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 organisation in order to deliver their new strategy. Strategic planning tools might help open up options or compare and contrast different opportunities and external trends. Most good practice advice stops short of helping you with implementing your strategy or changing your organisation.
There’s good reasons for this. Organisations are complex things and it is hard to generalise about how to implement strategic change without just stating the obvious.
One approach I’ve seen recently that I liked is McKinsey’s 7-S framework.
It is a tool that highlights different factors that influence an organisation’s ability to change. These are described as,
style – culture and informal practices
skills – both institutional and individual
strategy – what you are trying to achieve?
shared values – bedrock of your organisation
structure – how you’re organised and where authority lies in your organisation
staff – all the different people in your organisation and how they’re developed.
systems – processes used in managing the organisation.
All these factors are interrelated and on an equal footing, underlining the point that significant change in one aspect of the organisation will be difficult to sustain without planning or accomodating change in the other aspects.
It doesn’t work any magic, sadly, but it can provide a useful reminder about the different issues to consider when planning strategic change in an organisation.
I can be allergic to some private-sector strategy tools. I have found some to be filled with jargon, over-complicated and focusing people on completing the exercise rather than finding and agreeing a solution to a problem.
While this framework isn’t a neat and easy solution to the complexities of change management you might find it a useful tool to add to your planning processes and discussions, whether you’re using it as a simple checklist or working through the framework systematically in planning meetings.
You can view a short narrated introduction to the framework on the McKinsey website here
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 job descriptions it can be really helpful to ‘plan the planning’, getting a specific and realistic timetable for the planning process that considers,
what tasks can be shared out between staff
any significant fundraising deadlines, holidays or events that will impact on the ability of the organisation to plan and see the process through
any opportunities available to get out of the office and pick up ideas and insights to energise the planning process, like events, conferences or visits to other organisations that can be built into the timetable
costing a budget for the time taken to develop and monitor your strategy
The other question I’ve heard a lot and often struggle to answer is,
Q: What’s the difference between a strategic plan and a business plan?
A: In practice, a lot of people use the phrases interchangeably to mean similar things so it doesn’t always matter what term you’re using providing you agree whatever plan you have is right for your needs and circumstances.
Generally though, I’ve tended to say that strategic plans outline mission, purpose aims and objectives and where the organisation is going over the next five years.
A business plan, for me, suggests a strong emphasis on a business model and which may involve more detail on income strategies, financial models and scenarios and details on internal functions like HR and staff development.
I don’t think any of that is cut-and-dry though as good business cases clearly link to organisational strategy.
I’d welcome anyone else’s thoughts on this and other common questions.
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” can get bandied around a lot during strategic planning without getting clear agreement about what they mean for you or how it is going to happen.
Indeed, there are some particular challenges to participation in strategy. Though many people are keen to feedback their experiences and thoughts, their immediate concern is likely to be the project or service they are involved in rather than the future of the whole organisation. Involving people isn’t right for every organisation in every circumstance.
From our work and discussions on user involvement we’ve developed the following top tips for helping people participate in strategy
Be as specific as possible about who your stakeholders are. Stopping at vague definitions means you might overlook important groups your strategy needs to involve or at least take account of.
Get commitment from senior managers to support stakeholder input into strategic plans and priorities. Involvement can challenge organisations, and support from managers that legitimate challenge and constructive criticism is useful in the planning process will help prevent an immediate defensive reaction.
Plan how you want to involve people What role do you and the people participating want to take? Leading the strategy? Giving input? Debating ideas? Making decisions? It could also be helpful to consider the degree of involvement your organisation needs from different people. Once you’ve got answers to these bigger questions deciding on the detail of the how you’re going to involve people in different ways will be easier.
Build on what you do already. Consider how you can slot strategy discussions into existing meetings, forums and opportunities for stakeholders to feed back on your organisation, don’t just assume stakeholders will always be ready and willing to come to you. There is a massive range of methods and ways to consult and involve stakeholders, and most organisations will get better at this with practice. It’s important to try out a range of ways of helping people get involved and not let a fear of imperfection stop you from getting started.
Say what you mean and mean what you say. Be clear and honest about the opportunities available for people to get involved, the reasons for this and keep people up-to-date on what you do with the learning and information you get from your stakeholders. Demonstrating that their input influences your strategy and decision-making will help keep people participating in the longer-term.
This list is far from comprehensive. How does it match with your experience of involving people in strategy?
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 managed by a small team.
Use your vision and mission – starting off by getting staff and volunteers discussing your organisation’s purpose and reason for existing can be an empowering way of opening up strategic questions, and testing out the viability and desirability of different options for the future.
Be appreciative – Appreciative approaches are a good way to reconnect individuals to the larger purpose. They stretch vision about what might be possible in the future and allow disagreements to be discussed in a more positive environment. Rather than starting off with an assumption that there are things wrong with the organisation and strategy is a way of fixing problems, appreciative inquiry begin with a focus on what the organisation does well, what it is good at and how it can build on that.
Having fun! – because of all the technical jargon and management science around strategy some organisations are put off trying out new approaches or exercises for fear of “getting it wrong”. Strategy can be a process where organisations experiment with new ways of running meetings, consulting people and making decisions that they haven’t tried before.
There’s more detail on these points in our Introduction to Strategic planning, but I’m sure there are loads more expertise on this from forum members!
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 how they work, their processes and activities as well as the outcomes they deliver for users. And that this is important and some of it is worth capturing and communicating to audiences that matter to them.
