We are S&L. For 8 years, we have been building strategies for our clients as if they were for ourselves. We’re not bad at it. I would even dare to say: we do it well. But make no mistake, even after 8 years, we still make mistakes. That’s not pleasant, but it is certainly instructive. So, because people learn more from fuck-ups than from someone else’s bragging, I’d like to share the four fuck-ups we learned the most from.
The consultants at S&L aren’t really true consultants, even though Stijn does sometimes wear a shirt. They are all people who, as directors of a non-profit, felt the need to make more impact. So the advice we give is mainly based on that experience, with that baggage and the desire to change the world. My own first experience with strategy was also as a director and board member. I wrote policy plans, facilitated internal strategy processes and, as a board member, got involved in the strategy development of quite a few other organizations.
Meanwhile, 8 years later and more than 100 strategies down the line, I can start making those kinds of hit lists. And one with blunders seemed like a good place to start.
Fuck-up 1: creating a new one without evaluating the previous one
One of the first strategy processes I facilitated with S&L was at an organization that had already existed for thirty years. There were quite a few problems at the time. Issues with the structure, HR questions, the organization was not well enough known, and it had shifted from a movement into a service organization. So there was enough material to fill a strategy process with.
Thirty years is no small thing; the organization had a rich history. We did listen to those stories, which were often brought by "the old guard" with a layer of frustration. What we did not do was examine them deeply, beyond the stories or the emotion of the person telling them. What hypotheses lay beneath them? Which choices made the difference back then? Why did another period yield much less?
Today, I start almost every strategy process with evaluation. Thorough evaluation. So more than a quick SWOT or a glance at a progress report for the government. Evaluation is not that simple, though. Sometimes there is a strategic plan to evaluate. Sometimes it exists and no one has looked at it. And sometimes the actual strategy is not described anywhere and you have to reconstruct it from decisions, budgets, and activities from the past few years.
The first step, then, is to clarify what the strategy actually was. After that comes the more annoying question: did it work? In my view, by the way, you carry out such an evaluation by questioning the entire system. Of course you can look at figures and indicators, but judgments about strategic success also sit in the minds of an entire organization.
- What results did we expect?
- Which of those were achieved, and to what extent?
- When do we consider those results good, mediocre, or poor?
- And above all: what does that say about the hypotheses on which our strategy was built?
Evaluation is something you can do as an external party. At S&L, we are increasingly being asked to act as an external evaluator. In the international solidarity sector, for example, where independent monitoring and evaluation are imposed by grant providers. In that case, we carry out the evaluation for them. Advantage: the independence of the researcher. Disadvantage: you do not (yet) build a burning fire for change.
An alternative is to do it together. We enjoy doing that too. Advantage: by thoroughly investigating with a group what worked and why, you immediately build the strategic thinking capacity you need for the next strategy. Disadvantage: in organizations with people who are too nice, not everything is always said. Especially where an evaluation is truly painful, you run the risk of silence.
Fuck-up 2: stopping when it's abstract
An organization has too little budget. A full-fledged strategy process costs too much time (and therefore money). We really want to help, so the temptation is great to say: we’ll determine the strategic lines, formulate the goals, identify a few important levers, and then you can take it from there.
But that is truly dangerous. In my experience, a lot of strategic insight only emerges when you also make a strategy tactically concrete, and that costs. Time and therefore money. As consultants, we must keep making sure we don’t become pleasers. Sometimes you simply can’t help, and denying that costs everyone.
Imagine: an organization that works on nature decides to focus much more strongly in the coming years on encouraging others to create new nature. At an abstract level, that sounds fine. Everyone is enthusiastic. But as soon as you make that choice concrete, the real work begins. Which activities are part of it? Which competencies do we then have too little and too much of? How do we train them? How do we finance that? Who builds relationships with the partners who have to do the work?
