When Strategy Lands on Your Desk: A P&C Leader’s Starting Point
How to turn a board-approved strategy into a functional plan that actually works
By Rachael Kelly | The Strategic Step
It's strategy season! Offsites have been held and forward strategy has been settled. The Board and executive team are clear on direction and outcomes. Executives are now tasking their leadership with development of function strategies and detailed plans.
While every client is unique, here's my starting point when supporting People & Culture teams to develop their strategy and delivery roadmap.
Be clear on whether you're changing or evolving
Is the organisation changing direction in all or part of its existing strategy, or adapting its approach to the same vision? The answer shapes how you communicate the strategy and what you ask people to do differently.
Understand expectations and dependencies
Divisional or functional level strategies and plans are often developed in isolation, leading to disconnection, accountability gaps, and friction. Leaders should consider not just what strategic objectives their function leads, but what their function must support or enable. This is critical for support functions, and particularly for People & Culture teams that must also consider the workforce impacts of organisational strategy as a whole.
I often see divisional strategies include workforce initiatives that only become evident to the CPO when the People & Culture function is labelled a barrier to delivery.
It's important to read every internal and external facing live strategy and business plan (thirteen, for one recent client) and speak to every executive owner of those strategies. Solid desktop review and 1:1 interviews will help to get clear on expectations and priorities.
Assess where you're at
Organisations carry half-finished initiatives and embedded assumptions into every new strategy cycle. Acknowledging that openly creates a far more grounded starting point. Ask: what's important but hasn't been done? What can we carry forward? What needs to be retired? What's missing?
Bring the team together
Co-design is important for buy-in, ownership and connection of role to strategy. Depending on the size of the team, all team members can contribute to either or both of the what and the how.
Creating space on the agenda for the CEO and other business leaders to talk directly to the P&C team is incredibly beneficial. It gives team members exposure to leaders that some may not have otherwise had, and enhances connection of function to strategy.
Build in sustainable delivery and agree measures
Many of the most effective strategies I've supported have been horizon-based, where the achievement of each horizon forms the foundation for the next. This allows sustainable delivery while delivering tangible achievements against a longer-term vision. It's about evolving and progressing along a continuum, rather than completing a fixed list of discrete activities.
Flexibility to respond to changes in the internal and external environment will always be required. When that happens, the investment made to date isn't lost — greater capability and capacity is often an output of those horizon-based achievements.
Define the measures up front and consider the interdependencies. What measurement correlates with another, including those owned by another function? Agree the targets for each horizon as well as the end game, and establish the format and cadence of reporting to the Board, your people, and the public where relevant.
Translate objectives
Cascading objectives might be a feature of your performance planning cycle, but without very deliberate and careful translation for each level of the organisation, a disconnect can be created for whole cohorts. The framing has to be appropriate for each of the executive leadership team, senior leadership, people leaders, and individual contributors. This goes to both the what and the how — think values and risk appetite for a start.
It's also important at a functional level. All functions can contribute across all strategic pillars.
While some leaders are adept at cascading objectives to their team, it's not always the case. Providing a framework will deliver greater consistency in the quality of team and individual objectives set. Working sessions where leaders are supported to do the goal-setting work in the room are significantly more effective. People own what they create.
How we help
Facilitation of strategic planning for leaders and teams
People strategy design and implementation planning
Assessment of current and required P&C capability and capacity
Translation of strategic objectives to whole of organisation
If your functional strategy is due this quarter and you'd value a second pair of eyes on the approach, get in touch — we'd be glad to help you get it right from the start.