Philip Sutton, 24 September 2016 Version 28
Creating a Strategic Agenda
based on practical idealism
(In two sets: 6 months / 2 years [or so])
Principles & Unresolved
issues/strategic questions
v15
Monitoring and review
Implications for IT/websites etc.
Implications for budget
Implications for people
Expected outcomes
Goals / Targets / Deadlines / Metrics
Management / How?
Further explanations
Culture / Tradition
Implications for organisational structure management methods
Agenda of timely manageable
strategic actions
Unresolved issues: Key questions
(invitations for action)
High-level principles (rules of thumb, heuristics)
How to excel at strategies &
capabilities
Ethics
Necessary high-level capabilities
Why?
Necessary high-level strategies
Unresolved issues: Key questions
Defining success
Operational-level principles (rules of thumb, heuristics)
Purpose(s)
(Mission[s]) if time bound
Context / SWOT / Analysis / Discovery of surprises / Scenarios / So what? / Synthesis
This framework draws heavily on a modified version of Chris Tipler’s Corpus Rios framework, and on Joe
Herbertson’s methods for backcasting from principles of success and setting the strategic hierarchy.
Download latest version from:
http://www.green-innovations.asn.au/Strategy/Strategy-method-for-practical-idealism.pdf
Strategic agenda setting process
v6
Decision team
Iterative steps
Purpose [mission(s)]

Definition of success

Necessary high-level
strategies

Necessary high-level
capabilities

How to excel….

Strategic actions
Stimulus team
Interesting facts
Analysis
Insights
Powerful ideas
Strategic principles
Unresolved issues/
strategic questions
Resource generation &
allocation
All the way
through
Unresolved
issues:
Questions
&
Principles
&
Supporting
information
Documented
strategic agenda
(structured around
projects & processes)
The work of the stimulus team
v4
The role of the Stimulus Team is to gather and analyse information and to create options to a degree
that is beyond the capacity of the Decision Team. Specifically the Stimulus Team should provide
input is the following areas:




