Strategy in a Changing World

Here at VMC, we’re all about simple, tangible advice, based on our extensive experience. With that in mind, here’s five things you should consider when setting strategy in such an ever-changing environment.

1. Involve the whole organisation

Buy-in from the whole company is essential, therefore it’s essential that everyone across the organisation is involved in some way at the outset. Whether its workshops, surveys, or other forms of engagement, the whole company needs to feel that they have a genuine voice in the process. Doing this well will give you different perspectives, harness the insight of your experts, and ensure that everyone owns the strategy together. Do it in a tokenistic manner, or not at all, and the opposite will be true.

2. Define the vision clearly

When defining your long term vision, avoid being constrained by your current position. It is all too easy to limit your ambition based on what you think is possible now, but the best strategies are bold and ambitious. Rather than asking, “what can we achieve in 3-5 years’ time?” - reframe the question to “it is the year 2029, and we have achieved our vision of X, what has had to happen for that to be true?”

Looking at the question this way avoids being constrained by current challenges, and allows you to define the 3-5 big things which would need to occur for you to achieve your ambition. Looking at these goals, and breaking each down further, gives you a much better sense of whether your ambition is feasible or not.

With the vision in place, everyone in the organisation should be crystal clear what that vision is, and what success would look like. Embed it in your communication, make sure its in everyone’s induction, and focus on it relentlessly.

3. Break down the vision into 3-5 big goals

As outlined above, if you have your long term ambition, and you know what would need to happen in order for that to be realised, you can get to work on understanding how those goals can be achieved. Harness the expertise of teams, asking them what would need to happen to achieve those goals. This may surface more questions than answers initially, but it’s an essential part of the process, not only for ensuring everyone remains part of the strategy, but for really and truly understanding what would need to happen to achieve those goals.

Let’s take an example - if we were to say we wanted to double the number of people our organisation helps, and improve their outcomes by 25%, over the next five years, we would quickly be able to draft a number of goals which we’d need to achieve in order for that vision to be realised. For argument’s sake, let’s say we need to grow our income by 15%, we need to lower our average client journey by 20%, and we need to increase the number of clients who self-serve by 20%.

Work with people across the organisation to understand what would need to happen to achieve those goals. Work hard on getting them to think and generate all sorts of ideas. The result of these sorts of workshops is a series of potential solutions, as well as a series of unanswered questions. For example, one question may be: how can we understand client behaviour better to ensure we’re matching our supply to the demand?

Looking at potential solutions, as well as tackling some of those unanswered questions, gives you decisions to make about where you deploy your resources, based on what you know now, to best achieve those big goals.

4. Be adaptable

Here’s the major thing which separates good organisations with great ones: the recognition that the long term vision may not change, but the way you achieve it might at any given moment. Let’s give a simple example: your vision is to get from London to Rome as quickly as possible without flying. You may plan your route meticulously, but if your train is delayed, you will need to adapt. You might need to take a bus, or take an alternative route altogether. It’s a simple example but the underlying point is essential; you have to be ready to adapt, and change your “route” as you learn more on your journey. Strategy is very much the same - you may simply learn more information as you go, that tells you that what you thought you knew before, is completely wrong. Or something externally may occur which means you have to change. The simple point is this; your end goal hasn’t changed, but your way of achieving it has.

What’s vital about this is that you are clear about this with the organisation from the outset, and from a cultural perspective, everyone is encouraged to take proactive steps towards the pursuit of the goals, being open about what they’ve learned, and where they think the organisation has it wrong. The open, ongoing dialogue will do wonders as you constantly check and re-assess your progress, which is only possible if you’re not paralysed by complexity, but proactive in the face of an ever-changing world.

5. Be open, honest, and repetitive

The culture alluded to above is vital if you’re to succeed in a changing world. The best organisations we’ve worked with are open about the fact that things change, and adapt quickly to the situation. They encourage proactive behaviour from their staff, accept the risk that mistakes will occur, and speak openly about how those mistakes are simply a chance to learn more information, and adapt accordingly. Nothing is more powerful than getting an organisation relentlessly pulling in the same direction in pursuit of its goals, and that’s only possible if everyone is absolutely clear what the strategy is. That requires it to be embedded in inductions, progress to be clear for everyone at any given moment, and for everyone to be clear how their goals relate directly to the company’s.

Are you trying to set a new strategy in a changing environment, or a refresh of your current? We can handle the process from start to finish with you, advise you from afar, or simply give you an expert view on how you can improve.

Get in touch with us for a discussion.