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Strategy block

Strategy block is a painful condition, affecting most organisations at some point. The leadership find themselves unable to navigate a clear way forward.  Perhaps the result of having got dependent over the years on particular sources of income, and then found they have been cut; or the organisation has not kept pace with change; or is madly pursuing funding for funding’s sake; or there are different visions among the leading people. The symptoms include mission drift, despair, negativity, management stress, romanticising the past, hankering the return of these supposed halcyon days. See this recipe as an antidote!

Serves – any organisation
Preparation – the time to recognise that “Strategy Block” is affecting your organisation; then the realisation that you need to do something about it
Cooking time – 4 weeks approximately

Ingredients

  • Your Mission and Vision
  • Current activity
  • Evaluation
  • Group consultation
  • Independent facilitator
  • Fundraising options
  • Internal Consultation
  • External Consultation
  • SWOT analysis
  • PEST analysis
  • A Competitor analysis
  • Your leadership

Method

  • Take your organisation’s Mission and Vision and compare it with your current activities. Are you carrying out activity that goes beyond your Mission and Vision, or is your Mission and Vision not being fully delivered by your activities?
  • Depending on your answer, carry out an evaluation to decide if you should be altering your current activities or amending your Mission and Vision.
  • The evaluation process should involve: carrying out a SWOT analysis (a structured way of identifying the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats associated with your organisation); a PEST analysis (a framework for identifying macro-environmental Political, Economic, Social and Technological factors that are considered to affect your organisation now or in the near future analysis); a competitor analysis – that is identifying any closest competitors and considering whether they do anything better than you, if so how and why; an external consultation – by getting in touch with your stakeholders, service users, the community you serve, others in your network– to get their view of your organisation, its current and potential activity; taking a hard look at your leadership –would there be benefits if the leadership could gain experience in a different setting for a period, then come back with new ideas, or maybe it’s time for a permanent change – are new people needed with new ideas?
  • Don’t do all this alone – carry out an internal group consultation on this subject with Trustees, staff, volunteers. People may be inclined to be more honest about their views if you use an independent facilitator or researcher. A joint meeting may be useful, preferably outside of the normal work environment (e.g. an Away Day)
  • The next stage is to decide on a timetable for change (if the need for any change is identified) and how you implement it.
  • This may involve a decision on when to withdraw from undertaking any activity and what processes are required to do this, and/or whether to start or re-start any activity. Of course, more hard work follows in order to implement these changes, e.g. managing change, fundraising et al

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