The Strategy Design Cycle in an early childhood setting

Strategy design is an important facet of leadership that supports early childhood settings to grow, improve, and maintain their viability in the early childhood context. Clear strategies enable leaders and teams to carefully coordinate choices about their service, practices, and philosophies, to implement their aims in an effective and integrated way and build professional learning to increase capacity over the long-term[1].

Although strategy design can be comprised of a range of different activities and actions[2], it is generally a deliberate and disciplined activity[3], related to the elaboration of goals, decision-making, and courses of action designed to meet predetermined objectives and visions[4]. The short and long-term planning of early childhood services becomes strategic when it involves:

• Careful attention to the context in which it will operate
• Thoughtfulness about purposes and goals
• Consideration of the strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and opportunities the early childhood service faces
• Focus on a broad agenda before selecting individual actions
• Systems thinking, or understanding of how all the aspects of the whole system work together and the interrelationships between different parts
• Participation of stakeholders
• Thinking about the future and how strategies might influence the future
• Consideration of implementation and challenges that might occur with implementation
• Understanding that strategies will also need to be responsive to and emergent in practice[5]. Strategies should not be overly prescriptive, but create a space for flexibility, negotiation, and compromise[6].

The Strategy Design Cycle detailed here provides a framework for consideration of all these strategic elements in planning for improvement.

The Strategy Design Cycle

The Strategy Design Cycle works through a process to stimulate evaluation and strategic thinking, and includes:

• Preparation: Determining the process for strategic planning, gathering key actors and decision-makers, building communities and connections, and establishing commitment.
• The strategy design process
  • Clarifying the mission of your setting
  • Developing a vision
  • Understanding your context
  • Identifying strategic issues
  • Setting strategy and goals
  • Action and reflection[7].

The Strategic-Setting Cycle is an iterative cycle, so teams may repeat the sequence many times, or return to different parts of the process a number of times as needed. There is no specific order in which early childhood services should complete strategic activities, and a service’s approach will depend in part on the people involved and their particular strengths and weaknesses, and whether significant transformation or a process of incremental learning and change is required[8]. You will notice suggestions for alternative processes in several sections of the cycle.

The Strategy Design Cycle presented here rests on an understanding of strategy design as an emerging and evolving process, rather than fixed plans and tight timeframes for action. This recognises the early childhood setting as a complex adaptive system, which depends on and develops in unpredictable and not entirely controllable ways through the interactions of diverse actors and elements within the system and its wider environment. This complexity theory perspective supports a different conceptualisation of strategy as a set of principles or guiding theories for action, to orient the direction of practice in line with agreed strategies and priorities for the early childhood setting, while at the same time being open and adaptive of new opportunities and interactions as they occur.

Leaders are champions and facilitators of the strategy design process. As champions, they model enthusiasm, commitment, and positive attitudes towards strategic planning processes, and in general keep strategic planning high on everyone’s agenda[9].

Preparation

1.      Deciding who, why, what, and when

Some preliminary thinking about the service’s particular context before initiating strategic planning, helps leaders to determine when to initiate strategic planning, and how to organise and promote it[10].

Why is this step needed?

While leaders may be convinced about the benefits of strategic planning, it will only be effective if key people in the early childhood service’s community are equally enthusiastic. Spending time outlining why strategic planning will support more effective teaching and learning in the service, and emphasising the benefits of the process (real action and change), is crucial for encouraging people to get involved. When applicable, it can be good to focus on difficulties or failing practices to inspire others to consider what might be changed to improve[11]. Participation and collaboration are important for everyone involved to better understand strategies and their role within them[12].  

What this step involves

• Setting the processes for discussing and establishing the mission, vision and strategies[13], initiating and promoting the process[14].
• Determining an outline of the general sequence of activities required for strategic planning, and explaining to others how they will be involved and what will be required of them, time frames, and documentation[15].
• Explaining what is up for change and negotiation and what is to remain unchanged. This is about creating an appropriate amount of space for possibility without overwhelming people[16].
• Inviting people to commit to the strategy design process. While as many people as possible should be involved in contributing perspectives for the direction and priorities for the early childhood community, the actual specifics of strategy and planning might best be completed by a smaller team[17]. Some people will be better at strategic thinking, acting, and learning than others[18].  
•  Developing strong guidance for planning groups to ensure they move through the process of strategy design in an effective way. It is important to be committed and courageous about strategy setting, which involves dedicating time, money, and resources to strategic planning, to demonstrate commitment to the process[19].

