Strategy Survival Guide

Learning from others - International comparisons
In Practice 2: SU Voluntary Sector Regulation Project
International mapping: At an early stage in the project we mapped out the key characteristics of law and
regulation relating to not-for-profit organisations in a wide number of countries (e.g. most European and
Commonwealth countries, and the USA). This information was collected via requests to the Embassy in
each country, and through other contacts.
Visit to Australia and New Zealand: Australia and New Zealand had both recently completed reviews with
a scope which was extremely similar to that of the Strategy Unit project and both had an equivalent
common law legal system. The 'problem’ to be addressed was almost identical to that being addressed in
the UK by the Strategy Unit team – although the reasons for addressing it, and the drivers behind the
respective reviews were different – and some of the solutions being proposed looked to have promising
potential for the UK context. Two members of the team visited both countries, conducting a round trip
taking 10 days (including travel) and conducting face to face interviews with academics, policy makers
from range of government departments in both administrations, voluntary organisations (especially
umbrella organisations) and MPs/politicians. We identified the individuals we wished to meet partly by
asking our UK contacts for leads, partly via searching the web and partly with the help of the High
Commissions in both countries, who also offered some limited help with the organisation.
The visit to Australia and New Zealand was valuable in filling in essential contextual information (such as
the political context, the drivers behind the review, and the reasoning behind the selection of particular
policy options – the type of thing which would have been extremely difficult to ascertain at a distance).
Without this, assessing the merits of the proposals and their applicability to the UK context, would have
been difficult. The visit also brought a new perspective and new intellectual stimulus to our own challenge
and challenged several of our key assumptions about our own situation. The exercise also clearly
demonstrated that evidence of unsuccessful initiatives (i.e. what not to do) is equally valuable (although
less visible in terms of final outputs).
Learning from others - International comparisons
In Practice 3: SU Global Health Project
The SU project on global health looked at ways to improve the international community's contribution to
tackling HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in developing countries. The team used a pro forma to guide their
collection of material on existing programmes.
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
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