Is your strategy still "right"?

Does the question make you feel uncomfortable or uncertain? It is planning season and we are doing the work alongside clients, partners, and friends. Some of us, plugged into ground realities, sense seismic shifts in the landscape ahead. A new S curve is needed. Others assess that it is not necessary to take a zero-base look at their strategy. The assumptions upon which it is built still hold true and there is still a good runway to go. Small adjustments would keep the ship sailing optimally towards their destination.

Whether you're in scenario 1 or 2, change cycles and reaction times have become shorter and shorter. It hits 100-year old organisations and 1-year old organisations alike.

We are in no way advocating that you should change your strategy like the seasons. For certain, you should not! In the face of internal and external change, then

• What would be your anchors? What is sacroscant or immutable?

• How often, beyond the annual work plan review, should you really be taking a harder mid-stream look at our strategy - what's working, what's not, and how the external environment has changed?

• What significant internal changes have occured or are about to occur that may call for a review of your strategy?

• When the strategy is "not working", is it a failure of commitment and management will? Does it lack organisational buy-in? Insufficient skills and know-how? Or is charge ahead 'because the boss said so' (no understanding)?

• What then is "working" about the strategy and must be defended? What's "not working" and calls for courage to stop?

• What must be added and at what cost?

At DPI, we are dead serious about application and real, actionable change. Beyond frameworks, case studies and a theoretical exercise, we do 1-days with client-partners that demonstrate, up-skill and provide the process tools to drive a productive and participatory review using your very own situations. We work with you to build scenarios, assess and converge on the best-balanced Strategic Option and scenario.

Don't waste precious time going through the motion. Find or codify a repeatable process that works for you and don't be afraid to iterate with some of the above points in mind.

The review process may prove that your strategy is right. Or, it may help you get it right at the sweet spot of it being both distinctly yours and distinctly relevant for the time and space before you. All the best!

Join us for a guided learn and apply workshop, and take the framework and tools back to your organisation, included with an optional post-workshop consult with DPI. (Funded for eligible charities professionals and volunteers). Upcoming dates:

• 4 Nov

• 16 Dec - register below!

• 16 jan

• 12 Feb

Register!