Suddenly that beautiful strategic choice becomes a whole lot heavier. Reality is at the door, and then you have to go back to your strategy. Perhaps it was a bit too ambitious after all, or the strategic turn was formulated too sharply. Perhaps that new way of working can actually only start in two years.
Making things concrete is not a purely implementation phase that comes after the strategy. It is part of strategy development itself. Organizations often formulate major ambitions without calculating the full need for people, competencies, technology, communication, leadership, and money. On paper, you then have a wonderful strategy. In reality, you have an unpaid mountain of work.
The activities are therefore the stress test of your strategy. Skip that test and you only discover during implementation that your strategy was never actually feasible.
Fuck-up 3: only setting priorities when the money has run out
We work with people who want to change the world for the better. People who want to reduce poverty, defend human rights, save the climate, improve education, fight discrimination, or provide people with good care. Their problem is rarely a lack of ambition. An awful lot needs to happen. And preferably now.
That is why, in strategy processes, you can easily end up with an impressive collection of priorities. We need to communicate more strongly and offer more services and take a political stance and renew our volunteer work and professionalize our fundraising and digitalize. All important. And then, a few months later, someone comes along with Excel and it turns out you can only pay for about half.
Actually, by then you are too late in setting priorities. The budget must test your strategic choices while you are shaping them. The financial reality in practice must not be the first stress test of your strategy. Setting priorities comes first. Choosing whether you give strategic priority to impact. Or organizational fit. Or feasibility.
- What is must-have and do we do first?
- What do we really want?
- What would be nice if room opens up?
- What are we not doing for now?
That last one is painful, especially for idealistic organizations. Because not doing something can quickly feel like betraying the mission. I do understand that. The realization that your organization has limited people, time, and money sometimes takes away the hope of rapid change. Still, we need to face reality soon enough and make choices. What a non-profit wants is almost always greater than what it can do. A good strategy sits between those two.
Fuck-up 4: creating a strategy everyone can live with
I live in a cohousing project with 19 families, and we make decisions by consensus. That is how 30 adults jointly appointed an architect and then, by consensus, helped decide what our homes and our neighborhood should look like. The result is fine. I enjoy living there. But let’s just say that, a hundred years from now, architectural historians will probably not be organizing a bus trip to our project.
Consensus has its qualities. Genius is not automatically one of them. I see that in strategy as well. In recent years I have often worked in the Netherlands, and people warned me in advance to expect tough discussions. Direct. Hard on the substance. My experience is sometimes almost the opposite. There is endless compromising. Everyone has to be on board. Every team has to recognize itself in the story. Every concern gets a place. No one is allowed to lose, and so no one really wins either.
Participation is valuable, but as soon as consensus becomes the goal, you get a strategy that may feel broadly supported, but it hardly provides any direction. This is not a plea for a director who locks themselves in a room for three days and then carries “the tablets of stone” down from the mountain. Involve people. Absolutely. But at the same time, make it clear who advises, who co-designs, and who ultimately decides. A strategy is a choice, and every real choice rules out possibilities.
Incidentally, I often see that organizations with one crystal-clear social objective are very strong strategically. Single-issue movements can be annoyingly sharp. One goal. One strategic line. They become very good at that. They achieve results, grow, attract resources and people, and can then do more. In broad organizations, I mainly see the opposite movement: in practice, doing less and less because they want to do too much at the same time.
Daring to lose
When I put my four mistakes side by side, I actually see one pattern: comfort. I wanted to move forward too quickly and looked back too little. I sometimes kept strategy too abstract and thus escaped the practical consequences. I postponed making choices and I sometimes confused support with keeping everyone happy.
A strong strategy is not comfortable. Daring to say that something you came up with five years ago has not worked, or translating your wonderful ambitions into working hours and finding that they are too big. It can be painful. But discomfort, I believe, is crucial when developing a strong strategy.
May we bring some discomfort into your organization? Help evaluate or make tough decisions?
I’d be happy to hear from you.
Do you have suggestions for the next hit list?
Send them over!
Koenraad
