Organization Strategy

If you’re a CEO, you need to build the right top team to drive performance and speed up transformation. We help you:

• Clarify (and sometimes change) the work of the team
• Get the best out of your leaders
• Enable them to deliver on your strategy

To deliver your business strategy, you need an organization structure that aligns with your purpose, culture, and operating model. We help you:

• Align your leadership team around your vision
• Identify the organizational capabilities you need to execute your strategy
• Identify the gap between where your organization is today and where it needs to be
• Translate your strategy into an operating model, processes and organization structure, underpinned by your purpose and culture
• Create a practical implementation plan to make change happen

You need the right people in the right roles, doing the right work. We help you:

• Quickly understand what work you do, what work you might need to do and what skills you’re missing
• Understand and organize your work into Work & Career Architectures
• Connect work and talent through career pathing solutions
• Understand the job stretch requirements between legacy and future roles
• Organize work into pay levels to support pay equity and pay cost optimization

We help you align your people strategy with your business strategy and build the HR capability you need to put it into action. We help you:

• Develop people strategies that connect to the business strategy and help you adapt quickly to the unknown
• Future-proof your performance management processes
• Build an engaging employee experience, to equally target performance and wellbeing
• Design a strategic HR function that drives business change

We help you create a culture that works towards your organizational purpose and goals—not against them. We help you:

• Define the culture you need to achieve your goals
• Inspire change in leaders and create the conditions for them to succeed
• Design experiences that provoke mindset shifts and the desire to do things differently
• Align structure, systems and processes to make change happen and stick

It’s not just about sparking new behaviors—it’s about sustaining them. Our change management team works with you to:

• Assess your change needs
• Build a strategy, plan and governance process to drive change
• Design and deliver change communications and internal campaigns
• Inspire your people to change their own behavior
• Build your organization’s change capability
• Track and measure the results

Think of an organizational strategy as your business’s roadmap. It’s a comprehensive blueprint that defines how your business needs to allocate resources, manage its operations and respond to changes in the market to achieve your strategic goals.

A robust organizational strategy ensures you have the foundation for success: clear direction. The strategy should outline the goals you want to achieve, what actions you need to take to achieve those goals and what resources you need to make those goals a reality. Everyone can look at the strategy and understand how they play a role in the organization’s ultimate success.

With a cohesive organizational strategy, you can also ensure that resources are allocated effectively. Without a plan, organizations may not use resources as efficiently as possible. Different parts of the organization may be doing duplicative or unnecessary work while other teams are underutilized. A strategy balances resources, so you choose the right resources to do the right work at the right time. Setting defined priorities early on keeps resources on track and ensures businesses invest resources in the tasks and areas where they’ll have the greatest impact.

An organizational strategy can also improve an organization’s adaptability. Unlike what some leaders think, a strategy isn’t an inflexible, set-in-stone approach to change. Instead, the best strategies are flexible, allowing organizations to adapt to changes in the market and decide which opportunities are attractive and which to avoid. A strategy can also help organizations identify potential risks. By recognizing threats up front, organizations can create strategies to mitigate them. A proactive response plan helps organizations anticipate what resources they will need to respond to unanticipated events.

A successful organizational strategy that will guide an organization toward its goals consists of the following key components:

• Mission and vision: These statements, which outline an organization’s purpose, values, and long-term aspirations, are the foundation of an organizational strategy.
• Goals and objectives: A sound strategy points the organization toward reasonable goals. Effective organizational strategies consist of SMART goals: goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant to your mission and vision and time-bound.
• Analysis of the current state: Before you know where you’re going and chart a path to get there, you have to know where you’ve been. In other words, you need to understand your organization’s strengths and weaknesses as well as any internal and external opportunities and threats: these are the components of a SWOT analysis. Your SWOT analysis should consider your organization’s culture, resources, technology, competitors, customers and market trends.
• Action plan: You can’t have an effective organizational strategy without action. Outline a clear plan that defines the specific steps the organization must take to reach its goals. Each goal should establish a deadline, assign responsibility for tasks and set metrics to track progress.
• Resource allocation: Your strategy should also include a plan for allocating resources —including budget, staffing and technology — to support the action plan.
• Metrics: The strategy should identify the key performance metrics (KPIs) you will use to measure your progress and evaluate your success. You should monitor these metrics and adjust them as necessary as your strategy and goals shift.
• Communication plan: To ensure people comprehend your strategy and are aligned with your organization’s goals, include a clear communication plan. All stakeholders should understand the role they play in implementing your strategy. The plan should have a timeline for rolling out the changes and a way for you to monitor your progress.

