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Distillations in this newsletter: What to do if your strategy has stalled; New training course on ‘Stakeholder Engagement in Strategy’; How AI is transforming strategy development.
STRATEGY DISTILLED:
A monthly concoction of insight, learning and things you might have missed for anyone who works on strategy, works with strategy or just loves strategy.
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This month …
- What to do if your strategy has stalled.
- Strategy snippets you may have missed: New training course on ‘Stakeholder Engagement in Strategy’; How AI is transforming strategy development.
If you enjoy reading this newsletter, don’t forget to forward it to friends or colleagues who might also find it of interest.
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What to do if your strategy has stalled
The biggest barrier to your strategy delivering on its promises is your failure to clearly differentiate your strategy from your strategic plan.
Here’s a situation I hear about A LOT! Your strategy is in place. It may have gone down well when first launched but since then it seems to have somehow stalled. It’s not getting the traction you hoped for. It hasn’t driven the change it needed to. And it’s certainly not having the impact you projected.
If that sounds familiar, you are in good company. It even happens in organisations that outwardly seem hungry for change, are well managed and have what appears to be a well-thought-through strategy.
My advice, typically, is don’t waste the moment. Whenever a strategy stalls, this is a great opportunity to work out what your organisation struggles with in relation to strategy. Don’t just blame the strategy. It is all too easy to believe that the strategy you produced, in all good faith and possibly with a great deal of effort, is, for some reason, the wrong strategy and that all your ills will be cured by writing a new and improved strategy. This may indeed be true, but it also might not be, in which case you may find yourselves, several months down the line, facing an identical problem with your brand new strategy. Instead, spend some time exploring whether you are able to fix your current strategy and, in the process, you may discover some fundamental truths about how best to think and operate strategically.
My starting point in working with an organisation whose strategy has stalled is always to check whether their strategy is clearly separated from their strategic plan (I touched on this topic in July 2022’s Strategy Distilled but have become even more convinced of its importance since then). In this post I want to walk you through why this is my starting point, how I would set about diagnosing the issue and how I would explore the various treatments that could be prescribed.
However, before we get started on that, we have a few issues of definition to resolve. I read a lot of strategies, and it is very rare indeed for me to find one that fits my definition of a strategy. The majority of strategies are, in my view, a blend of strategies and strategic plans. Indeed, when I analysed 52 of the strategies of UK Universities, a few years ago, I discovered that almost as many strategy documents were called ‘Strategic Plan’ (17 of them) as ‘Strategy’ (19 of them), despite there being little meaningful differences in their content: the ‘Strategic Plans’ had more KPIs but the ‘Strategies’ had more KPTs.
So, here are my definitions:
Strategy: a concise document setting out which of the many things we, as an organisation, could aspire to in the future we actually commit to pursuing.
Strategic plan: a much more extensive account of how we intend to realise the aspirations set out in our strategy.
Figure 1 is how I illustrated the separation of strategy from strategic plan in The Strategy Manual.
Figure 1. The Separation Model of Strategy
Why then do I suggest that this separation of strategy from strategic plan is so important as to describe it as foundational? Well, to begin with, as both Henry Mintzberg and Roger Martin have pointed out before me, strategy and strategic planning serve different purposes within organisations (see Mintzberg’s paper and Martin’s 10-minute video). They require very different approaches, processes and tools and they produce different outputs.
For me, though, the critical issue is the one at the bottom of Figure 1: strategy remains the same, whilst strategic plans change. Perhaps, more accurately, we should say strategy, at the time it is produced, is designed to remain the same for the lifespan of that strategy. By contrast, strategic plans are written in the knowledge that circumstances will change and plans need to adapt. Like all good plans, a strategic plan needs to be written with clear assumptions in mind which set expectations and determine contingencies. When assumptions are challenged, these expectations and contingencies may need to change.
The reason this is such a game changer is that it resolves a conundrum at the heart of strategy: how can strategy be both a constant, unchanging commitment to a particular vision of our organisation’s future, whilst still remaining adaptable and agile in the face of changing circumstances? If we keep strategy separate from strategic planning, the conundrum is resolved. Strategy remains constant and unchanging as the strategic plan adapts, provided we remain diligent in keeping the strategic plan in service of the strategy.
The ‘thinking’ take-away from this month’s post is, therefore, to look at your own strategy and ask to what extent have you separated strategy from strategic plan. Are there aspects of your strategy document that, on reflection, really ought to be in a separate strategic plan? Conversely, is your strategy clear enough about which strategic goals (ideally no more than a handful) are intended to remain the constant, unchanging ‘North Star’ for your organisation, guiding decisions and actions throughout the entire strategy lifecycle?
The ‘action’ take-away could be as modest as exploratory discussions with your leadership team about whether to aim for greater separation between strategy and strategic plan when you produce your next strategy.
If, however, as discussed at the start of this post, you find yourself in a situation where your strategy has stalled, more drastic action may be required. This is where the separation of strategy and strategic planning may come to your rescue.
Keep your strategy unchanged but write a new strategic plan to interpret it, make it actionable and measure its success in new ways.
This is an approach that has come to the rescue of several leadership teams that I’ve known. It is an operational decision and hence needn’t attract much, if any, attention from the Board. It can be a delicate task, striking the right balance between refreshing an existing strategy and avoiding being seen as introducing a new strategy by stealth. It works well with strategies that are broad-brush in their ambitions. They can be made more specific and actionable, whilst remaining true to the strategy’s original intentions. A new strategic plan can also be accompanied by new approaches to executive governance (e.g. clearer and more specific delegation; clearer reporting paths leading to stronger accountability; strategy as a standing item on meeting agendas) and new ways of measuring strategy (e.g. indicators of both progress and impact; better data management; using APIs, dashboards and AI).
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Strategy snippets you may have missed
New training course on ‘Stakeholder Engagement in Strategy’
Very excited about this new course that I’m delivering for the first time on the 2nd and 3rd April. Here’s the course summary:
‘Strategy only succeeds if a wide range of individuals, from senior leadership to front line teams, understand the intentions of strategy and are committed to the changes it mandates. This course will give participants a practical and applicable understanding of stakeholder engagement in strategy along with the tools and processes to undertake engagement activities.’
Next week’s course is specifically tailored for the Higher Education Strategic Planners Association and if you are in HE, get in touch with HESPA to find out when the next one is scheduled. Contact me (mike@goalatlas.com) if you want to explore stakeholder engagement in strategy within your own organisation or sector.
How AI is transforming strategy development
McKinsey’s recent article on ‘How AI is transforming strategy development is a good read. It suggests that ‘Artificial intelligence is set to revolutionize strategy activities. But as AI adoption spreads, strategists will need proprietary data, creativity, and new skills to develop unique options’.
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Goal Atlas facilitates the development, adoption and measurement of your strategy in ways that work for you.
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If you enjoyed reading this newsletter, don’t forget to forward it to friends or colleagues who might also find it of interest.
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