Supporting service
Strategic management
A strategy is a set of choices: where the organization will compete or serve, what it will stop doing, and how it will know it is working. We help a leadership team make those choices, write them on a page, and review them on a date.
When it is needed
- A leadership team that agrees on the vision and disagrees, quietly, on what to do first.
- An organization with a strategic plan on file that nobody refers to when a real decision is made.
- A company that has grown by saying yes to every opportunity, and now carries more lines of work than it can run well.
Why it matters
Most strategies fail long before execution. They list ambitions instead of choices, so every project can claim to serve them and nothing is ever declined. The document is approved, and the organization carries on as before.
A strategy that works is short enough to be remembered, specific enough to say no with, and reviewed often enough to stay true. It names the few things that matter most this year, the measures that show progress, and who owns each one.
How we run it
The five stages of Fit-to-Maturity, and what each one does for this service. Read the method
Short cycles, each checked by your decision-maker, until it matches what you expect.
- 01
Map
We read the plans and the numbers that exist, interview the leadership team one by one, and set out where they agree, where they do not, and what the organization actually spends its time on.
- 02
Fit
A strategy on one page: the choices, the ones declined, and a few priorities with an owner and a measure each, sized to what the organization can act on.
DesignPut it to workYou check itAdjust
Your decision-makerOn your side, with the final say. Accepts or redirects each step.Short cycles, each checked by your decision-maker, until it matches what you expect.
- 03
Run
The priorities go onto the leadership meeting's agenda and into the portfolio. We sit in on the first reviews and correct the measures that turn out to measure the wrong thing.
- 04
Hold
The leadership team runs the quarterly review on its own; we read the record and coach from the side.
- 05
Revisit
Once a year, or when the market or the ownership changes: which choices still hold, which priority is done, and what replaces it.
What you are left with
- A strategy on one page, with the choices declined
- Priorities, each with an owner and a measure
- A quarterly strategy review: its agenda and its record
- A line from each priority to the projects in the portfolio
Samples, shaped to each engagement.
The flagships it supports
- Flagship 01
Corporate governance
Decision rights, a board or committee rhythm, and the few documents that make decisions visible and followed.
Scores the dimension Decisions and governance
- Flagship 02
PMO and portfolio management
A PMO set up and started to serve your portfolio rather than police it, a portfolio you can fund and staff, and project management when you need it.
Scores the dimension Portfolio and PMO
The other supporting services
Organization development
How the organization grows its capacity to work and to change: structure, roles, teams and culture, developed with the people inside it rather than imposed on them.
Human capital management
The roles, skills and capacity a practice needs, and an honest view of the gap between them and the people in place.
Corporate transformation
A change to what the organization is: its structure, its ownership of decisions, its operating model, run as a sequence of changes rather than one program.
Digital transformation
The strategy, governance and change side of putting technology at the center of how the organization works, with the technology delivered through our partners.