Jake Eliot
Jake says...
Jake hasn't given a description of themselves yet.As members of this site will know all too well, there are loads of tools out there to help you develop a strategy and a strategic plan.
Ever since we started work on our guide to managing change, From Here to There, my team’s been interested in approaches and exercises that help organisations think through how to implement changes to their organisation.
In our experience, one of the outcomes of a strategic planning process is that a group of staff conclude they need to make changes to the...
These are really useful Caroline, thanks.
Some of the questions I’ve heard from individuals and groups reflect either the challenges of getting strategy done alongside the day job, or trying to get to grips with what a useful strategic plan will be for their organisation for instance.
Q: How do we develop a strategic plan on a tight budget in just a few months?
A: The reality is, everyone has to adapt their process to suit their time and budget. As well as embedding it people’s work plan and ...
In the last year, my team’s done some work on involving users and other stakeholders in the running of organisations. Developing our new website has given us the opportunity to pull together some of our thinking on participation: involving users and other people in your work and planning to generate new ideas, challenge your assumptions and help you to ensure that your products, services or campaigns are as relevant as possible.
Phrases like “involving users” and “consulting stakeholders”...
I think you are right to point to both the jargon around strategy and its reputation as an, often mysterious, skill or practice owned by high level managers are off putting.
From some research we did with Partners in Evaluation (through the Performance Hub) we came up with a few ideas for how organisations can get the most out of strategic planning, including,
- Actively involve people- start off with the assumption that strategy involves the whole organisation, even if it needs to be led and...
I do think there is something in this about how people, users, donors, staff and trustees relate to organisations. Though part of me reacts strongly and negatively to advertising-types talking about love and respect!
A lot of work we’ve done recently on full value has been to encourage organisations to think about how they are of value to different audiences in different ways.
What the Love and Respect model opens up for me is the point that organisations create value, love and meaning in...
I am really taken with the last point, “Giving (it away) is good”, and the implications for VCOs in thinking about the different things they do that are of value.
The writer Kevin Kelly recently picked up this theme on his blog
He highlights a similar question: how do people whose business model depends on intellectual property and resources thrive when so much of their value can be distributed for free through new technology?
Kelly argues,
When copies are super abundant, they become...
The Performance Hub has recently published a learning report from a piece of research and development work in 2006 which looked at the process of strategy formation in five small third sector organisations. Beyond the writing of the plan, or general principles from management texts, what are the practical lessons from an effective planning process?
The findings of the report are focused on how small organisations can develop effective strategies but are relevant to organisations of any size...
You may be interested in a survey report the Performance Hub have recently published, which looks at what strategic planning tools are used and valued by a range of third sector organisations.
Our findings are based on a survey carried out in 2006 of nearly 250 organisations.
Many of the surveyed organisations have taken an organic, incremental, iterative approach to strategic planning, opting to use techniques such as SWOT, PEST and stakeholder analysis to begin with, and then adding other...
Hello all.
Does anyone have ideas on how organisations who are new to strategic analysis can make the most out of tools like PEST?
In particular,
- Any advantages you have from bringing in catergories like legal, environmental and ethical into the discussion
- What are useful and time-efficient ways have you used to prepare for a PEST analysis? (I’ve heard organisations dividing up the categories between trustees and asking them to research the factors as ‘homework’ before the...
I found this blog post on supply side pressures affecting internet access in Australia a useful aside:
