Strategy Survival Guide

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Strategy Survival Guide Version 2.1 Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit home | strategy development | strategy skills | site index Strategy Development > Justification & Set Up > Tasks Clarifying the issues The complex and cross-cutting nature of strategy projects mean that at the outset it is important to develop a clear articulation of the issue to be addressed, and agree this with all key stakeholders. This will help to define the scope of the project, identify any fixed boundaries that are not open to review and set expectations for its outputs. This exercise should go further than defining the overall issue to be addressed by breaking it down in a logical way to highlight all the sub-issues. A powerful tool for structuring the issue in this way is an issue tree which generates a logical family-tree style hierarchy of issues and sub-issues. Mapping out the entire ‘issue space’ in this way is useful for a number of reasons: • it generates a detailed understanding of the relevant issues • it helps to identify the true root causes of an issue • it provides a focus for initial discussions with stakeholders to understand their view points • it highlights potential modules of work, or workstreams, for the project • it provides a structure and framework for subsequent data gathering and analysis. Clarifying the issues at this early stage will also help the team to stay focused, help each member to know how their work fits into the whole, and act as a reference later in the project to check that the team has achieved what it set out to achieve. Useful links: > issue trees Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Development Page 16
Strategy Survival Guide Version 2.1 Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit home | strategy development | strategy skills | site index Strategy Development > Justification & Set Up > Tasks Planing the project Having gained commitment to the project and its scope from stakeholders, it is important that the project is planned in detail. An accurate, well-maintained and frequently referenced project plan is essential to managing the project successfully. Although taking time to plan is crucial to the success of the project, planning is often neglected or rushed in the haste to get onto the more interesting analysis phase of the project, especially when stakeholders or ministers are keen for project results. However, planning is the whole basis of project management philosophy and it is vital to do it well. Team leaders should expect to spend as much as 30% of their time project planning. Taking a step back to develop a project plan before diving into the detail has a number of benefits: • it helps forge a common vision across the team • it provides coherency between different strands of the project • it helps to think through tasks and anticipate potential roadblocks • it highlights trade-offs on issues of time, budget, breadth and depth of analysis • it helps anticipate long lead-time activities • it helps manage key stakeholder expectations of what is in and out of the scope for the project, what the team is doing, and whether the project is on track • it provides an 'anchor’ when difficulties develop. The plan should go into significant depth on the project's rationale and approach, including how the work will be structured, what the key milestones will be, and how the main risks will be mitigated or minimised. In addition the plan should set out the intended approach for managing stakeholders and communications, and define the project governance structure. Finally, the extent to which the project will be in the public domain should be agreed. The sensitive nature of some projects may mean that it is not appropriate to announce them publicly. Useful links: > developing the plan > structuring the work > setting milestones > managing risks > defining accountability > managing stakeholders and communications Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Development Page 17
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Page 6 and 7: Building an Evidence Base 113 Data
Page 8 and 9: A Framework for Strategic Direction
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Strategy Survival Guide Version 2.1
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Identifying key stakeholders and th
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Engaging with stakeholders Having i
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• What channels do we know don’
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Preparing the Story Once you have a
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development process include brainst
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Reinforcing Loops A + Balancing Loo
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Structuring the thinking - Systems
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Opportunities • Where are the goo
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Structuring the thinking - PESTLE I
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Revolution This is creativity at it
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For example, Sub-problem: My collea
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Structuring the thinking - Creativi
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in The Magenta Book) are rigorous m
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• Avoid asking the same question
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Expectations can be shaped by a num
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Collecting data - Surveys In Practi
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Collecting data - Interviews & focu
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Step One: Define the problem explic
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• Are the units correct? Step Sev
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Analysing data - Modelling In Pract
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The Five Forces Framework can be us
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References Structure, Conduct, Perf
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Symbols • What language and jargo
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• Put a contact name, telephone n
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Learning from others - Internationa
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4. Functional Benchmarking or Gener
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Strengths • Quantitative forecast
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3. Bring drivers together into a vi
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Scenario development In Practice 1:
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Scenarios used in the Strategy Unit
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groups at random. In other words, t
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events. There are a number of diffe
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Multi-criteria analysis In Practice
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Cost-benefit & cost-effectiveness a
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For further material, see the Ratio
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Compelling vision for action - the
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Designing an implementation plan In
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Creating Public Value http://www.nu
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Driver trees 97 Econometric modelli
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management 17, 20, 27, 34, 45 outpu
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Strategy Unit, Admiralty Arch, The
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Strategy Survival Guide

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