Strategy Implementation Planning
Planning how to put your strategy into action, so it shows up in everyday work.
You've agreed a new strategy, and now it's time to put it into practice. Before it goes out to everyone, it helps to plan how it'll get there. What does it mean for each team? Who decides what? And how will teams work on it together?
Strategy implementation planning helps you make that plan. We work alongside your leaders to map out how the strategy will reach every team, and how you'll keep it on track once it's under way. Your people know how your organisation really works, so we build the plan with them. That way it fits how you already run, and it's theirs from the start.
When it might help
People often come to us at moments like these.
The situation | How it might help |
|---|---|
You've just agreed a new strategy | Plans how it will reach every team, before it goes out. |
You'd like every team to see where they fit | Helps each team see how its work connects to where you're heading. |
The strategy asks teams to work together in new ways | Agrees shared priorities and handovers between teams from the start, so the work joins up. |
You'd like decisions to sit closer to the work | Makes it clear who decides what, so people can get on with it. |
You want the strategy to stay alive all year | Builds a simple rhythm of check-ins, so you keep coming back to it, not only at planning time. |
You'll need to choose where time and money go | Links the strategy to budgets and people's time, and agrees a fair way to choose when priorities clash. |
What we'd work on together
There are six parts to planning how a strategy gets into the work. Each one matters on its own, but they work best together, so we look at all six and how they connect.
Seeing the connection
Everyone can see how their work links to the strategy. It's the simplest part, and the one everything else builds on.
Goals for each team
The strategy is turned into a few clear goals for each team. Teams help shape their own goals, rather than having them handed down. A small number of measures then show whether things are moving.
Who decides what
It's clear which decisions sit where, and how much room teams have to act without checking first. Leaders get more time for the big questions, and teams can move faster.
Working across teams
A lot of strategy lives in the places where work passes from one team to another. We help teams agree shared priorities and how they'll hand work over, so it joins up.
A regular rhythm
A simple pattern of meetings where you look at how the strategy is going and adjust. It keeps the strategy alive through the year, rather than only at planning time.
Where time and money go
The strategy is linked to budgets and to people's time. We also agree a fair way to choose when two priorities clash. We work on this with your finance and planning leads.
How it works
- A first conversation - we talk about your strategy, where you're heading, and what you'd like it to change.
- Making the strategy easy to act on - before anything goes to teams, we help your leaders turn the strategy into a small number of clear goals.
- Planning it together - we run sessions with your leaders and teams to work through the six parts. You bring what you know about how things really work. We bring ideas from other organisations and check nothing important is missed.
- Handing it over - we walk through the finished plan with you: what it settles, what it leaves open on purpose, and the first few steps. Then we make sure your leaders feel ready to put it into practice and adjust it as they go.
The thinking behind it
People tend to follow a plan they helped make. They understand why it's shaped the way it is, and they can see it fits how the work really goes. So we build it with your people, rather than for them.
We also give working across teams as much care as the line from top to bottom. When researchers asked thousands of managers what made a strategy hardest to deliver, working across teams came up almost as often as getting everyone lined up behind it (Harvard Business Review, 2015).
What you'll have at the end
- A clear plan for getting the strategy into the work, covering all six parts and specific enough to start using straight away.
- A calendar for the year, showing when you'll check in on the strategy, who's involved and who decides.
- Something your leaders own, because they helped build it.
- The confidence to adjust it yourselves as things change.
Where this fits
Strategy implementation planning is often the first step once a new strategy is agreed. Some organisations start with a strategic alignment assessment, to see how well strategy reaches the work today. Once the plan is ready, some put it in place themselves. Others ask us to help with the strategy execution itself, through our strategy implementation support.
Common questions
Do we need a finished strategy first?
It helps to have your main direction agreed. If some parts are still taking shape, we can help turn them into clear goals as part of the work.
How is this different from the strategic alignment assessment?
The assessment looks at how well strategy reaches the work today. Strategy implementation planning works out how your strategy will reach it from here. Some people start with the assessment, but you don't have to.
Does it cover our budgets and measures?
Yes, at the level of principles. We work with your finance and planning leads to link the strategy to where money and time go, and to choose a few useful measures. Your own teams keep running the budgets and reports.
How long does it take, and what does it cost?
It depends on the size of your organisation and how many people you'd like involved. We'll agree a timeline and a clear price with you before anything starts.
Strategy should be the golden thread running through every decision, every team, every day. We help you create the conditions where that happens - so strategy is felt everywhere, not filed somewhere.
A clear read of how far your strategy travels - from the top team's picture of it to what the middle and the edge can actually act on.
The Strategy Deployment Programme takes your strategy implementation plan and deploys it across the organisation: the breakthrough objectives cascaded and negotiated level by level, the budgets and operations pointed at the priorities, the strategic-initiative portfolio delivered, and a strategy-review rhythm keeping it all moving. By the end the strategy is the way the organisation runs, not a document, and your leaders are running that machinery themselves.
Staying on Strategy keeps your deployed strategy fit and improving, run by your own leaders and teams. You test the strategy against results on a regular rhythm, re-align priorities as conditions change, and reallocate funds and attention onto what matters now. We build that rhythm into your people so they run it themselves, and you can keep us on a lighter ongoing cadence as an outside pair of eyes if you want one.
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