2.      Build communities and connections

Much of the strategic work of strategy design takes place in forums and discussions in which people create and deliberate over shared meanings about what the early childhood setting is and what it might be and do. Building community and connections aims to create a space in which ideas and opinions can be shared freely[20].

Why is this step needed?

Building community and connections with key stakeholders is important for helping teams and community members to see themselves as part of the early childhood service[21], and for gaining a range of honest insights into the early childhood service’s operations and philosophies. Diverse perspectives are likely to be incredibly useful to the planning team as they continue in the Strategy Design Cycle, while meaningful dialogue and connections with others can give groups the passion, commitment, and resilience to bring shared value[22] to the early childhood service.

What this step involves

• Providing forums for participation such as community meetings, team meetings, workshops, or retreats, as well as informal conversations, newsletters, emails, and social networking[23] to capture perspectives and enable groups to build a consensus about priorities[24]. Flexible options may be important to enable as many stakeholders  as possible to participate.
• Promoting trust by demonstrating transparency, consistent and uniform treatment of all members of the community, a deep commitment to fairness as well as flexibility, open-mindedness, and willingness to change a course of action[25].
• Determining key values for discussions that enable all contributors to feel safe to articulate their perspective. Leaders also need to be highly sensitive to power differences between people from different backgrounds and with different relationships to the early childhood setting, which may constrain some people’s ability to participate[26]. Practices such as active listening and a balance between asking questions and imparting information can encourage constructive dialogue.[27].

The Strategy Design Process

Important tasks for leaders throughout strategy design, include encouraging debate, creativity, and multiple sources of ideas[28], promoting the use of explicit tools for planning strategies[29], and helping to distil the important details from people’s contributions in order to link them to strategy design[30].

1.      Clarify mission

Clarifying mission is about identifying the why or purpose of the early childhood service as an organisation, and explaining who the service intends to serve and what services they intend to provide. The mission of the early childhood service forms a foundational statement about the core purpose and focus of the early childhood service, which remains unchanged over time (unlike vision and strategic plans) [31].

 Why is this step needed?

Determining the purpose of your early childhood service is essential to the formation of strategy – you need to know what you are trying to achieve before you can determine how you will actually achieve it.

What might this step involve?

• Using reflective questions to identify the core purposes of the early childhood service. Some useful exercises are listed below.
• Creating mission statements that are short, specific, and inspire action. For example, mission might include intentions such as supporting families with bringing up children, nourishing health and wellbeing, or providing a strong foundation for children’s ongoing learning. The mission should be positive and inspire the wider community to identify with it and commit to it[32].
• Thinking about how the mission could be measured and evaluated. Having a clear way to monitor the early childhood service’s progress towards its mission statement, and the regular measurement of progress can be very motivating, and can assure all in the community that the mission is highly achievable[33].

Useful exercises for this stage include purpose-mapping or ‘the big questions’. See this guide for an explanation of these exercises and how to use them to support this stage of the Strategy Design Cycle.

Where to from here?

Creating a vision (Step 2) will help teams to be more specific about the particular way in which the service will meet this mission.

2.      Develop a vision

Vision articulates a standard of excellence[34] that encapsulates or expresses the mission. The vision is more flexible and dynamic than the mission[35], and can be changed as priorities, resources, or environments change. A realistic, well-understood vision that is geared to the local community and context can unite people and provide hope and inspiration. This step involves giving explicit attention to the philosophy, values, and culture of the early childhood service[36], and should involve the wider community[37].

Why is this step needed?

Having a clear picture about where an organisation is going, how it will get there, and why it should, is crucial to successful change efforts, and supports the work of subsequent steps in the cycle, as community values and beliefs help guide teams in identifying strategic issues (Step 4), and choosing strategies (Step 5) to enhance practice[38]. The vision is more specific than the mission. It defines the specific effect or outcomes intended[39] – for example, the types of educational experiences and the type of care that will be provided. This means selecting directions rather than trying to be all things to all people[40]. Leaders can also use visioning to shape the identity of the early childhood team[41], and to unite people in a shared vision and directional trajectory[42].

