
What a strategic plan actually contains
How it differs from operational planning
The five-step plan
The strategic planning model
Preparing the project plan for the strategy work
Choosing who owns the plan
Forming and training the planning team
Running the first planning meeting
Assessing mission, vision and guiding principles honestly
Stakeholder analysis and a structure review
Scanning the external environment
Gap analysis, and making recommendations
Shaping the desired future state
Choosing participants and a facilitator
Day one: working from the starting point
Day two: working towards the target point
Defining the plan and the desired outcomes
Finalising the document
Communicating it to the organisation
Building the implementation plan
Developing performance metrics for the plan
Assigning owners and allocating resources
Executing against milestones
Training people, and sustaining the strategy afterwards
The four superpowers of the method
Where it came from, and how it was born at Intel
The basic principles
Why it spread beyond technology companies
The planning cycle
The format that separates an objective from a key result
Synchronising goals across teams
Where the format usually goes wrong
Training the management team first
Training everyone else
Running the first goal-setting meeting
What to expect from an imperfect first cycle
The agenda for a regular goal meeting
Using one-to-ones to support delivery
Updating goals mid-cycle without losing meaning
Keeping goals visible between reviews
Debriefing on the results
Presenting outcomes to the company
Capturing lessons learned
Feeding them into the next cycle
How this works at Google and Intel
MyFitnessPal
Preply and iDeals, from the inside
What transfers between companies and what does not
Dedicated platforms
Universal systems with goal-tracking functions
What to look for before buying anything
When a spreadsheet is still the right answer
Linking goals to performance review
The relationship with 360 assessment
Whether to link goals to pay, and the consequences
Connecting goals to learning and development
The definition and core principles, from a delivery point of view
How company goals connect to what your team does on Monday
The manager's role in setting and managing them
Focusing on what is business-critical, and wording it correctly
Preparing the team for a goal-setting cycle
Running the first meeting
The "from X to Y by Z" format in practice
Selling the change with both rational and emotional arguments
The cycle: planning, monitoring, evaluation
Setting up the regular meeting that catches problems early
Adjusting objectives without abandoning them
Why leading indicators decide the outcome
Scoring delivery and setting the next set
Running the wrap-up conversation
Recognising achievement and planning growth from it
Presenting the outcome upward, and feeding it back into strategy
The four types of performance indicator, and why the distinction matters
The characteristics of a metric that works
How indicators connect to strategy
The 10-80-10 rule, and knowing your critical success factors
Cases from companies that did this properly
The four stages of building the system
Running a two-day workshop on success factors
Impact mapping to find the factors with the most leverage
The three laws of productivity
The emotional factors that decide whether people accept a metric
Preparing the short version and the full proposal
The eight steps of the promotion process
The common measurement traps
Deciding what genuinely needs measuring
Formulating the metric precisely
Eliminating metrics that cost more than they return
Deriving indicators rather than inventing them
Calculating them
Working through several success factors in practice
Improving reporting using Stephen Few's principles
Best practice in graphical display
Getting more out of software you already own
The reporting hierarchy for staff, managers and executives
The seven fundamental building blocks
Agile methods that raise the chance of success
The specific next steps for the coming five weeks
That tying indicators to pay raises productivity
That more indicators lead to better performance
That every indicator is a KPI, and that monthly tracking improves anything
Why linking measurement to reward is the most expensive myth of all
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
Ask three people what your company's top priority is this quarter. If you get three answers, the strategy is not being executed. It is being stored.
Where the chain breaks
Between a strategy and a result there are five links, and it almost always snaps at the third. The plan exists. Objectives get written. Then nobody owns a specific number by a specific date, the metrics measure activity because activity is easier to count, and the review conversation becomes a form somebody fills in the night before. I have run quarters exactly like that. Everything was green and nothing had moved, and it took me too long to notice that the green was measuring effort.
What this course actually covers
Six blocks, one per link in the chain. First, producing the strategy: preparing and running the session, and leaving with an implementation plan rather than photographs of a whiteboard. Second, cascading it with OKR across the company: training managers, the first goal-setting meeting, the quarterly rhythm, closing the cycle, tooling, and connecting goals to review and reward. Third, the same cycle from a team manager's chair, for the people who receive objectives rather than design them. Fourth, measurement: critical success factors, designing indicators, displaying them, and the six myths that break most systems. Fifth, the individual level — the performance agreement, feedback, evaluating results and competencies, the review conversation, and the decisions that follow it. Sixth, change management, because executing a strategy nearly always means somebody has to work differently.
A note on the fifth block
Those eight lessons are recorded in the language of managing people: role profiles, review cycles, talent pools, promotion and dismissal decisions. That is deliberate. Execution eventually arrives at one person and one conversation, and this is where the plan either becomes their work or does not.
Who is teaching this
I am Mike Pritula. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, running quarterly goal cycles through fast growth, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.
What is included
Lifetime access to all 40 lessons
Active instructor support in the Q&A section
A Udemy Certificate of Completion
Working material: the session agenda, the quarterly cycle, the "from X to Y by Z" format, impact mapping, review templates, Kotter's eight steps
Real cases from Google, Intel, Preply and iDeals
Where to start
Open the objectives your team agreed at the start of this quarter and find the one with a named owner and a date. If there isn't one, you have found the broken link before lesson one. Enrol now and start today.