What does "going forward" mean?

meaning

Going forward is almost a completely useless phrase. If one says [x] going forward, they mean [x] into the future, but it is very redundant, as one could just as easily say [x]. It seems that many business people want to sound as fancy as possible, so they use as many fancy words as possible to get the same point across. This leads to entire dialogues of contentless speech, filled with words devoid of meaning.

A BBC article puts it much more poetically than me:

When someone says ‘going forward’ it assaults the ears just as, when a colleague starts slurping French onion soup at a neighbouring desk, it assaults the nose.

I think it is a phrase that one should avoid as much as possible, as in the relatively short time it has been in use, it has been abused, hung out to dry, and abused again.

As ianjs has said, it is quite redundant. Redundancy isn’t a bad thing in itself, as it can help to reinforce points. But going forward is so cliché that its effect is lost.

The term can be useful in certain situations, such as “I will be polite to you, going forward”, but it sounds too much like the overused term, that it sounds nicer to say “From now on, I will be polite to you”, or “I am going to start being polite to you.”

Going forward just grates against my ears, and despite it being perfectly relevant in the above example, I would avoid using the term altogether. This is obviously a matter of opinion, but, because of the way the phrase has been used recently, it would be better to use a bit of imagination, and use different wording.

PS: This answer has had 4 up-votes and 3 down-votes, which means it is a very contentious issue. Take this answer with a grain of salt, and remember that English usage is subjective. This probably means that going forward annoys ⁴⁄₇ people who voted on this post, and that ³⁄₇ voters like the term.

I understand the term to mean henceforth, with the implication that the strategy will be different and possibly improved.

The difference is one of time. Your second example: This is our strategy implies the strategy is unchanged. It was, is, and will be our strategy. On the other hand, when one says: This is our strategy going forward. they are implying a change in strategy. They are essentially talking about future time using the present tense.

In your example "That is our strategy going forward", by "going forward" I understand that the strategy used to be a different one in the past.

Here is another context where the phrase is not useless nor redundant:

You left your bike outside, you didn't lock it and somebody stole it. You could then say: