Strategy Development

As former founders and C-level executives, we’ve been tempted by frameworks like OKRs as the solution to not having a clear direction as much as our clients have. You write down three things, they trickle down to each department and every team, and presto. Direction is set.

Until priorities at the top change, seemingly out of the blue and at random. Teams are left wondering why this quarter priorities are so different from last, why there seems to be a shift every other week. They don’t understand how what they're doing helps move the needle. They constantly need to shift priorities, abandoning efforts

All of this leaves morale at the very bottom. People will be left feeling like nothing they can do truly matters, because things are either shifting so quickly or because they don’t know the context of why something is important.

When there are no clear priorities, everything is equally important and nothing ever really gets done. People work on too many things, either shipping very rarely or only incomplete things.

Our approach

We can help you and your team to identify key focus areas for your business and turn that into a compelling and actionable strategy. Our approach to strategy development fosters participation and insights from across the organization. We’re confident that a set of diverse perspectives and inputs from the folks closest to the work will yield the best results.

Our belief is that a strategy should be simple. Two pages or less. Anything beyond that is a plan. Two pages or less are easy to understand, easy to parse, easy to go back to whenever it’s unclear whether something should be prioritized or not.

We generally work in this framework, where we can do the work either remotely or in-person.

1. We get a lay of the land in your organization through interviews and surveys that have been known to get straight to the essence. What are the current challenges? What are unearthed opportunities that aren’t being priorities? What’s working, what isn’t? What’s holding the organization back? Are there misalignments?
2. We work with you to turn the data into a simple and compelling strategy as well as a set of key priorities for your organization. No big frameworks, no ambiguous language, no long documents. Simple, approachable, easy to understand. That’s our mantra when it comes to strategy.
3. We follow up with you regularly, working with your leadership team to assess progress against the strategy and create a space to discuss whether the company is moving in the right direction or whether something needs correction. Strategy isn’t a one-time thing, it requires constant attention to bring it back into people’s focus.

Think we can help?

Want to learn more about our approach and how we could help? Get in touch!