Every year, leaders and their teams launch dazzling presentations with their business goals in the hopes they will finally achieve them this year.
But how many of them will hit their targets by the end of the year? How many of them are actually still on track by the end of the first quarter?
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Sounds familiar? 👀
Setting goals is only half the battle—tracking and adapting them is equally essential to ensure consistent growth and performance.
But to get results, you can’t fall into the cycle of playing catch-up, juggling multiple spreadsheets, and jumping between disconnected project management tools.
You need a structured, strategic approach to the goal-setting process and tracking if you want to make the most of the new year.
That’s where our business goals templates come in!
In this article, you’ll get our 15 most popular and best goal-setting templates to help you keep your teams on track and achieve your business objectives.
- Simple Strategy Template To Set And Track Team Goals
- Company Strategy Template For Company Goals
- 2023 Strategy Template To Simplify Your Goal-Setting Process
- Operational Plan Template For Your Operational Goals
- Balanced Scorecard Template To Set And Track Strategic Business Goals
- Digital Transformation Strategy Template For Digital Transformation Goals
- Project Strategy Template To Track Project Goals and Objectives
- New Employee Onboarding Strategy Template To Set And Track Goals
- Costco Strategy Template To Inspire Your Business Goals
- OKR Template (Excel Version) To Stay On Track
- KPI Reporting Template (Excel Version) To Set And Track KPIs
- SMART Goals Template To Implement SMART Goals At Your Organization
- SMART Goals Worksheet Template
- Business Strategy Roadmap Template To Progress Toward Your Goals
- 90 Days Action Plan Template To Deliver Your Quarterly Goals
✨ This collection includes a variety of free goal-setting and tracking templates that will help you define your most important business objectives and measure progress toward achieving them. These free templates are pre-filled with examples and fully customizable to fit your specific needs.
1. Simple Strategy Template To Set And Track Team Goals
This Simple Strategy Template is built to give you a clear and concise action plan that focuses on achieving specific goals without getting bogged down by unnecessary complexities.
This template will guide you through the key elements of effective goal-setting and help you:
- Set strategic goals and monitor progress.
- Ensure your team members understand their roles and responsibilities.
- Get your team on the same page about the company’s strategic direction.
- Focus your team's efforts and resources on what matters to keep the needle moving.
Try it out and set your quarterly or monthly goals. You’ll get a clear structure and guidance for goal-setting and help your teams track progress through key performance indicators (KPIs).
💡Best for: Teams of all sizes and industries that want a no-frills goal-setting and tracking template.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Simple Strategy Template (Cascade version).
2. Company Strategy Template To Track Company Goals
Need a tool that will help you set and track your company’s strategic goals? Try our free Company Strategy Template.
This template is a comprehensive guide for planning your business's overall growth and strategy. It comes prefilled with Focus Areas, Objectives, Projects, and KPIs to get your strategic juices flowing.
You’ll be able to track your whole company’s annual, quarterly, monthly, and daily goals while having real-time insights into the business performance.
💡Best for: Business leaders and strategy teams in enterprise and medium-sized businesses that want to implement a more structured approach to business goal-setting and management.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Company Strategy Template.
3. 2023 Strategy Template With Examples To Simplify Your Goal-Setting Process
The 2023 Strategy Template is pre-filled with examples that can help you in your goal-setting process for 2023. It’s built on a tested and proven framework used by more than 45,000 Cascade users. And it’s free!
You’ll get immediate access to:
- 4x Focus Areas
- 12x Objectives
- 23x Projects
- 24x KPIs
Check it out and customize it to align with your strategic priorities for the year, making sure you stay on track with your annual goals.
💡Best for: Business leaders, team managers, and team members who want to plan and achieve their business goals in 2023.
👉 Click here to get your FREE 2023 Strategy Template.
4. Operational Plan Template To Manage Operational Goals
Managing staff, delegating short-term goals, and aligning day-to-day tasks with your long-term goals is quite the juggling act.
