Relationships between functional objectives and strategies

In the hierarchy of objectives, it is the corporate objectives which are the boss! These are the objectives that the business as a whole is trying to achieve.

By contrast, functional objectives can be viewed as a willing servant of the corporate objectives! Their purpose in life is to help make possible the achievement of the corporate objectives. As such, functional objectives need to be:

• Consistent with corporate objectives (i.e. not work against them)
• Suitably focused on the key functional activities

Here are some examples of how corporate and functional objectives might work well together: