Creating an actionable but accessible strategy – Smarten it up with a bow tie...

Mike Zywina, Director at Lime Green, explains how to create a strategy that's detailed and specific enough to be actionable, but clear and accessible enough to be quickly understood.

When creating a strategy, it can feel hard to get the right balance in terms of length and detail.

On the one hand, you want it to be detailed and specific enough to be actionable. You want your staff to use your strategy to guide and shape their work, and your leadership to use it to measure progress and determine whether things are on track.

On the other hand, it needs to be clear and accessible enough to be quickly understood. You want anyone to be able to pick up your strategy and quickly understand what you’re aiming to do and why. This is vital if you want to build confidence in your work.

There’s an inherent tension here that often isn't acknowledged. We’re trying to cater for multiple audiences, with different needs, at the same time.

Your internal audiences (trustees, staff etc.) need detail. If the strategy can't serve as a compass for what they’re trying to achieve, what they should prioritise, and how they should approach difficult decisions, then it won’t feel relevant to them. They won’t refer to it. It’ll sit on a shelf gathering dust.

Your external audiences (service users, supporters, funders etc.) need brevity. They want to understand your big-picture vision and approach – if the strategy can't communicate that in two minutes, or if they’re confronted by a wall of text, they’ll switch off.

It’s a challenge that charity leaders are very familiar – how can you please everyone, when they all want different things?

Fortunately, the strategy dilemma is one that I think can be solved...

It’s time to smarten up your strategy with a bow tie

The left side: the strategy process

Here is everything that went into creating your strategy. It’s the hard work that made everything possible. The sweat and the tears (hopefully not any blood, though I’ve been in strategy meetings that have come close).

Behind every bold vision and brilliant decision, there’s a whole lot of stakeholder consultation, analysis of the landscape, competitor research, and decision-making workshops.

This is simultaneously the most important part of the strategy process, and the least interesting part once you’re done.

But it does have ongoing value. It’s important to document your process, because this is the evidence base for all your big decisions – why you committed to certain objectives, why you decided not to do certain things.

There are certain points when every organisation doubts their strategy. Perhaps circumstances have changed, new opportunities have arisen, new leadership have joined. You're wondering whether to change course.

This is when it’s vital to remind people (or explain to them for the first time) the thinking that underpinned your approach. Recalling your key methods, observations and conclusions can provide the confidence needed to stick to your strategy, or the context needed to change it where necessary.

When I’m working on a strategy, I’ll always make sure there’s a lengthy but clear report that documents all the work we did to lay the foundations for our decision-making. 95% of people will never read it again, and that’s ok. But when someone needs to reach for it, it's there.

The central knot: your concise, published strategy

This part is centre stage for a reason. It’s the main event, and a thing of beauty when you get it right.

Your published strategy is what everyone will read – it should be a summary of your main objectives and activities, your intended outcomes, and the big picture of why this is important. You should include your vision, mission and values, especially if you’ve updated them as part of your strategy*.

It's also helpful to highlight any key internal objectives that underpin your strategy, such as improving collaborative working, refining impact measurement or investing in fundraising. This helps to make you accountable ands build trust in your organisation.

But the key word here is summary. You want everyone to be able to understand it without getting confused or bored. Challenge yourself to keep this part to 1-2 pages if you can. I’m a big fan of presenting your published strategy as an infographic or chart, rather than paragraphs of text.

Use clear, concise, action-orientated words. Avoid jargon and acronyms. Ask key people (staff, service users, partner organisations etc.) to provide honest feedback on whether they understand and feel excited by it. It may be helpful to create a longer version initially then edit it down across a few drafts.

*I have some issues with the way that charities typically explain their mission and particularly values, but that’s a blog topic for another day.

The right side: your full, internal strategy

A 1-2 page strategy may look exciting. But on its own, it's unlikely to achieve much.

Creating an internal strategy version will provide the full picture: detailed objectives, planned activities, timeline, key resources and infrastructure needed. This is the manual that helps your team to turn your strategy into reality: what they need to focus on doing, or changing.

This will be longer and more practical than the published strategy, but still less detailed than an operational plan. It will probably detail a more prescriptive approach for Year 1, then a more high-level plan for future years – this ensures your strategy feels actionable but not too restrictive.

You should still aim for clear and concise language, format it nicely, and avoid jargon. People must be able to find what they need, and feel clearer and better after reading it.

This full, internal version is actually what makes your 1-2 page published strategy possible. By putting all the important detail needed for internal use in a separate place, you can create a much clearer, more concise external version.

Why use the strategy bow tie approach?

This a great way to create a strategy that caters for multiple audiences with different needs, giving them varying levels of detail. It enables you to produce something that's easy to both understand and implement.

After all, what is the point of a strategy?

We want something that holds us accountable, that we can measure progress against. We want it to serve as a guide for our team, helping them to understand what they’re aiming to achieve, what they should generally prioritise, and how they should approach tricky decisions along the way. We want to be able to retrace our steps in moments of crisis or doubt.

We don't want a lengthy tome that nobody ever dares open, but neither do we want something that feels too flimsy to be relevant.

The bow tie approach will help you to achieve what you need from a strategy, while removing this tension.

Is your organisation about to develop a new strategy? I'd love to have a chat about your plans and explore how we could help.

GET IN TOUCH