Welcome to the 41st edition of The Pulse, your bi-weekly newsletter of Insights for Strategy Leaders. And welcome to all of the new subscribers since the last edition!
In this edition:
- 🌐 How to Align KPIs with Strategy to Cut Through the Noise
- 📆 4/17 Save the Date: Aligning Project Management with Strategic Goals
- 🍿 Why Your Strategy Must Connect to Your Operating Plan (video)
- 🎓 Strategic Planning for Higher Education
Read Time: 5 Minutes
Let's jump in.
One of the most common mistakes we see from organizations looking to gain better alignment around their Strategic Plan or provide visibility to their Leadership team on plan performance is the urge to resort to KPI Dashboards. 🔢
Whether those dashboards exist in a BI tool or a manual solution like Excel or Sheets, Strategy and Operations Leaders often struggle to incorporate those KPIs into their operating rhythm and team meetings.
And when those KPIs aren’t leveraged to drive more proactive conversations, it can be frustrating. And I can understand why.
Between the countless hours setting up the integrations to bring together data, and the resources required to help visualize it meaningfully, it’s no small lift. And while those dashboards hold valuable insights, their impact is often drowned in an ocean of data. 🌊
Rarely do Strategy and Operations Leaders tell us, “We need more data.”
In reality, most companies have far too many KPIs, dashboards, spreadsheets, and disparate tools, leading to a mind-numbing amount of data. 😵 What starts as a worthwhile initiative aimed at highlighting the key performance indicators of your organization, slowly morphs into a fool’s errand trying to capture every possible KPI Leadership might want to visualize.
And because of the journey of building the perfect dashboard, leaders lose trust, become disengaged, and resort back to their prior methods of trying to bring together objective data with subjective context.
Yet, when done right, bringing visibility and ensuring that your team is looking at the right KPIs, will ensure teams can proactively intervene, adjust, and accelerate towards hitting the goals you set out to achieve in your Strategic Plan.
Which is why I wanted to share four ways to align KPIs with Strategy and cut through the noise.
1. Prioritize Three to Five Operating Outcomes
A well-structured Operating Plan and Strategy is typically guided by three to five key metrics that define success for the year. At Elate, we call these as the Operating Outcomes.
Think of them as indicators of business health—metrics that matter to your Board and Leadership Team and should be reviewed regularly. We take it a step further at Elate by communicating our Operating Outcomes to the entire organization every week.
Why?
Because we believe that when employees understand what drives company-wide success, they can prioritize their work accordingly.
Whether or not you choose to display and communicate your 3-5 Operating Outcomes to the entire organization, alignment among Leadership is non-negotiable. Additionally, these metrics should be directly impacted by Leadership-owned Objectives (more on that next).
Ultimately, these are the outcomes that we are engineering our Strategic Plan to hit and exceed. Plain and simple.
Too many organizations overload dashboards with 10, 15, or more "mission-critical" metrics. While all have value, they often create noise. 🔊
We aren’t suggesting eliminating all of your metrics except three Operating Outcomes. However, it’s important to understand that these outcomes will dictate where your Leadership team spends their time, attention, and efforts.
Often when it comes to setting Objectives, we hear the phrase, “If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.” The same applies to KPIs.
Ruthlessly set your Operating Outcomes and allow those to drive your focus before anything else.
2. Connect Outcomes to Objectives
To shift your Strategic Plan from a laundry list of transactional tasks to driving more purposeful work across your organization, it starts by setting Objectives with clear, measurable Outcomes.
While this is a cultural shift for many organizations, it is worth investing in if you want a more proactive approach to reporting that cuts through the KPI noise.
So how does this play out in practice?
In practice, setting Objectives with clear Outcomes helps identify the metrics that matter to success. Each Objective should directly or indirectly contribute to a company-wide Operating Outcome. For those that are indirect, the outcome should be a leading indicator of one of the main Operating Outcomes.
This starts to create a hierarchy that can be easily visualized: Company-Level Operating Outcomes → Department/Team Outcomes → Individual Outcomes tied to Objectives.
When we draw this clear line of discernment between Outcomes, we naturally cut through KPI clutter and focus on the leading and lagging indicators that truly impact strategic success.
3. Don't Let Perfect be the Enemy of Progress
“We aren’t in a good place with our data” - Every leader, at every company.
If I had a dime for every time I heard that, I’d be a wealthy man. 💸
Yet, this mindset often holds organizations back from aligning their Strategic Plan and KPIs.
Other common concerns we hear:
- “Most of our data is tracked manually, so it’s out of date.”
- “We struggle to find a single source of truth.”
- My personal favorite - “Our leaders don’t trust our data.”
Again, I completely understand the above sentiment. I’ve been there and felt that pain. But these concerns arise when companies try to boil the ocean and try to track every possible KPI, rather than focusing on what truly matters. It is the classic example of 'perfection is the enemy of progress’.
Just start with the non-negotiables–your three to five Operating Outcomes at a Leadership level. Then connect Department and Team Outcomes to those. The business needs direct visibility into the metrics driving your Strategic Plan.
Rather than tracking everything, align on the select few that matter most. The same goes for integrations.
While there might be a lot of data living across dozens of different tools, that doesn’t mean we need to focus on every integration.
If the most critical data you need to proactively monitor the health of your plan lives in Salesforce, then start there. It might mean that some other data is tracked in a Google Sheet or Excel file–and that’s okay.
Too many Leadership teams operate blindly and delay progress waiting for perfect integrations.
Don’t fall into that trap.
4. Share Proactively and Engage Intentionally
Finally, don’t assume people will seek out KPI insights—especially if this is a new muscle your organization is building.
Instead, meet them where they already work, and be proactive.
For example, if your Leadership Team meets on Wednesdays, share the Leadership Report a day or two in advance. This allows everyone to come prepared with a baseline understanding of critical KPIs tied to the Strategic Plan.
Then, use the meeting to remove hurdles and identify opportunities—not to review every single metric. Highlight notable changes, discuss concerns, and allow that to drive the conversation as you shift into reviewing your organization's Leadership Objectives.
While we’re already three months into 2025, now is the perfect time to revisit your Leadership Meeting structure if visibility or transparency into your organization’s Strategic Plan is lacking. And if I can help, just respond to me here. Happy to set up some time.
📆 Save the Date: Aligning Project Management with Strategic Goals on Thursday, April 17th
While we've yet to "formally" announce this yet, why not share it with our Pulse community first?
Organizations often blur the lines between project management and strategic planning. While both are crucial, they serve different purposes—and confusing them can lead to a cluttered, siloed approach that lacks true business impact.
So on April 17th, our team is doing a live session on how to bring them together in a way that drives meaningful outcomes across the business. We'll also be showcasing our latest integrations feature that seamlessly connects project management to strategy.
More on this to come, but registration is below if interested.
🍿 Why Your Strategy Must Connect to Your Operating Plan
Staying on the topic of Operating Outcomes here.
It’s easy to overlook, but your Operating Plan—whether it’s in the form of a proforma or a spreadsheet—isn’t just for finance or the board. It’s the foundation that shapes your entire strategy. When the two aren’t aligned, your organization can struggle to hit key metrics, as those are what the executive team is held responsible for.
🎓 Strategic Planning for Higher Education
With a July fiscal year, many colleges and universities are currently refining their 3-5 year strategic plans—and we’re working closely with them throughout the process.
If you’re a Strategy and Operations Leader in higher education and want to connect on strategic planning at your institution, feel free to reach out. My door is always open.
Also, if you’re curious how higher ed institutions are leveraging Elate, check out the link below:
Why Universities Use Elate to Align Vision with Execution