Interesting facts
Analysis
Insights
Powerful ideas
 Strategic principles
 Unresolved issues/ strategic questions
 Resource generation & allocation
The Stimulus Team should provide a highly realistic assessment of:
 the benefit or value that the organisation currently provides and plans to provide for its
intended beneficiaries.
 the effectiveness and character of the organisation’s economic or resource generation engine.
The Stimulus Team needs to:
 access wisdom that is relevant to the organisation wherever it is to be found, either insider
the organisation or beyond.
 challenge all assumptions, explore the possibility that assumptions are wrong in some way.
3
Glossary
V9
Actions: The action items or initiatives in the
Strategic Agenda
Agenda: The overall strategic logic and the program
of actions that will give effect to it. Commonly called
a plan or the organisational strategy.
Assumptions: Expectations about the operational
environment in which the strategic agenda plays out
– which are needed for its success.
Backcasting: A technique of imagining success in
the future, and using a maze solving method
iteratively trace an action path back from the
successful future to now and couple this backcasting
with the development of a successful path from the
current reality forward to the successful future.
Integrating these paths leads to the formulation of
strategies and capabilities needed to close the gap
between the imagined successful future and the
current reality.
Better sameness: Strategic outcomes driven by
purposes, strategies and actions that are not
significantly more insightful and effective than
approaches already known to be fundamentally
incapable of achieving the necessary or desirable
imagined future success.
Capabilities: High level (usually cross-functional)
capacities that enable the organisation to achieve
their purposes, missions and high level strategies.
Insight: Hitherto undiscovered information that is
highly relevant and valuable. Seeing the facts from a
new and interesting perspective.
Intelligent constraint: A limitation that the
organisation places on itself to reduce its choices and
to achieve strategic focus and to enable the
organisation to excel at the actions that matter. The
deliberate, skilful restriction of choice.
Interesting fact: A fact that is highly relevant and
can survive the ‘so what?” test. One that points in a
potentially interesting direction.
Meaningful difference: The opposite of better
sameness.
Missions: Time-limited purposes of the organisation.
Powerful idea: An idea that has the potential to be
very important to the organisation.
Principles: Considerations that direct inform action.
High level rules-of-thumb or heuristics governing
decisions and behaviour – used to given guidance
where analysis can’t yield adequate insights at all or
in time. Often strategy or capability specific.
Purpose: The enduring raison d’être of the
organisation. Why it exists.
Secrets: Insights.
Ethics: Who the organisation serves, how it
constrains how it treats others.
So what? The cut-through question designed to test
the strategic usefulness of any information or idea.
Good habits: Effective capabilities. The things an
organisation has learned to do well and has a
consistent inclination to do.
Strategies: High-level ways to achieve the
organisation’s purposes and missions.
Horizon of aspiration: How far in the future you
should imagine yourself in order to comprehend your
purposes and missions.
Horizon of capability: How far in the future you
should imagine yourself in order to comprehend how
to act effectively (ie. to frame effective strategies,
defined effective capabilities and actions.
How to excel: Statements of how to excel at high
level strategies and capabilities (usually crossfunctional).
Success: A future imagined condition where the
organisation has been entirely successful.
System: The wider context in which the strategic
agenda is set. It has biophysical and socioeconomic
dimensions. The system needs to be understood as a
viable whole.
Unresolved issues/questions: These are questions to
include in a strategy to drive the further development
of the strategy.
Zone of effective intent: The zone where capabilities
are well matched to aspirations.
4
Backcasting from principles of success
Step A Imagined
successful future
Step B Current reality
Step C Possible solutions
Step D Implementation
Strategic hierarchy
Level 1 (top)
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
Level 6
v7
Where do we want to get to?
Where don’t we want to get to?
(expressed as principles)
Measured against A
Driven by the A-B gap
Viable, flexible pathways
v13
System understanding
Ethics & self-interest (who’s/what’s needs are we trying to meet?)
Success principles(to set top level goals)
Goals, strategies and targeted actors
Actions & capabilities
Metrics
Nesting of strategies & implementation ideas
v2
(2 methods)
1. Arrange strategy elements on a ‘ends’/’means’ spectrum. Ask: ‘why?’ to see where
an idea should be in relation to the most important, top-level ‘ends’ (purposes, goals, etc.), and ask
“how?” to see where an idea sits in relation to the most specific and practical ‘means’ for achieving,
implementing or doing something.
2. Using the Babushka doll analogy: Plans can often be nested in a hierarchy running from:
big picture” through to the most practical detail. Within a plan there will usually be a
goal/objective/purpose, one or more strategies (solutions to a problem or opportunity) and (often)
ideas on how to implement a strategy element. Implementation ideas of a higher level strategy are
often the purpose or a strategy in a lower-level plan. (Hence the Babushka doll analogy.)
Using multiple perspectives (2 methods)
v1
1. Software development ‘above and ‘below’ method: System designers of complex
software will pay attention to (but not try to directly control) the world above and the world below
the system level that they are responsible for designing.
2. The thinking/feeling “as if” or “standing in the shoes of” method: System
designers often deliberately shift their subjective perspective to get a broader understanding of the
system from the perspective of different players – people or organisations or work units that have
different roles (positive or negative) in the functioning of the system.
Template for interfacing a goals hierarchy with project management
v2
Goals – If/Then logic
If/Then Goal
level
Then
If
Plus
Goal
Outcome
Higher
level
Strategies
Unresolved issues/
Questions
+ Outside Factors congenial
+ Assumptions correct + Outside Factors congenial
Actions / Projects – If/Then logic
If/Then Expected
Then
If
Actual
Outcomes
Outcomes
Outputs
Outputs
Action/Project
Action/Project
Inputs
Inputs
Action/Project-level Strategies
Plus
Unresolved issues/
Questions
+ Outside Factors congenial
+ Outside Factors congenial
+ Outside Factors congenial
+ Assumptions correct + Outside
Factors congenial
Inspired by: Schmidt, T. (2009). Strategic project management made simple: Practical tools for leaders and teams. John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, New
Jersey.
v4
Practical idealism
End state
goal
Aspiration
Over-reach
Under-reach
Capability
The zone of effective intent – where
capabilities are well matched to aspirations
Philosophy behind the whole method: http://www.green-innovations.asn.au/opmult.htm
v1
A GENERIC STRATEGY / ACTION SYSTEM
3 Goals
& Visions
5 Too Hard
Basket
Solutions
6 Action
Plans
B
1 Env.
Monitoring
2 Issue
Detection /
Action ideas
4
v2b
B
7
Fast Track
A
Action
A
Learning inputs from the whole system
8 Action
Monitoring
A - Action does not proceed if it is not practical.
An action that is not diverted for further consideration represents a lowest
common denominator consensus. After consideration it is a highest common
denominator consensus.
B - Ideas/plans proceed to the fast track after advocacy and the achievement
of consensus amongst the relevant parties.
Action Styles: Entrepreneur (1,4 or 3,4); Incremental reactive (1,2 or 8,2)
Comprehensive systematic (3,5); Env. ethical opportunist (1,3,4 or 8,3,4)
Env. pioneer (3,5,6)
Green Innovations, 1994. Version 2.b
Principles
V1
Criticality (in project management): Each successive
"current" phase in a project timeline must be viable.
Fuzzy-goal-directed evolution: When dealing with
long duration complex projects, it is critical to keep
in mind that each successive "current" phase in a
timeline must be viable – future optimality is not
enough. It is therefore useful to think of project
management for long-duration programs as a process
of fuzzy-goal-orientated evolution.