If you want to start setting and tracking operational goals outside of ineffective spreadsheets, try out our Operational Plan Template. Use it to develop engaging operational goals that are strategically aligned, adaptive, and data-driven.
You’ll get immediate access to powerful features, including real-time dashboards and basic integrations that will help streamline collaboration and measure performance.
💡Best for: If you’re a COO or operations manager, use this template to close the gap between goal planning and execution and help your team drive operational excellence.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Operational Plan Template.
5. Balanced Scorecard Template To Set And Track Strategic Business Goals
Our Balanced Scorecard Template is a quick and easy way to use the Balanced Scorecard framework in your business.
Use this template to set goals and track progress from all four perspectives based on the Balanced Scorecard methodology: financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth.
💡Best for: Any team or organization that is already familiar with or wants to use a Balanced Scorecard to improve their performance and hit business goals faster.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Balanced Scorecard Template.
6. Digital Transformation Strategy Template To Deliver Digital Transformation Goals
Setting goals and tracking progress for digital transformation initiatives can be complex and result in way too many failed strategies. Transformation leaders and their teams have to deal with long timeframes, unclear visions, and resistance to change.
Try our Digital Transformation Strategy Template to streamline your planning and avoid common goal-setting pitfalls. With it, you’ll be able to:
- Create clear digital transformation goals
- Define the focus areas of your transformation strategy
- Quickly set objectives and KPIs to keep track of progress
- Plan projects and track specific initiatives to be achieved on specific due dates
- Track overall transformation strategy performance and impact on business outcomes
💡Best for: Transformation teams and CEOs who want to set and track digital transformation goals that follow best-in-class strategic practices.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Digital Transformation Strategy Template.
7. Project Strategy Template To Track Project Goals And Objectives
A project strategy outlines project goals, action steps, and resources required to complete projects successfully and on time.
Our Project Strategy Template is ideal for planning projects, creating SMART goals, monitoring project roadmaps, and enhancing your existing project strategy. Use it to define project workflows and objectives, track KPIs, monitor project costs, and measure performance.
Like all templates, you’ll also get instant access to the Dashboard feature. You’ll be able to create custom, live dashboards to monitor key project KPIs.
💡Best for: For PMOs, project or portfolio managers who need to track and report on project progress.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Project Strategy Template.
8. New Employee Onboarding Strategy Template To Set And Track SMART Onboarding Goals
Create or enhance your HR goal-setting processes with our New Employee Onboarding Strategy Template. It comes pre-filled with goals and KPIs to kickstart your onboarding planning for new employees.
Use it to plan and improve:
- Onboarding processes
- Transitions to different roles
- Motivation and engagement for new hires
💡Best for: HR professionals, managers, or anyone overseeing onboarding and training initiatives.
👉 Click here to get your FREE New Employee Onboarding Strategy Template
9. Costco Strategy Template To Inspire Your Business Goals
If your focus is growth in 2023, get goal-setting inspiration from the strategies that made Costco a leading global retailer.
Our Costco Strategy Template can help guide your successful business strategy based on Costco’s approach to goal planning. Jumpstart your goal-setting process with insights and tips from their winning strategy.
💡Best for: Business owners and CEOs that want to learn from Costco’s growth strategy and apply these insights.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Costco Strategy Template
10. OKR Template (Excel version) To Stay On Course With OKRs
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal setting worksheet for setting clear, measurable, and achievable goals and tracking progress.
If you’re thinking of implementing OKRs, use our OKR Excel template to help you plan, track, and execute OKRs. The template comes pre-filled with OKR examples to help guide you, but it's fully customizable to match your specific needs.
Pros
- Owner, Progress, and Status columns.
- Set and track OKRs at the company/organizational, team, or individual level.
- Done-for-you OKR template so you don’t have to start OKR planning from scratch.
Cons
- Doesn’t support real-time collaboration.
- Finding the right or latest version of your spreadsheet, later on, can be a nightmare.
