Measure What Moves: A Strategy Workshop That Ends With KPIs

Most strategy workshops end with a document. Measure What Moves is a strategy workshop that ends with KPIs: a free, live online working session for CEOs and MDs of companies with 50 to 500 staff. You bring the strategy you have, work through four plain questions, and AI drafts while you decide. You leave with KPIs for the organization and for every department, each with an owner, on one page your board can follow.

This page explains what happens in the session, what you leave with, and who it is and is not for, so you can decide whether it is worth your seat.

Why most strategy workshops end with a document

You probably already have a strategy. It might be a slide deck from last year's offsite, a page the board approved, or a few clear sentences you repeat at every all-hands. The problem is rarely the strategy itself. It is that the strategy never became numbers that departments own.

The gap is wider than most CEOs expect. In a 2018 MIT Sloan Management Review study ("No One Knows Your Strategy — Not Even Your Top Leaders"), Sull, Sull and Yoder found that only 28% of executives and managers responsible for executing strategy could name three of their company's strategic priorities. If the people executing the plan cannot name it, they cannot be measuring it.

A typical strategy workshop does not close that gap. It produces good conversation and a document, and then everyone goes back to their department and sets goals on their own, in their own words, against their own reading of the plan. By the second quarter, the company has a strategy at the top, a set of departmental targets underneath, and no visible line between them.

The fix is to end the session somewhere more specific: a short list of measures, each one tied to a priority, each one with a single name next to it.

What happens in the strategy workshop

The session works through four plain questions, in this order.

1. Where are we now? An honest picture of the starting point: what the business delivers today and the numbers you would use to show it. This is where baselines come from, and where you find out which of them you do not have yet.
2. Where are we going? Your strategy, restated as a few priorities the whole company could repeat. Not a new strategy. The one you brought, made plain.
3. What could affect us? The risks and changes that could knock the plan off course, from a large customer leaving to a key hire arriving late. Some of these deserve a measure of their own.
4. What must we deliver? The measures that would show the priorities are being met, for the organization and for each department, with a target and an owner.

At each step, AI drafts and you decide. The AI turns what you say into candidate priorities, measures and definitions so you are not starting from a blank page. You accept, change or reject every one of them. Nothing goes on the final page that you did not choose.

What you leave with

One page. For the organization and every department, it lists the KPIs that matter this year, what each one measures, and the one person who owns it. It is short enough for a board to follow and specific enough for a department head to act on next week.

Here is the shape of that page for an illustrative 150-person professional services firm. Your measures will be your own.

Two things make this page different from a typical workshop output. Every department appears, not just the ones that are easy to measure. And every row has one owner, a person rather than a team, because a KPI owned by everyone is a KPI owned by no one.

If you want to understand the method behind the page before you come, how to create KPIs from the strategy you already have walks through it.

How the AI part works

AI is in the session to save you drafting time, not to make your decisions. It reads what you say and proposes measures, definitions and gaps: a priority nothing measures, a department with no link to any priority, two departments whose measures pull against each other. You decide what stays.

You also choose what you share. Drafting KPIs works from priorities, measures and job titles, so you can leave out financial statements, client names and anything about individual employees. If your company has an AI policy, follow it. If it does not have one yet, an AI governance framework a leadership team can actually use is a sensible next read, and it is a question your board is likely to ask soon anyway.

What it is not

Not an offsite. There is no retreat, no flipcharts and no away-day agenda. If you are planning an offsite anyway, the offsite agenda article shows how to end that one with KPIs too.

Not a consultant. Nobody spends weeks interviewing your team and then hands you a report. You do the work in the session, on your own strategy, and the decisions are yours.

Not a course. You are not there to learn a framework and apply it later. You are there to leave with the finished page.

No prep. You do not need to fill in a template or gather data beforehand. Bring the strategy you have, in whatever form it exists.

Who it is for, and who it is not for

It is for you if:

• You are the CEO or MD of a company with roughly 50 to 500 staff.
• You have a strategy, even a rough one, but departments set their own goals without a clear line back to it.
• Your board asks how the plan is going and the honest answer is "it depends who you ask."
• Your financial year starts soon and you want KPIs agreed before it does, not in the second month.
• You want to do the thinking yourself, with help on the drafting.

It is not for you if:

• Your company is a handful of people. At that size the whole team can sit at one table, and you probably do not need a page.
• You have no strategy at all and want someone to write one for you. The session turns the strategy you bring into KPIs; it does not invent the strategy.
• You are looking for a facilitated offsite for your leadership team, or a training course for managers.
• You want a consultant to do it for you and report back.

If you would rather run your own strategy workshop

You can. The four questions work in a room as well as online, and the output is the same page. How to run a strategic planning workshop covers the agenda, who to invite and how to keep the session from ending in a document. The usual reason leaders choose a working session instead is time: drafting measures for every department is slow by hand, and it is the step most often left until after the meeting, which is where it stalls.

If you want the page without building the process yourself, Measure What Moves is the free session described here.

Frequently asked questions

Is the strategy workshop really free?

Yes. Measure What Moves is a free working session, and there is nothing to buy to attend. The page of KPIs you leave with is yours to use however you like.

Do I need to prepare anything?

No. Bring the strategy you have, in whatever form it exists: a board paper, a slide, or the few sentences you say at every all-hands. The session starts from there, and the four questions do the rest.

Is it safe to work on our strategy with AI?

You choose what you share. KPIs can be drafted from priorities, measures and job titles, so you can leave out financials, client names and anything about individual employees. AI drafts and you approve: nothing goes on your page unless you chose it.

What if our strategy is not written down?

That is common and it is fine. If you can say in a few sentences what the company is trying to achieve this year, that is enough to start. The second question, "Where are we going?", exists to turn what you know into a few plain priorities.

When is the next session?

Session dates are listed on the registration page, which the link at the end of this article opens. The best time to come is before your financial year starts, so the KPIs are agreed before the year they measure.