Strategy, Change and Organisation Development

Every leadership act, decision and communication is strategic – or not. Leaders do strategy every day insofar as they are moving the organisation forward towards its goals and positioning it to be sustainable in its wider environment.

Leaders are judged by their decision making. Particularly their decisions about strategy, direction and priorities.

Our approach to strategy development creates clarity, confidence and commitment. The strategy provides a framework for operational business plans, individual and team performance objectives as well as day to day decision making and choices.

Participation in the strategic planning process is developmental for the leadership team and it creates ownership and commitment. Clarity about future direction is motivating for staff, particularly at a time of uncertainty.

We offer a range of tools to support strategy development including

  • Future mapping, vision building and scenario planning
  • Clarifying the foundations of organisational purpose, mandate and values
  • Environmental analysis tools such as SWOT, PESTEL, Force Field analysis, understanding drivers for changes, stakeholder engagement and profiling
  • Organisational “fitness” analysis using a systems approach and data generated by measures such as customer and staff surveys, performance assessment, culture mapping and reviewing governance arrangements
  • Processes to analysis the gap between current reality and the vision state, determine strategic priorities, set goals and plan actions

The test of any strategy is its “implementability”

This involves change management and organisational development. Taking account of the human side of strategy implementation is critical. Organisations don’t change – people do.

We help with the change management implications of implementing the strategy. This may involve the creation of an internal organisation development plan.

The aim is to build the internal capability which is necessary to deliver the strategy or to reshape the internal systems and structures to better utilise scarce resources.

Organisation Development encompasses a range of tools and techniques. It is “a whole organisation approach” defined as ‘a planned and systematic approach to enabling sustained organisation performance through the involvement of its people’. CIPD (2009)

The emphasis is on organisational learning through planning, action, evaluation and mainstreaming the positive interventions and using the experience to improve the organisational planning process in the future.

In contrast to traditional consultancy approaches, we help plan Organisational Development interventions which are led and managed by internal change teams who are accountable to the executive senior team.

The internal change projects are determined by the organisational fitness analysis which will diagnose the areas which need to be developed if the strategy is to be achieved. Typically this can be in areas such as

  • Leadership development
  • Creating a strong customer oriented culture
  • Streamlining and simplifying work processes and practice
  • Better utilisation of technology and other job support enablers
  • Cross boundary working to create seamless and customer focused work processes

We offer client experience a wide range of methods to assist in this process. These include process improvement tools, project management, change management tools, collaborative working and culture change approaches.

Recent examples

Belfast City Council, Ballymena Borough Council, Cavan County Council, the Ombudsman for Children’s Office, Ireland.