From my (very) limited understanding of debates in marketing though, there is some interesting criticism of the Lovemarks idea. Partly this is because of its presumption of a traditional private sector advertising model; the brand is a solid, tangible thing that is owned and communicated by the company and advertisers to comsumers.
I think some of the interesting stuff around marketing now views the brands as a place, not a thing or product, which feels much more immediately relevant to voluntary and community organisations.
So the question for organisations is less “how do we get people to love what we produce more than they love what our competitors produce?” but “what benefits do people get from interacting with us?” Those interactions might be as light as a conversation which mentions the organisation, or as engaged as being a user of that organisation’s services, a staff member, voluteer or trustee.
And such interactions may well involve love and respect.
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 worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable
He outlines 8 features or qualities that are “better than free” because they have to be generated and cultivated and can’t just be copied. He suggests these are:
immediacy
personalisation
interpretation (paid for services that operate on free stuff)
authenticity (any hint of “realness” in the virtual world)
accessibility
embodiment
patronage (feel-good process of supporting the creators)
findability (the new version of distribution: drawing users’ attention)
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 that are new to strategic planning or looking to refresh their approach.
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 techniques according to their size or culture.
Interestingly, there were a few more visual tools like strategy mapping and the Balanced Scorecard which weren’t widely used by our sample but were highly valued by those that did use them.
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 organisation’s awayday).
Jake
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 organisation in order to deliver their new strategy. Strategic planning tools might help open up options or compare and contrast different opportunities and external trends. Most good practice advice stops short of helping you with implementing your strategy or changing your organisation.
There’s good reasons for this. Organisations are complex things and it is hard to generalise about how to implement strategic change without just stating the obvious.
One approach I’ve seen recently that I liked is McKinsey’s 7-S framework.
It is a tool that highlights different factors that influence an organisation’s ability to change. These are described as,
All these factors are interrelated and on an equal footing, underlining the point that significant change in one aspect of the organisation will be difficult to sustain without planning or accomodating change in the other aspects.
It doesn’t work any magic, sadly, but it can provide a useful reminder about the different issues to consider when planning strategic change in an organisation.
I can be allergic to some private-sector strategy tools. I have found some to be filled with jargon, over-complicated and focusing people on completing the exercise rather than finding and agreeing a solution to a problem.
While this framework isn’t a neat and easy solution to the complexities of change management you might find it a useful tool to add to your planning processes and discussions, whether you’re using it as a simple checklist or working through the framework systematically in planning meetings.
You can view a short narrated introduction to the framework on the McKinsey website here
Jake
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 job descriptions it can be really helpful to ‘plan the planning’, getting a specific and realistic timetable for the planning process that considers,
The other question I’ve heard a lot and often struggle to answer is,
Q: What’s the difference between a strategic plan and a business plan?
A: In practice, a lot of people use the phrases interchangeably to mean similar things so it doesn’t always matter what term you’re using providing you agree whatever plan you have is right for your needs and circumstances.
Generally though, I’ve tended to say that strategic plans outline mission, purpose aims and objectives and where the organisation is going over the next five years.
A business plan, for me, suggests a strong emphasis on a business model and which may involve more detail on income strategies, financial models and scenarios and details on internal functions like HR and staff development.
I don’t think any of that is cut-and-dry though as good business cases clearly link to organisational strategy.
I’d welcome anyone else’s thoughts on this and other common questions.
Jake
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” can get bandied around a lot during strategic planning without getting clear agreement about what they mean for you or how it is going to happen.
Indeed, there are some particular challenges to participation in strategy. Though many people are keen to feedback their experiences and thoughts, their immediate concern is likely to be the project or service they are involved in rather than the future of the whole organisation. Involving people isn’t right for every organisation in every circumstance.
From our work and discussions on user involvement we’ve developed the following top tips for helping people participate in strategy
This list is far from comprehensive. How does it match with your experience of involving people in strategy?
Jake
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,
There’s more detail on these points in our Introduction to Strategic planning, but I’m sure there are loads more expertise on this from forum members!
Jake
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 how they work, their processes and activities as well as the outcomes they deliver for users. And that this is important and some of it is worth capturing and communicating to audiences that matter to them.
From my (very) limited understanding of debates in marketing though, there is some interesting criticism of the Lovemarks idea. Partly this is because of its presumption of a traditional private sector advertising model; the brand is a solid, tangible thing that is owned and communicated by the company and advertisers to comsumers.
I think some of the interesting stuff around marketing now views the brands as a place, not a thing or product, which feels much more immediately relevant to voluntary and community organisations.
So the question for organisations is less “how do we get people to love what we produce more than they love what our competitors produce?” but “what benefits do people get from interacting with us?” Those interactions might be as light as a conversation which mentions the organisation, or as engaged as being a user of that organisation’s services, a staff member, voluteer or trustee.
And such interactions may well involve love and respect.
Jake
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 worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable
He outlines 8 features or qualities that are “better than free” because they have to be generated and cultivated and can’t just be copied. He suggests these are:
Jake
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 that are new to strategic planning or looking to refresh their approach.
You can read the full report and a separate summary of the findings on the Performance Hub website
Jake
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 techniques according to their size or culture.
Interestingly, there were a few more visual tools like strategy mapping and the Balanced Scorecard which weren’t widely used by our sample but were highly valued by those that did use them.
You can see the full survey report on The Performance Hub website
or join in a discussion in the forum about the survey.
Jake
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,
Thoughts, comments and ideas all welcome!
Jake
Jake
I found this blog post on supply side pressures affecting internet access in Australia a useful aside:
Australian broadband not as fast as the kids would like