Organizational effectiveness measures how well organizations achieve their goals. Management expert Peter F. Drucker came up with five key aspects of organizational effectiveness: customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength. To improve all five of these aspects of organizational effectiveness, organizations must align their people, processes and resources. The more effectively organizations become aligned, the more likely they are to flourish and grow.

You can measure an organization’s effectiveness in all five of Drucker’s areas by looking at how well an organization is performing in these categories:

• Meeting its goals and objectives: Effective organizations achieve their objectives in a timely, efficient manner.
• Using resources: Strong organizations optimize their resources, including their people, capital and technology, to achieve their goals.
• Adapting to change: Sound organizations can respond to changes in their external environment, including their industry and market. They shift their strategy and operations to match what is happening outside the company.
• Innovating: Effective organizations can stay competitive because they’re able to generate new ideas, products and processes so they can better meet customers’ changing needs.
• Managing risks: When an organization is effective, it can identify potential risks and take steps to mitigate them before they affect the organization or its results.
• Fostering a positive work environment: The most effective organizations foster a positive work environment that increases employee engagement, raising employee satisfaction and retention.

An organization — and the strategy of an organization — are only as effective as its people. Organizational effectiveness refers to an organization’s ability to achieve its goals, objectives, and mission and people are the driving force behind an effective organizational strategy.

Great companies are built by great people, regardless of how you measure it: in terms of delivering value to shareholders, surprising and delighting customers or having a positive effect on the world around you. The key for organizations, then, is to improve the quality of their leaders — and their people throughout the organization as a whole — through assessment, training and coaching.

People are responsible for carrying out the tasks that are necessary for the organization to function effectively. They develop products, provide services and manage day-to-day operations. They’re the source of creativity and innovation. They solve problems using their unique perspectives, ideas and experiences and deliver new solutions and approaches.

Every organization aspires to perform at its best. But few actually achieve their loftiest goals. If your organization is missing its targets, struggling to retain talent or falling behind the competition, you may need the services of an organizational strategy consulting firm.

Business strategy services can help businesses identify opportunities to become more successful in the following ways:

• Leverage their expertise and knowledge: Top organizational strategy consulting firms have a roster of leading consultants with experience in your industry. These industry experts can offer organizational leaders a fresh perspective on what’s happening in your business and diagnose the symptoms. They can also help you draft a strategy to better connect your goals with your people and processes.
• Deliver an objective assessment: Organizational strategy consultants can conduct an objective assessment of your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. A thorough SWOT analysis can help you identify areas for improvement and develop targeted strategies to shore up your weaknesses and take advantage of opportunities.
• Create a strategic plan: Business strategy services often include developing a comprehensive strategic plan that aligns with your organization’s goals, mission and vision. This customized plan can guide your decision-making process, resource and budget allocation and strategic priorities so you can chart your course to achieve your objectives.
• Lead change management initiatives: Professional consultants can guide organizations through structural changes, such as mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and process improvement. They can help leaders reduce the stress and frustration that often accompany change and minimize disruptions to your operation.
• Structure training and development: Organizational strategy consulting firms often deliver training and development programs designed to strengthen their workforce and leadership bench.
• Support the implementation of new initiatives: The overhaul required to match the new strategy of an organization can be overwhelming — and managing that change isn’t part of your leaders’ day job. Expert organizational strategy consultants can provide support as you implement new tools, structures and workflows to increase your chances of success of becoming a more strategic organization.