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As part of our educational agenda, June is all about organizational strategy. Read on for some insights, and join our free webinar this month.
The cornerstone of running an impactful organization lies in developing a solid organizational strategy. A good strategic plan will be your “north star”, providing an anchor to make decisions that drive your desired impact. The best strategies include thoughtful, measurable, and actionable components to ensure accountability and mission fulfillment.
Despite its importance, many organizations we meet don’t have a strong organizational strategy. While they usually have a mission statement describing the change they want to make, they’re often missing the practical components of how to achieve that. Without a strong strategic plan, even the best-intentioned organizations will struggle to maximize their impact.
In this post, we asked our EASE experts for their advice so that you can make sure your organizational strategy is both strong and practical.
We'd also like to invite you to a panel-style webinar on June 18th at 12 PM EST, where we'll cover these strategies in depth and provide answers to commonly asked questions.
Register HereWhile often used interchangeably, organizational strategy refers to what an organization aims to achieve and why (high-level, long-term, guides organizational culture). A strategic plan guides how and when the work is done, and metrics for success. When culture and strategy work together, there is a much better chance that the vision is realized.
When you pay attention to culture while rolling out a strategy, you’re setting your team up for long-term success.
As a leader, it’s important to understand your current and desired organizational culture. To influence a change in culture, set goals for employees to support behaviors that encourage the culture you desire. (i.e., teamwork, flexibility, and fresh thinking) and shift the behaviors that limit the culture (i.e., gatekeeping, fear of new ideas). Lead by example, communicate openly, and make sure people are recognized and rewarded for actions that align with your goals.
A strong, well-developed organizational strategy is built upon a clear, foundational understanding of the company's core identity. This begins with a clearly defined set of values, a compelling mission, and an inspiring vision, providing the essential "big picture". Without this foundational clarity, any strategic effort risks lacking direction and cohesion.
Furthermore, an effective strategy isn't crafted in isolation; it demands inclusive participation from all levels of the organization, encompassing tactical and operational teams. This comprehensive involvement is crucial to ensure that the "big picture" truly reflects all facets of the business, preventing critical pains or opportunities from being overlooked. Crucially, even the best-defined strategy will fail to yield results without a robust control and monitoring framework, leveraging regular ceremonies like weekly or monthly retrospectives to track progress, adapt to changes, and ensure continuous alignment.
Your strategy must advance your mission and goals. It should also be time-bound—even if you choose to continue the same strategy for many months or even years, you should be checking in on your strategy periodically. Does it still make the most sense, given where your organization and the world around you are now? And speaking of resources, do you have enough resources to have a reasonable chance of executing your strategy successfully? Do you know who is responsible for tracking your strategy and reporting on its progress? Have you developed clear tactics to implement your strategy? Does your strategy actually cover your whole organization? If you answered "No" to these questions, you don't have a well-developed organizational strategy. It might be time to hire a consultant.
"80% of success is showing up." Just having an organizational strategy is an important first step. Minimally, having a pithy vision statement will ensure everyone is driving toward the same outcome.
Hiring, development, and teambuilding are critical. If you have the right people and you trust them to make good decisions, you won't need to spell everything out.
Finally, don't scar on the first cut.
Having a well-developed organizational strategy is about having the right "meta-strategy": i.e. having an excellent process to produce a great strategy, now and over time. This involves nuts-and-bolts best practices, and crucial org culture elements.
Here are the nuts-and-bolts best practices I would highlight:
(1) Have a clear theory of change (ToC) that ties your ongoing activities to your mission
(2) Decide how much you're gathering evidence about what are the right activities (exploring) vs. how much you're doubling down on activities you have strong evidence that they work (exploiting)
(3) Say “no” to everything except the very best 2-3 activities
(4) Have 1-2 OKRs per activity, with KPIs tied to your inputs and the earliest stage outputs in your ToC. Here are the most important org culture elements I would highlight:
(1) Get a lot of feedback on your approach from a diverse set of people (both who have context on your project and who do not have context)
(2) Be inclusive with decision making, embrace dissent, and strive for buy-in across the org instead of forcing the strategy top down
(3) Zooming out to build a strategy is work: set aside time for everyone needed to collaborate on the strategy so people aren’t distracted with execution (retreats are best!)
(4) Uncertainty is inherent; Commit to being open to shifting your strategy based on the latest facts and assessments (this is essential for achieving buy-in in the presence of diverse opinions)
I help orgs with mission, principals & values articulation. Often a massive missing piece is the notion of "pre-requisites" to those major pieces. In other words, what needs to be in place in order to give those values the best chance of being expressed by people?
The best crafted visions will never take, or slowly dematerialize without organizational or social infratstructure.
Your people can't hold "radical ownership" without high autonomy and decision-making scope. They will struggle to "work sustainably" without any organizational infrastructure or cultural shaping to support that. They will struggle to be open and truthful when incentives exist for other behaviors.
Fiating values, even when jointly decided, doesn't make it so. What's in place that will encourage these values express? What's in place to cause these values to endure? And what's in place to ward off the hollowing out and misuse of those values?
I hope these insights have given you some practical guidance to make your strategic plan stronger and more implementable. I would welcome any comments or suggestions that have worked for you to share with anyone else reading this.
And don't forget to join us for our upcoming webinar on June 18th at 12 PM EST! It's a great opportunity to dive deeper into these concepts and get your specific questions answered by our expert panel.
