Co-Creating Strategy
It’s strategy planning season!
Since it’s also Halloween season, the bad news first: According to some studies, 60–90% of strategic plans never fully launch. A key reason for this is an over-reliance on the external landscape and disconnect from internal organizational reality. Often, the problem, organizational capabilities, immovable pressures, or cultural landscape are not fully understood.
As Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath points out, strategy by definition bears uncertainty.
Now, the good news: We can reduce the risk of failure by applying a more inclusive, co-creative approach that considers a multitude of perspectives.
So, how might we co-create a strategy that’s both, human-centered and business focused and that combines rigor and creativity?
Elements of Strategy Co-Creation
“Strategy represents the logic that connects analysis and planning.” — Jim Kalbach
These are a few questions to explore as we co-create the inputs (analysis), the design, and the outputs (planning) of strategy.
Analysis
- How will we explore what problem we need to solve with a refined or new strategy? Who needs to be involved?
- What quantitative AND qualitative data points need to be analyzed and how will we co-create and visualize insights?
- Who will impact or be affected by this strategy and how will we include their perspective into design and planning?
Design
- How might we articulate a clear vision of a destination far enough out so we can imagine it, but achievable enough that people can carry it out? What will it look like, why is it better than today, and how will it positively impact key stakeholders?
- What is the best route for our organization to get to our vision while considering aspirations as well as challenges (e.g., how company culture might impact the strategy)?
- How might we acknowledge, honor, and integrate aspects of previous strategic efforts?
- How will we iterate on the initial design of our strategy by running small tests of our high-risk assumptions?
Planning
- How will we realistically integrate strategy execution into the operational day to day activities of our employees? [Note: A recent study found that 76% of employees spend less than three hours per week on strategic work.]
- How might we co-create and visualize a roadmap with clear roles and responsibilities to help everyone in the organization understand where they fit in?
- How will we measure success at an individual and team level to empower our employees to plan their work while making space for autonomy in how they might achieve the goal?
- How might we tell the story of our new strategy to various audiences to engage them in a journey they would want to take?
Your Turn: What are some other questions we should ask that might nudge us toward more human-centric strategy analysis, design, and planning?
How might we apply these strategy co-creation principles in an HR context?
My Talent Tales interview with HR Leader Elles Skony who shares her approach for crafting HR strategy might serve as an initial primer.
And these are a few examples of how I have applied strategy co-creation principles in an HR context:
Co-Creating Future of Work Strategy
Over the last two years, I have facilitated the co-creation of future of work strategies in partnership with organizations’ executive leadership and HR teams. One of the most powerful elements of the process have been the empathy interviews the executives conducted with employees to identify pain points, needs, and wants around ways of working. The conversations provided leaders with insights they needed to make human-centered decisions and the employees felt valued because the executive team cared about their input.
Co-Creating DEIB Strategy
I have partnered with companies’ DEIB leaders to integrate equity and inclusion perspective into HR strategy, instead of being an add-on to the function. The resource and tools we created for the #HRvsRacism community often served as a starting point for self-reflection and co-creation. For individual leader/department DEIB action planning, I customized the Objectives & Key Results (OKR) framework to ensure alignment to the overall strategy and as a collaborative way to track progress towards actions.
Co-Creating Talent Strategy
“This was the most impactful and fun workshop I have attended in my seven years with this company,” was the feedback an HR leader shared with me at a recent talent strategy design session.
A few reasons why this experience was so powerful were that all leaders across HR were invited to co-create the company’s talent strategy, not just the talent management team. Each got to share insights from their perspective. Another was that the customer/employee experience was centered, both in value mapping as well as strategy design and action planning — an eye-opening experience for many on the HR team.
FOR DISCUSSION: How might we consistently immerse our (HR) leadership team in strategy and long-term thinking to hone their strategic thinking skills? [Note: According to Harvard Business School, 85% of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy and 50% spend no time at all.]
[NOTE: This article was originally published as part of the Design Thinking for HR LinkedIn Newsletter.]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Design Thinking for HR is a biweekly LinkedIn newsletter that aims to inspire HR professionals to experiment with the human-centered design framework. The newsletter is curated by Nicole Dessain who is an employee experience consultant, design thinking workshop facilitator, and Northwestern University instructor. Nicole is currently writing her first book about Design Thinking for HR. Join the Early Readers’ Community here.
