You might have an idea of your overall goal associated with a specific strategy.  At a very top level, it could be something like; attaining the most recognized brand,  having total customer loyalty (100%) or the most efficient operations (profitable).

Next

The next step is to determine the objectives that support your goals and the associated implementation activities.  You can blue sky the objective gathering and hope for the best or you can be a bit more rigorous in your methodology

Blue Sky

Innovation and creativity are typically present when there is no bad idea.  Just gather up all the thoughts, throw them in the wide opening of the funnel and hope they don’t get stuck on the way down.

Of course this method, while it is highly collaborative, is not efficient.  It can work where efficiency is not a priority, creativity is.  The result might really knock the overall goal out of the park once it oozes out of the neck of the funnel.

In many cases though analysis paralysis and too many cooks collaborating without direction leaves the output wanting.

Planned and Controlled

Filtering the ideas and objectives, through the use of defined filtering criteria, before they get into the funnel, improves the flow through the neck of the funnel.

These might not be highly innovative and creative ideas but they will work and it is a good probability the overall goal can be attained.