What might this step involve?

• Discovering the shared values, beliefs, principles, and ideals that are drawn from people’s experience, knowledge, culture[43], and positioning[44]. As everyone involved (stakeholders such as the teaching team, families, and community members) will come to strategy development from their own particular space of meanings, beliefs, privileges, and practices[45], the first stage of strategy design should focus on uncovering, sharing, and discussing what is important to stakeholders. Lists of values should be accompanied by in-depth discussion to ensure people are supported to co-create understandings and develop shared meanings[46].
• Talking about potentials and possibilities[47]. Strategy design means making choices about what the early childhood service is to be and to do, as well as what it is not to be and not to do. This might mean telling stories about potential future scenarios, or the potential futures in which children may grow up, and asking communities to consider how the service might respond to these[48]. It also involves exploring all ideas thoroughly without pre-empting, analysing or evaluating ideas, and allowing maximum time for discussion and for community members to develop understanding and offer their own contribution[49].
• Integrating perspectives into a shared narrative to create shared meanings, a shared sense of purpose, and consensus about priorities[50]. This can build cohesion and encourage participation and commitment[51].
• Drawing up a vision statement. A vision should be motivating and inspiring, but it also needs to be realistic, and feel practical and attainable to those working towards it[52]. It also should sit comfortably with all in the early childhood community, and it should not be overly complex so that any member of the team could easily explain it and identify it in action. Written vision statements should be shared across the early childhood community with a forum provided for feedback and refinements[53].

Useful exercises for this stage include purpose-mapping, ‘the big questions’, or shared visioning. See this guide for an explanation of these exercises and how to use them to support this stage of the Strategy Design Cycle.

Where to from here

With a clear view of what the early childhood community wishes the service to achieve, the next step is to assess the opportunities and resources available to support the service to move towards the vision. When the creation of vision occurs early in the process of strategy design, then it is important to keep circling back to vision after each subsequent stage to review and modify it as needed. It is also important to regularly discuss and reinforce vision statements, with leaders finding ways to connect the daily work of the teachers to the vision to increase engagement[54].

Alternative processes

Some services may prefer to examine their assessments of the service’s internal and external environments (Step 3) before creating a vision. A vision statement created at this point might then be more detailed and finely-tuned[55], and build on the strengths of teams and communities, and opportunities for optimal teaching and learning, while being aware of weaknesses and challenges and the limitations these may have[56].

3.      Understand your context

Early childhood settings are deeply embedded in their communities[57], and in the frameworks provided by government and policy. Leaders and teams need to understand their external environment and their internal features, and how these influence, support, or challenge their work. This evaluation of the context in which change will take place needs to be thorough and extensive, supported by reliable methods for information-seeking[58].

Why is this step needed?

It is important to identify strengths and opportunities, as these are resources on which the early childhood service can draw to achieve its vision[59]. Equally important is to identify and try to overcome weaknesses, while being aware of challenges that can highlight weaknesses or overload strengths and compromise the vision. Effective responses to the challenges of the external context are based on the early childhood service’s intimate knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses[60]. Not all approaches to environmental analysis include the identification of weaknesses. For example, a positive psychology perspective on leadership suggests that a focus on strengths and positives can make weaknesses lose their power and prominence[61][VH7] . Awareness of the internal or external environment of the service means that, if these contexts change, leaders and teams are able to identify the need for adaptations to strategies for achieving its vision.

What might this step involve?

• Producing a SWOC (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Challenges) analysis to examine the internal features of an organisation and its external environment[62]. Strengths and Opportunities concern what is good in the present, and what might be good in the future, while Weaknesses identify what is not so good at present and Challenges describe what might be difficult in the future. Settings that prefer a positive framing may prefer to use Strengths, Challenges, Aspirations, and (intended) Results (SOAR)[63]. Individual and group reflection should consider the following:

Internal environment: the early childhood service:

• the culture of your service, and how it affects the patterns of practice that exist[64].
  • the history of the early childhood service,[65] and patterns over time[66]. It is important to recognise aspects of continuity, and things that people want to preserve[67].
  • the service’s current strategies[68] and priorities, as reflected in everyday choices[69] and decisions, and how well they match with the service’s philosophy and vision. For example, what logic underpins decisions about enrolments, or patterns of staffing in the service, the way you run staff meetings, or plan curriculum, or allocate time for assessment and evaluation?
  • the service’s current competencies, and the assets such as technology, physical or human resources, that underpin them[70].
  • both actions and inactions – things that are and are not being done, and how these relate to potential futures[71]. What will it mean to continue doing things this way? What impact might a sphere of inaction have for the future of the early childhood service, or the children, families, and teachers that attend?
  • changes within the service[72] such as staff changes, or a change in enrolment patterns.

