Strategic Goals
Strategic Goals represent your organization's highest-level ambitions. They provide the north star that all company, team, and personal OKRs should ladder up to.
What Are Strategic Goals?
While OKR objectives focus on what you want to achieve in a specific quarter, Strategic Goals define where the organization is headed over a longer time horizon — typically an annual or multi-year plan. They answer the question: "What must be true in 1-3 years for our organization to succeed?"
- Long-term direction (annual or multi-year)
- Broad and aspirational — set by leadership
- Progress aggregated from linked objectives
- Example: "Become the market leader in mid-market SaaS OKR tools"
- Short-term outcomes (quarterly, typically)
- Specific and actionable — owned by individuals or teams
- Progress measured by key results
- Example: "Increase Q2 NPS score from 40 to 55"
Think of Strategic Goals as the top of your alignment pyramid. Company objectives align to strategic goals, team objectives align to company objectives, and personal objectives align to team objectives.
Strategic Goal Fields
| Field | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| Title | A concise statement of the strategic direction. Should be inspiring yet specific enough to guide decisions. | Yes |
| Description | Expanded context explaining why this goal matters, what success looks like at a high level, and any relevant background. | Optional |
| Status | Draft, Active, Completed, On Hold, or Cancelled. Same lifecycle as objectives. | Yes |
| Priority | A ranking from 1 (highest) to 5 (lowest). Helps leadership communicate relative importance when goals compete for resources. | Yes |
| Target Date | The deadline by which this goal should be achieved. Typically end-of-year or end-of-fiscal-year. | Yes |
| Progress | Automatically calculated from linked objectives. Displayed as a percentage and a visual progress bar. | Auto |
Creating Strategic Goals
Only Company Admins can create and manage Strategic Goals. This ensures that organizational direction is set by leadership and remains consistent.
- 1
Navigate to Strategic Goals
In the sidebar, click Strategic Goals under the Planning section.
- 2
Click "+ New Strategic Goal"
The creation form opens in a modal or a dedicated page.
- 3
Enter the goal details
Fill in the title, description, priority (1-5), status, and target date.
- 4
Save
The goal is created and visible to the entire organization. You can now link objectives to it.
Tip: Most organizations define 3-7 strategic goals per year. Fewer goals create more focus and make it easier for teams to understand priorities.
Linking Objectives to Strategic Goals
The real power of Strategic Goals comes from connecting them to your quarterly OKRs. There are two ways to create this link:
From the Objective
When creating or editing any objective, use the Strategic Goal dropdown to select the goal this objective supports. This is the most common approach.
From the Strategic Goal
Open a Strategic Goal's detail page and click Link Objective. Search for and select existing company-level objectives to attach.
Once linked, the objective appears under the strategic goal's detail view and its progress contributes to the goal's aggregated progress bar.
Viewing Strategic Goals
The Strategic Goals page provides a high-level dashboard of all goals. Each card shows:
- Title and truncated description
- Priority badge (color-coded 1-5)
- Status badge
- Progress bar aggregated from linked objectives
- Target date with a countdown indicator
- Linked objectives count
Click on any goal to open its detail view, which includes the full description, a list of all linked objectives with their individual progress, and an activity log.
You can filter the goals list by Status, Priority, and Target Date range.
Progress Tracking
Strategic Goal progress is fully automatic. Leemu calculates it by aggregating the weighted progress of all linked objectives:
Example
Strategic Goal "Expand into European markets" has three linked objectives: (1) Launch German localization (weight 40%, progress 75%), (2) Hire EMEA sales team (weight 35%, progress 50%), (3) Achieve SOC 2 compliance (weight 25%, progress 100%). The strategic goal's overall progress is: (40% x 75%) + (35% x 50%) + (25% x 100%) = 30% + 17.5% + 25% = 72.5%.
Best Practices for Strategic Planning
- Limit to 3-7 strategic goals per year to maintain focus.
- Review strategic goals quarterly and adjust priorities as conditions change.
- Ensure every company-level OKR maps to at least one strategic goal.
- Communicate goals broadly so every team member understands the direction.
- Use the priority field to signal which goals take precedence when resources are constrained.
- Set realistic target dates based on actual planning cycles.
- Create too many goals — if everything is strategic, nothing is.
- Set and forget — review progress at least quarterly.
- Make goals so vague that teams cannot determine which OKRs support them.
- Let goals stagnate in Draft status — finalize and communicate promptly.
- Skip the description field — context is essential for alignment.
- Assign the same priority to every goal — forced ranking creates clarity.
Example Strategic Goals
Below are examples across different organizational themes to help you get started:
Achieve $10M ARR by end of fiscal year
Drive revenue through new customer acquisition, upsells, and reduced churn to hit the $10M annual recurring revenue milestone.
Become the top-rated OKR platform on G2
Invest in product quality, user experience, and customer success to earn the highest satisfaction scores in the OKR category.
Expand into 3 new European markets
Localize the product, establish sales presence, and achieve regulatory compliance in Germany, France, and the UK.
Build a world-class engineering culture
Hire 15 senior engineers, reduce voluntary attrition below 8%, and establish a public engineering blog with monthly content.
Achieve SOC 2 Type II and GDPR certification
Complete all security audits, implement required controls, and obtain formal certifications to unlock enterprise sales.
Strategic planning cadence
Define or refresh strategic goals at the beginning of each fiscal year. Review them at the start of each quarter during OKR planning sessions. Adjust priorities and target dates as market conditions evolve, but avoid adding new goals mid-year unless circumstances fundamentally change.