurnal Manajemen Bisnis 11(2), 2024, pp. 1379 to 1389. doi.org
- Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, "Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey," American Psychologist 57(9), 2002, pp. 705 to 717. doi.org
- Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky and Max H. Bazerman, "Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting," Academy of Management Perspectives 23(1), 2009, pp. 6 to 16. doi.org
OGSM has no known single creator and no owner this page could identify; it is long associated with Procter & Gamble, and Throughline is not affiliated with Procter & Gamble, OGSM.com, Business Openers or any OGSM consultancy. Written by Tom Olajide, Founder. Last reviewed September 24, 2026.