Creating a department goal requires that you have information of the company goal and strategy so you can meet up and contribute as much as possible to the company vision.

Companies do not always share the goal and the critical success factors of the company to the employees.

If you are in this situation this small article might be helping you on the way.

You can ask company top managers for this information or you can create a good enough picture on your own.

But how can I do this on my own, from where do I get this information?

Majority of all companies have their mission and vision on the company’s web page, this will be a good source for information.

Also, look for any internal strategy document, they will also be very good to have.

For this example, I selected a public Swedish company as an example, and picked the companies mandata and vision, your company will probably not have mandate but a vision and mission defined so use that when you give this a try on your own.

I have selected the Swedish company Svenska Spel which is not an ordinary company as it is own by the government so it is focusing on making sound gaming in Sweden and prevent illegal gaming.

From Svenska Spels home page I have copied the mandate and the vision.

Svenska Spel’s mandate (From ”Svenska spels” home page 20160801)

AB Svenska Spel is to arrange gaming and lotteries under license from the government.

AB Svenska Spel is to respond to consumer interest in terms of offering a reliable alternative to illegal gaming operations.

A broad service is to be provided both in urban and rural areas.

Social considerations are to be prioritized in the development of gaming forms and in the business as a whole.

The risk of fraud and illegal gaming is also to be observed.

Security in gaming management is to be maximized.

Regulators should be able to maintain efficient and independent control.

AB Svenska Spel must adopt a prudential approach to new games and new markets.

The Company is to maintain a responsible marketing approach that reflects social commitment and prevents it being perceived as overly assertive.

The business is to be run cost-effectively within the confines of the Company’s mandate.

State-owned gaming company with a special mandate

Svenska Spel is a gaming company that sells gaming experiences based on a special mandate.

Our market performance shall be perceived as positive and trustworthy from the perspective of customers and other stakeholders.

Mission and vision (From ”Svenska spels” home page 20160801)

Svenska Spel’s mission

We develop and offer gaming in a responsible manner so that the many people who use our products experience gaming pleasure.

Svenska Spel’s vision

Every stake is important in a country like Sweden where gaming pleasure and social welfare go hand in hand.

-> End of text from Svenska Spel

Analyse of mandate, vision and mission

The text on the webpage has a lot of information that helps us define the company’s goal, critical success factors and strategical and tactical necessary conditions.

If we make a quick analyze it is very easy to transform the text into this Goal Tree.

The text needs to be tuned a little, but by just taking the sentences we can create a rather good Goal Tree.

Goal Tree is a method within Logical Thinking Process, which is a fantastic tool for planning and changing your work, I recommend following articles to give you more deep knowledge LTP4Scrum and The “Goal” DevOps movement with Logical Thinking Process.

Let’s continue the analyze;

I have divided the text into a Goal, and what I think is the Critical Success Factors that will make the Goal possible.

Under each Critical Success Factors, I have defined the Necessary Conditions that make the Critical Success Factor possible, some of the necessary Conditions are also part of the company’s strategy.

I have added a few items that is not part of the text, but makes the tree more complete you find them under “run cost efficiently”.

I have also added in a Critical Success factor for making money now and in the future, I do not believe our government will sponsor this company, it must make money to be able to develop new games and maintain the operations on its own.

Creating your department Goal Tree

We now have a company Goal Tree, that we can relate our department to.

Ask yourself how is your department contributing to the company Goal Tree?

When you start thinking about it, you will be able to identify a relation to what you do to the Necessary Conditions and by doing so you will be able to create your own Goal, Critical Success Factors and Necessary Conditions for your department.

You will also have the needed information to formulate a vision and mission statement that engage your personnel and by doing so you will contribute to company mission and vision.

Goal Tree is readable

The logic is simple; you read the Goal Tree from top to bottom;

In order to <the goal> we must <the critical success factors> and we must <critical success factor> …

You continue reading a branch at a time in the same way;

In order to <critical success factor> we must <necessary condition> and <necessary condition> …

By just reading it out load you will make a logical validation if you have made the correct design and logical decision.

In Planning with magnifying glass! article, you get more hints on the foundation of the Goal Tree, here I defining the relation to each layer in what I call the Planning Circle, objectives, needs and how we want to fulfill the needs.

I hope this was useful for you, when you will create your strategy for the year

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