Strategy setting is important in all organisations. There are many conventions for describing: Mission, Vision, Objectives, Strategies, KPIs, OKRs and Policies. All have great logic and can capture the essence of an organisation and where it is going. Co-creating strategy can, however, quickly descend into a word smithing exercise, certain words raise vocabulary antibodies in others, rambling strategy statements have meaning in the moment but have a rapid half-life, often a team will not even be able to articulate that carefully crafted vision within weeks of a strategic plan being published.
In my work I am always keen to step beyond written descriptions by creating visual representations. It can be incredibly valuable for teams to share their mental models of how their organisation works and adds value, the evolution of these carefully thought through representations then becomes a blue print for future development. Working this way always seems to make it far easier to then write the plan … ‘a picture is always worth a thousand words’.