DIY Strategy and Planning

Major change eventually comes down to two basic questions that need to be answered in detail many times:

1. “What does this change mean for us here? What needs to be different in our department / function / area?”
2. “How are we going to make that change happen?”

To you, those questions may look like implementation, but to the teams that have to answer them, they look a lot like strategy. Our “Do It Yourself” approach to helping teams answer those questions gives them the tools and support to do so, quickly and with good quality results.

Because they’ve come up with the answers, they have a greater sense of personal accountability for delivering the plan, they move more quickly into action, and they are better able to revise their plans as things develop. In addition, they are much better positioned to lead their own people through the changes they now think of as their own.

A typical programme looks like this:

Kick off and Tool kit scoping

This phase get a broad sense of the range of tools your people will need and starts the design effort that results in a complete toolkit to support your DIY strategy activities.

We generally start by meeting with you and your top team to understand the planned changes and to explain the DIY concept and approach. In this meeting, we will agree the scope of the required support with you and your team, defining which parts of the organisation are to be included and approximately how many teams will be doing DIY strategy and planning work. Finally, we will also help you identify a small group of people in your organisation we will need to work with in designing and testing the toolkit.

Following this first meeting, based on what we have discussed, we will identify the tools your people need. Tools can be frameworks for analysis, group exercises, planning approaches, resource estimating tips, or almost anything that helps create good local strategies and change plans. The toolkit will also generally include how strategies and plan will be approved and monitored – so that teams using the toolkit know how what they are doing fits with the overall picture.

We will work with your staff to see what tools and information you already have that can be incorporated into the toolkit, what tools we already have from previous toolkits that could be adapted to your situation, and which will have to be custom developed for you. We will also select a few teams across the organisation that we will work with to test the tool kit for completeness and ease of use.

The kick-off phase usually ends with another meeting with you and your top team to review the planned tool kit and get agreement on the activities and schedule for the next step. In this meeting, we will also discuss the scope of support needed and whether or not you have internal resources that can support teams as they use the tools.

Toolkit design, testing and preparation for rollout

This phase has three main threads, which sound like they happen in sequence, though in reality it can be an iterative process.

We first prepare a prototype version of the toolkit, which often is no more than a combination of existing information you have already, some tools and frameworks we have used elsewhere, and some early ideas on how any new tools might work. (At this point, the tools are generally not in a state to be used without our direct support of any team using them.)

We then test this prototype with a team or two to see if they can use it to generate good results. We use their feedback and our own observations to refine and add to the toolkit. Depending on the results we get, we may have to develop and test a number of prototypes, until your team and we are both comfortable that we have the tools you need.

Once you have a workable prototype, we create the surrounding background information, instructions, and other material that makes it easy for a team to use the toolkit with minimal support. We test this pilot toolkit with a few teams, again to ensure that the instructions and other material are clear and complete.

Finally, we help your staff to develop a plan for rolling out the toolkit. Where possible, we will aim to use your resources for the rollout and to provide early support for teams as they use the toolkit. We will provide these “Planning Coaches” with training on the toolkit, as well as meeting facilitation and general consultation skills.

This phase generally ends once you have approved the rollout plan.

Toolkit rollout

The rollout phase is generally done by your team of Planning Coaches, though we continue to provide support in the form of helping to modify tools where needed and / or providing additional training or coaching for new members of the rollout team.

Once rollout is well started, we will conduct a brief audit of the quality of the results, as well as making any changes or refinements to the toolkit that are required.

This phase usually ends when all the local strategies and change plans have been developed and approved, though our involvement often ends before that.

What next?

If you want to upgrade your organisation’s ability to create local-level strategies and change plans that work, then contact us.