What the problem is
An organisation shows what it really prioritises in two places: the agenda of its committee and the annual objectives of its senior managers. Almost no strategy makes it into either.
The consequence is familiar and it repeats itself whatever the sector: a well-made plan, approved and published, and six months later nobody could say what has changed in the week's work. It is not a problem of will, nor of the quality of the plan. It is four specific mechanisms, and all four can be dismantled.
- The strategy lives in a document and the organisation lives in its calendarThe committee is colonised by the urgent, the recurrent and whatever has to be approved. Strategy gets the last fifteen minutes, with everyone tired and the meeting already long. If it has no protected space, it does not exist.
- A priority is not a projectA priority is a direction; a project has an owner, a scope, milestones and a moment when someone has to decide whether to continue, change course or stop. Between the two there is a piece of translation work that almost nobody does, and without it the priority evaporates as soon as the room empties.
- The middle managers were not in the roomThey are the ones who have to change what they do on Monday, and they arrive at the strategy with annual objectives set before it existed. Deployment does not die at the top: it dies in the layer that has to carry it with the same amount of time as always.
- There is no rhythmThe review happens when somebody remembers, which is the operational definition of not happening. Without a fixed date and a short format, reviewing competes with the urgent every time, and loses every time.
What it means for a project to pull
Not every important project pulls. Pulling means dragging the organisation along behind it, and that depends on three conditions you can check before you start.
- CONDITION 1It forces decisions in several areas at onceA project that fits entirely inside one directorate gets delivered without changing anything. One that cuts across two or three forces conversations that had gone years without happening, and those conversations are half the value.
- CONDITION 2It has a visible early winSomething you can verify in the first few months and show inside and outside. Without it, the project walks into the eighteen-month blind spot and loses its backing before it produces results.
- CONDITION 3Its owner outranks what it has to moveHanding a cross-cutting project to someone who cannot summon the units involved is scheduling its failure in advance, with a name attached.
What gets installed
Four parts. None of them is a report, and all four are still running when I leave.
The year's calendar of decisions
Which strategic decisions have to be taken, who takes them and by when, anchored to the windows that already exist: the budget cycle, the board calendar, the funding-framework negotiation, the year-end close. It is the deliverable that pays off most and the one almost nobody has.
The portfolio of projects that pull
Each priority turned into a project sheet: name, rationale, general and specific objectives, remit and scope, work strands, governance, indicators, milestones and impact. With an owner, and with the points at which someone will have to decide whether it continues, changes or stops.
The redesign of the agenda
Separating deciding from informing, a protected slot for strategy at the start and not at the end, and a rule of entry: no strategic item gets on the agenda without an owner and without the specific decision being asked for. It is the cheapest of the four changes and the one with the greatest effect.
The watch board, switched on
The signals that tell you early that something is moving, each one with a person responsible, a threshold and a real date in the committee's calendar. It is the part that turns a decorative board into a mechanism, and it has a section of its own further down.
The watch board, switched on
In the strategy contrast the room builds a board of early warning signals. There I say, and I stand by it, what that board does not do:
It watches nothing by itself: it is a photograph of the day of the workshop, an indicator changes state because somebody goes in and changes it, and nobody reopens a workshop session five months later. The only thing that survives is the two right-hand columns (who is responsible and the review date), and they survive in that person's diary, not in a tool.
If nobody leaves the room with a date in the committee's calendar, the board is an ornament. I would rather say it here than sell it as an alert system it is not.
This service is exactly the work of turning that board into something alive, and it comes down to three unspectacular and very effective things: putting a person's name on every signal, putting the review date into a real calendar, and leaving behind a fifteen-minute review format that fits inside a meeting that already exists.
With foresight and without it
The board does not depend on having run the foresight session. It depends on there being something underneath which sits an assumption that can fail. Only one column changes:
- With foresightEach signal hangs from one of the four scenarios, and the question the board answers is which future are we drifting towards?
- Without foresightEach signal hangs from the critical assumption of a traction project, and the question is is what we took for granted when we decided this still true?
The six columns are the same in both cases (indicator, what it is a signal of, threshold, who watches it, review date and status). That is why this service works just as well after a contrast as it does on a strategic plan the organisation already had before it met me.
