Keep it to four pages!
Far too many strategies become lengthy documents bursting with details.
Good strategy is high-level and aspirational. It has a “kernel” or “heart” that is easy for people to remember and get behind.
In our strategy and transformation work, we often start by talking about aroha.
Aroha is a Māori word that is commonly translated as love.
But aro means to pay attention to; and ha refers to the essence.
Aroha is about finding the essence of what truly drives you. It’s about deeply understanding your ‘who’ and ‘why’ as an organisation.
Sarah Manley - Deputy Director, Community Health and Engagement at Hato Hone St John - approached us to help with their strategy development in late 2021.
St John is New Zealand’s largest charity and they provide a range of community health programmes around the country. Almost all of these have developed out of volunteers stepping up and taking the lead in their communities.
The directorate’s previous strategy was a 70+ page document, filled with detailed targets and goals. The level of detail was overwhelming at times and the aroha - the essence - was unclear.
Sarah wanted somebody to guide the process who:
Understood what community engagement could look like
Could quickly interpret St John’s internal language
Could help them to navigate the internal relationships that would be key to the team’s impact
Could translate their aspirations into something clear, compelling and concise.
In our early discussions, one team member said that success for them would be a four-page strategy document. We took that to heart!
Creating space for brave conversations
“Even without an induction to the complexity of our organisation, you’ve been marvellous at helping us navigate that. “You’ve been magicians at times, seriously. There’s a real art to helping create that safe space.”
Strategy development must bring people along for the journey. How you do it says just as much as any words in a document. It’s not strategic if you don’t engage widely; it’s just a business plan.
In this case, Sarah’s team had already led a series of discussions inside St John and with other partner organisations.
So we began by setting set up a strategy working group to guide the process. This included various members from Sarah’s team and the rest of the organisation.
And over the course of four months, we facilitated a range of conversations. Some of these were within the directorate; others were with St John staff; some were with regional trust boards and volunteers.
Throughout these conversations, we kept our ears open for the conversations that were not being had. For the conversations that made people a little uncomfortable.
We’ve learned that it’s often those uncomfortable conversations where breakthroughs can occur.
“At times I was unsure if we were talking about the right thing. But then I would see the impact in between conversations. Or I would realise that it’s just that I’ve been finding a conversation uncomfortable as you’ve been pushing us to go deeper and be more authentic.”
These brave conversations surfaced two key concepts.
First, St John’s work in community health must start with recognising Te Tiriti o Waitangi and pae ora - healthy Māori futures.
The second key concept was a shift from equality to equity. Equality focuses on inputs and ensuing everybody has the same. Equity focuses on opportunities and ensuring everybody has what they need to achieve their aspirations.
The Result
In our view, the document that pops out the end of a process like this is only one small part of the puzzle. It’s not helpful to hold too tightly to the document.
“There is a role for leaders — both within and beyond government — in creating a sense of certainty. Certainty creates a sense of security and predictability, which we, as humans, crave.
So, leaders do. They create rules and roadmaps which tell us what will happen, by when. This appears to help — to comfort people, and satiate the need for clarity and certainty. And this is great, except for one thing. What leaders are doing is not actually creating certainty — they are creating certainty artefacts — human constructs (often unconscious) which are designed to offer a sense of predictability and legibility despite the fact that the world is complex and there is, in fact, very little certainty at all.”
In other words, we should hold strategy documents like this lightly.
They are a reflection of what we thought and felt was important at a point in time.
But we must remain alive to what’s happening in the real world so we can adjust course.
“The result is we’ve got something that’s much more reflective of Aotearoa New Zealand. The process has lit a fire under our team and I can see it coming through every day.”
In our reflection sessions with Sarah, she spoke about the weight lifted from her shoulders as she was able to step back through this process:
“I had a goosebump moment recently at an Area Committee hui where I just got to stand back and witness our team embracing the direction of the strategy. It was all about Māori health, equity and partnerships. And it was just so exciting as there was this sense that we’re really going in the right direction. It means I can do I lot more letting go for these amazing people to take the lead.”
Is your direction strategic or reactive?
If you’d like to deepen your knowledge of what makes an organisation strategic, we recommend our podcast interview with Alicia McKay - New Zealand’s leading strategy guru.