Add Focus Areas to your Plan

Focus areas are the "foundation stones of your strategy". They expand on your Vision Statement and start to create some structure around how to actually get your organization to achieve its objectives. You can think of these as carefully-crafted "categories" of your plans that provide context, and group a set of related objectives! For example, focus areas can be - Expand global recognition, Aggressive growth, Launch new product lines, Zero regulatory issues, and so on. 

Adding your focus areas into Cascade is very easy, but be realistic and define only those focus areas which really matter as its important that you do not get carried away by the term "focus areas"!

Add Focus Area:

You can add focus areas while creating or importing a plan. From the Planner page, click Add Focus Area to

• add a new focus area
• or, add an existing focus area

When you click Add new Focus Area, you'll see a focus area added, and you can click into the "untitled focus area" text box to enter a meaningful one!

To add an existing focus area, click Add existing Focus Area - the My Focus Area Library opens! Search for the specific focus area(s), or filter them by plans, and choose the relevant ones from the list. You can select one to many focus areas as you wish!

Once the focus area is added, click the three dots against them to:

• explore - get an insight of the focus area
• remove from plan - delete them from the plan once the objectives under them are deleted! This will remove this focus area only from that specific plan!

Delve deep into Focus Areas:

Click Explore against a focus area to view detailed information on it. You can also navigate to this page from the Plans and Teams > All Focus Areas, and select the specific focus area! This page gives you a picture of horizontal alignment with the plans, the objectives, and the teams associated with these focus areas!

	Click the three dots to edit or delete the focus area. Edit - the Focus Area details box opens, and lets you edit the focus area name and its description. Delete - Once you delete all the objectives under it, you can delete this focus area. Remember that, if you delete a focus area from here, it'll be removed from all the plans its part of!
	Click to either add or edit the focus area details.
	"Focus Area Health over Time" - Hover the mouse over the line chart to see the average progress (in %) of the focus area over time.
	"Focus Area Health by Plans" - Hover the mouse over the donut chart to see the health of the focus area across plans.
	"Objective Count" - Hover the mouse over the donut chart to see the total count of objectives and their health.
	"People and Teams" - The bars display the number of collaborators, and the teams associated with the focus area and its related objectives.
	Toggle between the Plans and the Objectives tab to view relevant details.

"Plans" tab:

Expand the Plans to view the objectives associated with the focus area in that plan. Click on the "Team" to either view the team information from that Teams home page or click Assign to team to assign the plan to a team! 

Click the plan to view its details from the Planner Sidebar. Click the three dots against the plan here, to access the Plan Settings or click View Alignment to view its alignment from the Alignment page!

Click the (Pencil icon) to inline-edit the title of the objective. You can also edit the owner and the dates inline by clicking on the owner icon and due date fields! While the (Explore icon) lets you view the details from the goal-hub, the (Comment icon) lets you to leave a comment on the objective! Click the three dots against the objective to either edit from the Edit Objective Sidebar or delete it.

To add/edit the success criteria, or make any progress on the manual slider, you need to go to the Objectives tab!

"Objectives" tab:

Expand the Objectives to view the associated success criteria. Click the (Pencil icon) to inline-edit the title of the objective. You can also edit the owner and the dates inline by clicking on the owner icon and due date fields! While the (Explore icon) lets you view the details from the goal-hub, the (Comment icon) lets you to leave a comment on the objective/measure/action! Click the three dots against any of these to either edit them from the relevant Sidebar or delete them.

Scoot the manual slider to update the progress with a comment! You can add measures/actions/contributing objectives inline from the relevant "Add" buttons!

FAQs

Can I delete a focus area that's shared across multiple plans?

Yes! If you need to delete a focus area from all the plans its part of, then you can delete it from the Plans and Teams > All Focus Areas page. If you need to delete a focus area only from a particular plan, then just click the three dots against it, and click Remove from Plan to do so!

I added an existing focus area, it got added but there're no objectives!

This is the way it's supposed to work so that you've the flexibility to create your own objectives that'll determine its health!

How do I see the health of focus areas only for a particular plan?

You can see this from the Health of your Plan widget from the Dashboards page. (See Work with Dashboards)

Can I reorder the focus areas within a plan?

Not at this point! All you can do is delete and re-enter those!

All the objectives under the focus area are achieved, but the focus area health is still on track!

Yes, it is maintained on track so that you can keep adding objectives to your plan, and work towards your company's vision!