External environment:

• stakeholders, and the webs of relationships amongst them[73].
  • the community: the geographic area, specific groups identified by family ties, ethnicity, religion, or socioeconomic status, patterns of interaction, and patterns of power and privilege[74].
  • the policy environment and policy mandates that the service needs to comply with[75], and how these are interpreted. What is not permitted by the mandates? What is not ruled out?[76]
  • relevant social, economic, political, ecological, and technological trends and their potential impact[77]. What are the particular uncertainties and complexities[78] that might need to be documented and monitored?
  • what other services are doing[79], and fresh ideas and opportunities in the community and the national early childhood sector[80]. Information and inspiration can be found in newspapers, websites, newsletters, memberships to professional organisation, webinars and lectures, books, and networks[81].
  • environmental resources or opportunities[82].
  • professional learning and development already completed or available, new knowledge and theory[83].
  • issues of power and inequality, for example, over use of particular practices or access to particular knowledges[84].
• Examining the way that identified features work together as a whole, and the shape, direction, and networks of relationships that achieve the particular outcomes of the early childhood service. Thinking in terms of interrelationships, patterns, and connections, rather than focusing on individual elements is called systems thinking[85].
• Collecting different kinds of data in order to answer the questions about your areas of interest to strategy design[86]. Clearly articulated questions will help target the data collected[87], otherwise it is easy to get lost in collecting large quantities of data that are difficult to interpret and analyse[88]. Mixing the kind of data you collect will help you create a deeper, richer, and more complex understanding of areas of practice[89]. It is important not to seek data that will validate predetermined decisions but to be open to fresh opinions and interpretations. Data collection about practice should form a regular and integral part of the early childhood service’s culture, to create a robust and mature data system that supports its ongoing strategic development[90], and keep teams up to date with what is going on inside and outside the early childhood service.

Data can be collected via

• Surveys conducted in person or online. Numerical data might be obtained from surveys in which you assign a number to answers, and the mean score of each survey question for different groups of respondees explored[91]. Ensure that contributions are valued by following up on them and communicating findings to the wider community[92].
  • Setting up scenarios with children to explore their knowledge, skills, attitudes, or perspectives on an issue[93]. Observations can be structured with an observation protocol which indicates what to look for, or a specific way of recording or rating the behaviour of interest[94]. Teachers might collect comments or statements made by children or families, observational notes, photos, and video, as well as existing documentation.
  • External reports and governmental statistics to examine trends in socioeconomic conditions for families[95].
  • Formal or informal individual interviews[96]. Interviews can take place by phone, email, or online, as well as in person. Some members of your community may have difficulty reporting their views and opinions honestly, and so it might be important to observe their actions, behaviours[97], and be aware of what they are not saying, as another source of data.
  • Focus group interviews[98] in which you invite key families and communities to come together to collectively discuss their responses to specific questions as a group.
• Producing brief summaries of the data collected, thinking about what each piece of data shows about practice, and examining emerging patterns, such as gaps in provision, and patterns of advantage or disadvantage[99]. Are your practices reflective of these beliefs and values, or are there inconsistencies between what you believe and what you are doing?[100]

Useful exercises for this stage include the snow card technique or the timeline exercise. See this guide[SM8]  for an explanation of these exercises and how to use them to support this stage of the Strategy Design Cycle.

Where to from here?

While this step can take much time and careful deliberation, it is important to be aware that it is possible to do too much assessment of your current context, and leaders should use their judgement to know when to quit[101] and move to the next stage.

With an understanding of the external and internal environment of the early childhood service, particularly the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges that the organisation faces, and with attention to its mandates, mission and value statements, leaders and teams have a good foundation for first, identifying strategic issues (Step 4), and then developing effective strategies to respond to these (Step 5). It might be helpful to first return to your vision and consider how well it aligns with your identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges[102].