- Teams might find it challenging to track and monitor progress using a spreadsheet.
💡Best for: Individuals or smaller teams that use the OKR framework to set goals and are comfortable goal planning worksheets or spreadsheets.
👉 Click here to get your FREE OKR Excel Template.
💡Need some inspiration? Check out OKR examples in our article “16 OKR Examples, Good vs. Bad (With Tips and Best Practices)”
11. KPI Reporting Template (Excel Version) To Set And Track KPI Targets
Our KPI Reporting Template is another goal setting worksheet option if you want a simple goal tracker to monitor company, project, or individual progress using KPIs. It includes two types of KPI dashboards so you can keep track of performance.
Pros
- Communicating detailed data on a specific topic.
- Presenting high-level data about teams, projects, and SBUs.
- Creating professional KPI reports for important stakeholders or presentations.
Cons
- It’s based on an Excel format.
- It doesn’t support automation that could help you provide faster and more accurate progress reports.
- It doesn’t have drill-down capabilities that would allow you to do an in-depth analysis of underperforming areas. (But Cascade templates are loaded with features that enable you all of this and more. 👀)
💡Best for: Team leaders that need to monitor KPIs and report on progress toward business goals.
👉 Click here to get your FREE KPI Reporting Template
💡Need some inspiration? Check out KPI examples in our article “84 Key Performance Indicators (KPI) Examples (Tips + FREE templates)”
12. SMART Goals Template To Implement SMART Goals At Your Organization
Are you looking to implement the SMART goal-setting methodology at your company but don't know where to start?
Our SMART Goals Template is the answer to your problem. With a step-by-step process and progress tracking, it makes the implementation of the SMART goals method easy and seamless.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re setting annual, quarterly, or weekly goals, SMART goals offer a universal methodology that can help you create more efficient goals.
💡Best for: Team leaders who want to empower their teams to create SMART goals and work more efficiently.
👉 Click here to get your free SMART Goal-setting Template.
13. SMART Goals Worksheet Template
Not sure how to write a SMART goal? Here’s a basic PowerPoint SMART goal planner template that will serve as a guide for writing smart goals. It doesn’t matter whether you create business or personal goals, SMART goals help you work smarter. ;)
👉Download the SMART Goals Template here.
14. Business Strategy Roadmap Template To Ensure Progress Toward Your Goals
A well-defined business strategy roadmap is crucial for achieving your goals and objectives effectively and efficiently. Our Business Strategy Roadmap Template provides a robust framework to outline your action plans, break down your business objectives into manageable milestones, and closely monitor progress to keep your organization on the path to success.
You can easily change the template view, and your objectives and actions will be displayed in a roadmap/Gantt chart style like the one below.
Empower yourself and your team members with this dynamic tool, enabling you to define clear workflows, establish precise objectives, track essential key performance indicators (KPIs), manage project costs, and measure overall performance. Our interactive Dashboards grant you real-time visibility into your strategy's progress, giving you instant insights to make data-driven decisions and respond promptly to any deviations from your strategic objectives.
💡Best for: Business executives, strategy managers, and project leaders seeking to proactively track, analyze, and report on business progress.
👉 Click here to get your free Business Strategy Roadmap Template.
15. 90 Days Action Plan Template To Effectively Deliver Your Quarterly Goals
A well-structured 90 Days Action Plan is essential for effectively delivering your quarterly goals. This goal setting template is designed to empower you and your team to strategize, prioritize, and execute initiatives and projects with precision, ensuring successful outcomes in the short term.
With our 90 Days Action Plan Template, you can break down your quarterly goals into actionable steps, assign responsibilities, and set clear deadlines. This will enable your team to focus on key priorities, keep your team aligned and motivated, and stay on track throughout the quarter.
Use this template to:
- Monitor progress regularly with real-time updates
- Identify potential bottlenecks and quickly adapt your plan
- Make timely adjustments to ensure you meet your objectives on time
- Streamline communication, align efforts, and enhance collaboration within your team
- Foster a more efficient and goal-oriented work environment
💡Best for: Team leaders, project managers, and individuals responsible for driving success within a 90-day timeframe.
👉 Click here to get your free 90 Days Action Plan Template.
Cascade Goal-Setting Template Vs. Spreadsheets: Which One Should You Choose? 👀
Nothing is more frustrating than a goal-setting worksheet, template, or tool that promises a lot but doesn’t deliver.
Here are some things to look out for when choosing the right goal-setting template:
- Tracking & fast adaptability: Use a template that allows you to adjust and adapt as needed rather than one that is rigid or inflexible. Plans will change, and a good template must help you adapt goals as fast as possible while keeping everyone aligned.
Cascade: ✅
Spreadsheets: ❌
- Visibility: A good template should provide visibility on the key metrics, the progress of goals, and actions to achieve them. Access to real-time dashboards provides a high-level overview of progress, allowing users to see how close they are to their goals.
Cascade: ✅
Spreadsheets: ❌
- Keeping your team members accountable: A good template should help leaders keep goal owners accountable for progress. This may involve setting deadlines, assigning responsibilities, and setting up a system for regular check-ins or progress reports.
Cascade: ✅
Spreadsheets: ❌
- Using a goal hierarchy: A goal-setting template isn’t just a stylish to-do list or goal sheet. It should help you break down your company goals into individual goals or milestones and provide a logical order from vision to action steps to help teams stay focused and aligned.
Cascade: ✅
Spreadsheets: ❌
- Linking goals with business performance: What’s more distressing than realizing that your team is working on everything else but not on what really matters to support the business? You need to give your team context and empower them with information to make decisions aligned with business goals.
Cascade: ✅
Spreadsheets: ❌
What’s your verdict? The winner seems pretty obvious to us.
Ready to hit more goals this year and wow your management board?
Set And Track Goals With Cascade 🚀
If you want to get the most out of strategic goal setting and tracking, consider using goal management software like Cascade.
You can get by with siloed spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and Word docs. But they don’t offer goal-setting tools and tracking features to take your strategy execution and business performance management to the next level.
Why switch from trusty old Excel spreadsheets to goal management tools like Cascade?
- With Cascade, you can collaborate with team members, share updates and progress, and adapt your goals as needed.
- You get powerful features like automated reporting, interactive visualizations, and app integrations, making it easier to stay organized and on track.
- With the alignment map feature you can easily visualize how your different objectives and plans contribute to your company goals.
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- Static tools like spreadsheets and word documents are inefficient and don’t scale well.
- Spreadsheets require more manual effort for ongoing goal planning and consistent goal tracking.
As a Cascade user, you'll work smarter, not harder. Check out our template library to find more free goal-setting and strategic planning templates. This will help you streamline performance management and deliver better business outcomes.
Ready to take Cascade for a spin? Sign up today for a forever free account or book a guided 1:1 tour with one of our Cascade in-house strategy execution experts.
FAQs
What is goal-setting?
Goal-setting is the process of defining specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives or targets that an individual, team, or organization aims to accomplish. It is a proactive approach that involves identifying desired outcomes and creating a roadmap to achieve them.
How do you set a SMART goal?
Set up a SMART goal by following the simple criteria of the acronym: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
What are the 7 steps of goal setting?
The 7 steps of goal setting include: (1) Formulate your strategy; (2) Communicate strategy with your team members; (3) Pick your goal-setting framework; (4) Create a feedback loop; (5) Make tracking progress a habit; (6) Reward success; and (7) Evaluate and refine. You can read more about it in this guide on how to set team goals.
Which goal-setting framework should I choose?
First, research different goal-setting frameworks, such as OKRs, SMART goals, and KPIs, and evaluate which aligns best with your company’s and team’s needs. Don't forget to factor in ease of use, scalability, and the ability to track progress and make adjustments as necessary when choosing a goal-setting framework for your team.
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