At the heart of strategic planning is the process of creating the strategic objectives that you want to accomplish and also that serve as the guiding lights for the organization for some significant period of time. These objectives are significant for so many reasons. They should be easy to understand and engage your organization. They should serve to rally the organization around a common direction that points to “what can be possible.” They should be big objectives and not just tactical changes. They should inject new energy and a new flavor of personality into the organization. Is that a tall order? Sure, but here are some common mistakes you can avoid so that your strategic objectives can live up to what I am describing above.

Mistake #1 – Too Many Objectives
The most common mistake is simply defining too many strategic objectives. As we all know, “change” is difficult for any one group or organization (even for an individual), even a change that is perceived as for the better. If you overwhelm the organization with too many changes at the same time, you run the risk of diluting our effort and you are likely missing an opportunity to really engage the organization around a few, simple, repeated, wholly supported strategic objectives.

Why do some end up with too many? The biggest culprit is a hesitancy to truly weigh the real return on investment for each and to focus on those that give the greatest return first. Those involved in the process all have their own special interest or pet issues and the job of the entire group is to bubble up the most significant strategic objectives that take the organization forward in leaps and bounds.

Mistake #2 – Including Strategic Objectives that are Tactical
Tactical issues are important, but really fall into the category of “continuous improvement” vs. the category that includes strategic objectives. During the planning process, be sure to weed out the tactical onto a separate list. You can make plans to deal with tactical issues. You can do that separately, or perhaps some you can include in the overall implementation of a strategic objective (if solving this tactical problem will move that strategic objective forward), but the tactical issues themselves should not be considered as one of your big strategic objectives.

Mistake #3 – Wrong Timing
This mistake is one that is more subtle. There are some strategic objectives that may need to wait in terms of timing, either for the sake of not having too many, because significant tactical changes need to occur first, or because this objective needs to occur in the future after other strategic objectives are first accomplished that move the organization forward more significantly.

Mistake #4 – Failing to Innovate at All
Believe it or not, some organizations fail to create effective strategic objectives because they just continue to reuse and refine the last ones! They fail to innovate at all and just continue to try and be better at what they are doing with blinders on to the changing world around them. An organization that diligently creates a new strategic plan every year may fall into this habit. Strategic Plans should only be created and communicated when the organization is truly shifting and changing in new ways. Otherwise, you are just working on continuous improvement (tactical) goals. This is certainly fine during the process of executing a strategic plan, but you should be careful not to just crank out a strategic plan that bring no new innovation to the organization.

Mistake #5 – Non-Engaging
The last mistake is perhaps one related to “how” you present your strategic objectives more than the actual strategic objective itself. When you are investing the effort to create a strategic plan, it is logical to believe that you expect your organization to “get behind” the plan. Right? To accomplish this, you need to be able to clearly articulate a few (see above) “engaging” strategic objectives. These objectives should tug at the emotions of your organization, serve to galvanize the efforts of the organization, and the words should paint a virtual picture of the future of the organization. People need to believe that the organization will be stronger, better, safer, and more valuable to them by accomplishing the objectives presented.

Note that I did not say “more profitable” specifically. The truth is that while employees certainly recognize that being more profitable is important to the health of the organization, most of them do not view this on the top of the list at all. In fact, if the only motivation you are trying to give them is that the company will be more profitable, then you face an uphill battle.

Avoid these five mistakes and you will be on the right path for creating strategic objectives.