Search for an OGSM template and you will find a great many empty grids, most of them behind a form.
The grid is the easy part. What is worth understanding is why the page is shaped the way it is, because the shape is the model, and a template you fill in without understanding it produces a document rather than a plan.
What the template actually is
One page, and the constraint is the feature.
A page has edges. When everything has to fit, you cannot include every idea, hedge every statement or please every department. You have to decide what matters most, and the conversation about what to leave off is usually more valuable than the sheet you end up with.
The layout runs top to bottom:
The Objective across the top. The Goals beneath it. Then the strategies as rows, each one carrying its own KPIs and its own actions.
That is the whole template. Everything else is styling.
What goes in each box
Objective. One or two sentences, in words, with a horizon. Use [WHAT] by [HOW]: the ambition and, in broad strokes, the approach. If it runs past two sentences, it is not finished.
Goals. Three to five, in numbers. Each with the thing measured, the target value and the unit. Together they answer “how would we see that the Objective is true?” Hit them all and you have realised the ambition, which is why the list has to be short.
Strategies. Three to five substantive choices, plus at most two preconditions. In words, again using [WHAT] by [HOW]. Each with exactly one named owner. And if you cannot say what you are no longer doing, you have not filled this box in. You have made a list.
KPIs. Two or three per strategy, in numbers, with target values and units. These are the dashboard you steer by between reviews, not the Goals, which you are judged on at the end. Mix result measures with effort measures so something moves before the outcome does.
Actions. Per strategy, each with a verb you can finish, an owner and a deadline. And the whole set has to fit the capacity you actually have, which the first draft never does.
Notice the alternation: words, numbers, words, numbers, words. Each switch forces you to be specific about what you just said. When a plan feels vague, one of those switches did not happen.
The rows are the point
This is the part most templates get wrong, and it is worth being emphatic about.
Measures should not be a long list at the bottom of the page. They belong on the same row as the strategy they serve, so you can read across a single line:
This is the route we chose → this is how we will know it is working → this is who is doing what by when.
Lay it out that way and two failures become impossible to hide. A strategy with no KPIs, an assertion you can never check. An action attached to no strategy, work nobody chose.
Both are extremely common in plans laid out as four separate lists, and both are visible at a glance when the rows line up.
See two plans laid out this way →
Why we do not hand out a spreadsheet
We could. Most of our competitors do, usually behind a six-field form. We have decided not to, and it is worth explaining rather than pretending it is generosity.
A spreadsheet is a good place to write a plan and a poor place to run one. Four things break, and they break quietly:
It stores one value. Overwrite the KPI with this month’s number and last month’s is gone. You can report status but not direction, and direction is the thing you steer on.
It becomes versions. Someone emails the file, someone edits their copy, and within two quarters there are three plans and no way to tell which is current.
Reporting becomes a person’s job. Chasing eight owners for updates before every review is a real half-day, every month, forever. When that person is on holiday, the rhythm is not.
Coherence goes manual. Change a strategy at the top and someone has to remember which team plans referenced it. Nobody does, and the plans drift apart invisibly.
So rather than hand you something that works for one cycle and then quietly costs you the rhythm, our answer is that the software is the template. You can build a plan in OGSM.online free for 30 days (no credit card, and it stops on its own) and print or export it as a clean one-pager whenever you need it on paper.
If that reads as self-interested, fair enough. But we would rather say it plainly than gate a spreadsheet behind your phone number.
Build your plan in a tool that keeps the history.
Start your free trialIf you want to start on paper
Genuinely fine, and often better for a first session.
Draw the page on a whiteboard: a band across the top for the Objective, a block underneath for the Goals, then rows. Sticky notes for the strategies, and two columns beside each for KPIs and actions.
A first OGSM session should be a conversation, and a conversation does not need a database. Move it into a tool when execution starts: when several people report progress, when you want trends, and when the rhythm has to survive a busy quarter.
When software starts to matter →
The quality check
Before you call a filled-in template finished, run it past this.
Objective. Ambitious but achievable? Says both what and how? Matches your real challenges? Every removable word removed?
Goals. Do they make every part of the Objective concrete? Target value and unit on each? Only essentials?
Strategies. Does each contribute to the Objective or enable it? Does each give direction? Are they real choices, with a matching list of what you are no longer doing? One owner each?
KPIs. Do they make the strategy concrete? Quantitative, with target and unit? Can you get the number next month without building anything first?
Actions. Does each serve a strategy? Owner and deadline on each? Is the whole set feasible? Can each be completed within one cycle?
The page as a whole. Can everyone involved understand it? Is it the one and only plan for this team, with no shadow plan alongside? Does it fit on one page? Does it have a single owner?
If it passes, the hard part is over. Now book the reviews.