Strategy

Image credit: Tim Peterson on Unsplash

Strategy is about closing gaps. Gaps between what we are experiencing now–whether internally or in our external work with communities and movements–and what we want to experience. Please take in this description from the renowned strategist, Roger Martin:

"A new strategy seeks to close the gap by means of a new set of choices. By definition, this needs to be a different set of choices, or it would fail entirely to close the gap that has been produced by the current set of choices. Because strategy is what you do not what you say, that different set of choices need to be manifested in different actions. Otherwise, there is no reason to believe that there will be any progress toward eliminating the gap. To summarize, strategy needs to produce a new set of choices that translates into action and, by doing so, eliminates the problematic gap produced by the existing set of choices."

As such, organizational strategy transcends positions, job descriptions, functional departments, and budget line items. It’s bigger, more cross-cutting, and more unifying than any of those things. It's the primary source of both alignment and accountability across all of an organization's work.

Without compelling strategy, we are unmoored; mistrust and conflict ensue as people inevitably make conflicting assumptions about what to do and employ divergent methods to do it. That’s why strategy is the centerpiece of organizational design as we define it.

How does it work in the JustOrg Design application?

Each organizational Strategy is captured and updated in the application. Strategies should no longer be kept in disparate documents and PPT decks to which few people have access.

Creating a Strategy involves articulating:

1. Strategy Name

2. Strategy Challenge to be explicit about the gap the organization is working to close

3. Strategy Approach to offer people guidance and guardrails in thinking about how to activate the strategy

4. Strategic Priorities to offer time-bound actions that leadership envisions the organization accomplishing in the near term to activate the strategy

JoD INSIGHT: As you can see above, there is a great emphasis in JustOrg Design on making organizational strategy clear and actionable. It is only with this clarity that alignment and conscious, collective iteration can flow. People and teams cannot be expected to activate strategies that leadership has not taken its own time to define and align around. Indeed this is a great source of misalignment and conflict in justice-committed organizations. At the same time, and very importantly, Strategies can and should be updated as learning emerges and dynamics change; keeping Strategies in a version-controlled, cloud-based application–not a static document–is critical.

Once a Strategy and its related Priorities are active, teams across the organization will be able to associate their work to them. The following items can be associated directly with a strategy or a priority:

1. Table (upon creation, a Table can be charged with particularly activating one or more organizational strategies)

2. Table Action (anything a Table completes on its own work plan can be associated with a strategy or priority)

3. Table Decision (anything a Table decides in the course of advancing its work can be associated with a strategy or priority)

The associations above are absolutely critical; they allow the organization to aggregate all the actions and decisions made across teams to activate its Strategies and Priorities. This data creates shared intelligence about where the organization is making progress and where it will need to adapt and course correct. In the form of aways-current reports, they are vital sources of reflection and decision-making for leadership teams and boards.