How it is done
This service is long on purpose. The contrast is short because its job is to decide; this one is long because its job is to sustain. It runs across a year, with bounded sessions and a withdrawal date agreed from the start.
- Translating the prioritiesBack-office work on what the organisation has already decided, and one session with the leadership team to turn it into a portfolio: which projects pull, which ones fail the three conditions and what is deliberately left out.
- The calendar of decisionsThe real windows of the year are mapped and every pending decision is placed in them. This is where it turns out that half of what was agreed does not fit in the calendar the organisation already has, and the choosing has to be done again.
- The agenda and the cadenceRedesign of the committee's format and of the rule of entry for strategic items, and agreement on the review rhythm. It is tested live in a real session, not in a document.
- Taking it down to middle managersSessions with the people who have to carry each traction project, to translate it into what changes in their week and to align it with their annual objectives. Without this phase, deployment is an agreement between senior managers.
- Quarterly reviewsA bounded number of sessions across the year, in the short format already installed. I take part, but the organisation runs them from the second one on.
- WithdrawalThe last session is there to check that the mechanism works without me and to put in writing who holds each part. It is in the contract from day one.
What comes out
- The year's calendar of decisionsWith the real windows, the people responsible and the deadlines. It is a one-page document, and it goes up where it can be seen.
- The sheets for the projects that pullOne per project, with the full structure and the decision points marked.
- The committee's standard agendaWith the separation between deciding and informing, and the rule of entry for strategic items.
- The watch board, switched onWith a person responsible, a threshold and a date on every line, and with those dates in real calendars.
- The review protocolWhat gets looked at, in what order, in fifteen minutes, and what happens when a signal trips.
- The map of who holds what at the endThe withdrawal document: which part is left in whose hands when the engagement ends.
What makes it different
I don't do the follow-up
The moment a consultant does the follow-up, the organisation stops doing it, and ends up paying for an expensive project office with no authority. I install the mechanism, stay while the rhythm settles, and withdraw on a date.
This service does last
The contrast and the redesign are short on purpose. This one cannot be: changing a committee's agenda and its managers' objectives happens across a year or it does not happen. I say it here so that nobody discovers it in the third meeting.
It works on the calendar, not on the structure
There is no reorganisation, no new org chart, no tool to buy. The work is done on the meetings that already exist and on the objectives that are already set every year.
It works on decisions already taken
If the strategy has not chosen yet, this is not what you need: what you need first is a contrast. Deploying an ambivalence produces activity, not traction.
What isn't being done gets named
The reviews name the stalled projects and the decisions that have not been taken, in those words. A follow-up that rounds off the gaps is a follow-up that hands them on intact to the next quarter.
If the chief executive delegates this, it doesn't work
A committee's agenda is changed only by whoever chairs it. That is not a recommendation: it is the condition of entry.
Who it works for
- Industry and corporationsWhen the plan is approved and the investment committed, and the committee still spends its time on the usual things.
- Large universities and R&D centresWhen the strategic plan sits alongside a very distributed structure and there is no mechanism aligning the rectorate, the centres and the departments.
- Public administrationWhen the calendar that rules is the budget calendar and the declared priorities do not reach that window in time.
- Organisations that have already run a contrastWhen a watch board exists and it has to be turned into a mechanism with owners and dates.
How to commission it
What your organisation puts in
- Whoever chairs the committeePresent, not represented. It is the one condition without which I do not take the engagement.
- A strategy already decidedWith priorities chosen, even if nobody has translated them yet. If the choosing has not happened, the work you need is a different one.
- Access to the real calendarThe committee's, the board's and the budget cycle's. Without them, the calendar of decisions is a desk exercise.
- The middle managers, onceThe people who will carry each traction project, in one session to take it down to them. No more than that is needed, but that one is.
- A willingness for the reviews to name what is stalledA committee that only wants to hear what is moving does not need this work, it needs a report.
How it gets agreed
The scope and the terms are set in a conversation beforehand, based on the number of traction projects, the size of the committee and whether taking it down to middle managers needs one session or several. Every engagement is quoted on that basis, and the withdrawal date is agreed before we start.