Strategic Thinking and Organizational Architecture: A Snapshot

Strategic Thinking and Organizational Architecture: A Snapshot

• Use limited resources to have big impact

• Articulate, develop and test theory of change

• Focus resources on high-yield activity

• Help staff understand and commit to the Organization

• Clarify the organization work to external allies and clients

• Explain programs to donors and publics

• Create basis for learning from experience

• Build base for managing rapid change

Strategic Thinking: The Basics

• Social Vision: The “reality to be”

• Organization Mission: “Reason to be” or purpose

• Change Theory: Desired outcomes and pathways

• Strategy: Concepts for implementing change theories, choosing programs and allocating resources (“No’s”)

• Organization: Programs, architectured, alliances.

• Results: outputs, outcomes, impacts vs. stories vs. institutional positioning

• Learning systems: Integrate goals, performance indicators for operational and strategic learning

Elements of Strategic Action

•No strategic coherence without well-specified goals

•Specification means:•dimensions of value defined • tensions and conflicts identified •priorities determined

•(Well-specified ≠ rigid)

Defining Public Value

Snapshot of SGE tools

Strategic Management : What is it ?

“The design and implementation of integrated strategies that creatively use the range of management tools to fulfill the mission of the agency and achieve the Organization goals.”

•To develop a strategy for an organization, senior managers must bring three elements into alignment:A strategy should be substantively valuable, meaning producing things of value to overseers, clients, and beneficiaries.It should be legitimate and politically sustainable , meaning able to keep attracting authority and money from the authorizing environment.And it should be operationally and administratively feasible, meaning being able to be accomplished by the organization.•Senior managers need to improve and develop an organization’s capabilities in order to make a strategy feasible and the need to develop support to make the strategy sustainable.•In public organization, the judgement of political sustainability is based on the examination of the values at stake in the organization’s work; the interests of legislators or other elected officials; and the views of interest groups.•To judge operational feasibility, senior managers should use feasibility assessments among other tools.•In a democratic society, analytic tools such as policy analysis, program evaluation and cost-benefit analysis can be used to inform elected leaders about what the public will is and what can be done to create public value.

ValueValue

Capacity Capacity SupportSupport

The Strategic Management Triangle

The Triangle can be used in an ongoing basis to:

•Monitor support: Scan the authorizing environment for changes to the collective, political aspirations that guide operations.•Monitor Value: Search for emergent problems to which an organization might contribute part of a solution.•And monitor operations: Review operations for new programs or processes that could improve performance.

Context for Strategic Management

• As the number and diversity of interacting organizations increase:

• Strategic equilibrium becomes:

– More complex– More challenging to structure– Less stable

• (While potential for productivity, flexibility, and innovation can also rise.)

Strategic Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

• Organizations with little or no change in – goals– authorizing Environments and– operating Capacity

• are in strategic equilibrium

• Change in some elements + • stability in other elements =

• strategic disequilibrium

Strategic Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

• Strategic equilibrium can be recovered by:

– restoring the status quo ante in the element(s) that fell out of alignment

– or by revising the other element(s) to be compatible with the destabilizing change

– or by a combination of the two adjustments

Strategic Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

• Deliberate strategy change as special case

• Consciously alter definition of public value

• How progress happens • But imposes obligation to accordingly:• reconfigure operating capacity

– restructure, renegotiate, or otherwise revise base of legitimacy and resources

– reconfigure operating capacity

Authorizing Environment

GoalOperating Capacity

Authorizing Environment

GoalOperating Capacity

Authorizing Environment

Strategic Triangle

Creating Value

Legitimacy andSupport

Operational Capacity

Strategy

The Assessment Process

Organizational Architecture

Inputs Results

Partners, Allies

Activities

Structure

Tasks

Culture

PeopleLeadershipStrategy

Environment

Outputs

Outcomes

Impacts

Strategy & Stakeholders

Creating Value• Clients• Governments• Targets

Legitimacy andSupport• Regulators• Donors• Publics

Operational Capacity• Board• Staff• Allies• Supporters

Strategy

Imagining success: Plausible, sustainable future• Focus on outcomes and impacts• Process involves many stakeholders

Mapping pathways to outcomes•Design back to preconditions for outcomes•Map pathways to accomplish preconditions

Eco-intelligence and sustainable systems• Identify actors and dimensions of systems change•Develop multi-actor alignment and collaborations

Theories of Change

Strategy, Organization & Learning

MissionMission

OperationalCapacity

OperationalCapacity

Legitimacy& SupportLegitimacy& Support

Creating Value

Creating Value

VisionVision

OrganizationalLearning System

ClientOutcomes

SocialImpacts

Architecture

OrganizationOutputs

Programs

ExternalAllies

New StrategyNew Strategy

Strategy

Change TheoryChange Theory

Organizational Configurations

Simple

Functional

Divisional

Federation

Confederation

Network/Movement

Generate design criteria

Generate and evaluate grouping options

Generate coordination requirements

Identify and evaluate linking mechanisms

Impact analysis and first choice design

Identify issues for operational design

Identify implementation issues

Organization Design Process

Convene parties relevant to issues

Articulate shared values and definitions

Explore what parties bring to action

Negotiate strategic directions

Authorize leadership for joint action

Agree on who does what to implement

Develop expectations for monitoring progress and adapting to change

Network Design Process?

architecture emphasis• Values based Architecture elements key?•Organizational growth Architecture change?• Social change missions Architecture emphases?

Alliances/networks as Org configuration• Emerging forms: associations, movements, confederations, federations, partnerships• Constructing interorganizational values and stories• Bridging leadership as emerging capacity

Architecture Themes

Expand coverage impact on more people

Increase activities horizontal/vertical integration and deeper impacts

Indirect influence change behavior of other actors to widen impacts

Organizational sustainability: entrepreneurial task teams project org’n program instit’n

Scaling Up The Org Impacts

Integration via government program adoption;

Joint ventures with other actors to expand;

Training others so they deliver programs via other channels;

Delegation and deputation share staff, ideas;

Spin-offs that create new organizations; and

Organize local demand and community-based organizations to pursue self-help or advocacy

Indirect Scaling Up

Multiple approaches to scaling up: Which most appropriate to organization and context?

Scaling up challenges for Os:• Internal: new capacities; culture changes; leadership demands:

emerging stories?• External: alliance building; change theories; relations to constituents;

accountabilities; measuring impacts?

Social change and demand for re-invention primacy of organization and leader learning

Issues in Scaling Up Impacts