Why a book as well
Every guide on this site is free, and deliberately so. What is OGSM? covers the four building blocks, how to write an OGSM walks through the four steps, and the rhythm explains the reviews that keep a plan alive. You can build a working plan from those pages without buying anything.
So why a book.
Because a web page is read in five minutes and a method takes longer to land. A page can tell you that a strategy is a choice, and that most plans fail because nobody chose. It has a harder time walking you through the argument a management team actually has when two of the five strategies have to go, and what happens in the room when they do. That is the difference: the pages tell you what to do, the book tells you why it works and what it looks like when it does not.
If you want the instructions, stay on this site. If you want the reasoning, read the book.
What is in it
Bridging Strategy and Execution is the handbook to the method: step-by-step guidance, worked examples, and the part most methods skip, which is what to do after the plan is written.
It covers building an OGSM in four steps, and managing progress with the do, learn and adjust cycle that the whole method rests on. It goes into the roles around a plan, how to strengthen the collaboration a review depends on, and how to keep several OGSMs aligned once more than one team has one. Throughout, it uses real examples rather than invented ones.
| Title | Bridging Strategy and Execution |
| Subtitle | How the OGSM one-page plan turns strategy into results |
| Authors | Remco Bakker and Bas Schulten |
| Publisher | OGSM Leaders, 2025 |
| ISBN | 9789083613307 |
| Dutch edition | OGSM in de praktijk |
Which chapter each guide draws on
The guides on this site are not summaries of the book, but they lean on it, and it is worth being explicit about where. If a page leaves you wanting more, this is where to look.
| Chapter | What it covers | The page here |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | The four building blocks and how they fit together | The OGSM template |
| 2 | What a good plan needs to contain | OGSM vs OKR |
| 2 | Where OGSM came from | OGSM vs Hoshin Kanri |
| 2 and 3 | Worked examples, filled in | Two complete examples |
| 3 | The four steps in full, with a worked example | How to write an OGSM |
| 4 | Doing, learning and adjusting | The rhythm |
| 4 | Annual plans and rolling planning | OGSM as your annual plan |
Who wrote it
Remco Bakker founded Toolsfactory in 2014 and has spent more than twenty years helping entrepreneurs and organizations build strategic plans and then execute them. He writes the OGSM guides on this site. More about Remco →
Bas Schulten is a strategist and organizational consultant, and a partner at Jester Strategy. He has refined and sharpened the OGSM method across dozens of projects, in sectors that have very little in common apart from needing a plan that survives contact with the year.
Between them, that is where the examples come from. Nothing in the book is derived from a model.
Where to get it
The book is available on Amazon, and the book’s own site has more about it.
Order on Amazon → Visit ogsmbook.com →
And if you would rather start by building something: the method is on this site in full, and OGSM.online gives you thirty days to try it against a real plan. Start with the complete guide →