Alternative processes

A SWOC or SOAR analysis can be preceded by an examination of the service’s review of its vision, mission, and mandates, or it can be performed first to create a quick overview and point you in the direction of information you may not have noticed or not paid enough attention to. Rather than a SWOC analysis, some services might find it more relevant to select a specific strategic issue (Step 4) and gather information around that issue, such as meeting a mandate, or improving links to the community, or enhancing outcomes for children. This will create a more specific and grounded analysis[103].

If, during the process of assessing the external and internal environment, it becomes apparent that there are specific and immediate actions that should be taken to deal with challenges and weaknesses, then it is important to take action. It is not necessary to keep a sharp distinction between planning and implementation of plans[104].

4.      Identifying strategic issues

Strategic issues are identified through reflection on how the early childhood service’s relations with the larger environment in which it is nested impact on desired outcomes. A strategic issue is a challenge that affects the early childhood service’s mandates, mission, vision, community, organisation, or management. Strategic issues may require teams to engage in developing more knowledge about an area of practice, improving relationships with stakeholders, or exploring new technologies, structures, or designs[105].

Why is this step needed?

Strategic issues show where there are gaps or challenges and where bridges are needed in order to reach the goals or vision[106]. It is important to identify these issues so that effective strategies can be developed to negotiate them.   

What might this step involve?

• Brainstorming potential issues, and determining what makes them strategic (specifically their relation to mission, vision, mandates, or strengths, needs, opportunities, challenges). What or who says this is an issue? What issues might be missing? Focus on issues and not solutions. It is important that issues are properly framed and understood before solutions are suggested, as solutions will only be helpful to the early childhood service when they are developed to genuine and real issues. It is also important to allow plenty of time for reflection[107].
• Choosing which strategic issues to prioritise by having everyone mark the three issues that are most important from their perspective, and evaluating them according to their links to mission, vision, strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and opportunities. Also think about the likely consequences of not addressing an issue, which issues are important in the short term and which are important in the long term[108]. Can any of these issues be combined, divided into two or more separate issues, or can any be easily eliminated?
• Framing strategic issues as questions that the early childhood service can do something about (rather than something that requires a change in governmental policy, for example) and that invites more than one answer[109]. This is helpful for the next stage in the cycle.
• Maintaining a sense of humour, and looking for light-hearted ways to reduce tension if identifying and discussing strategic issues becomes overly serious, as well as to address and deal with emotions that come up for team members. Focus on instilling hope, courage, optimism, and faith, and on maintaining that strong sense of belonging and psychological and emotional safety in the group[110].

Useful exercises for this stage include creating a visual strategy map to show the direction of influence of different relationships, which might indicate which strategic issues should be dealt with first, as well as how doing so will impact other strategic issues[111]. See this guide[SM9]  for an explanation of these exercises and how to use them to support this stage of the Strategy Design Cycle.

Where to from here?

Some strategic issues will demonstrate the misalignment of mission and vision with teaching and learning strategies, staffing choices, or use of resources, and may have an impact on the early childhood services mission or values statement. If a strategic issue relates to updating or revising the early childhood service’s mission or vision, then once this has occurred, it is likely that a new set of strategic issues will emerge, and another round of identifying and planning for strategic issues will be necessary. With a clear understanding of strategic issues, teams can move onto exploring strategies and goals for action (Step 5).

 

Leaders and teams can first identify goals (as in Step 5) related to meeting mandates, mission, or vision, and then identify strategic issues related to meeting those goals, before articulating strategies. Alternatively, some services may find it easier to move directly from goals to strategy design without first identifying strategic issues, which can work well when leaders, teams, and communities broadly agree on mission and values[112].

Alternative processes

5.      Strategy and Goalsetting

Strategy is about helping early childhood services relate to their communities and environment in the most optimal way, responding to strategic issues by taking advantages of strengths and opportunities while addressing weaknesses and challenges in order to achieve the vision that is collectively desired. Documenting these ideas in a clear and simple way to provide a framework for action can support coordinated action and collaboration, as well as serve as a reference point for ongoing evaluation[113].

 Why is this step needed?

Strategising is about getting on with making changes in daily teaching and learning practices with children and their families[114]. In this important step, leaders and strategy teams make some crucial strategic decisions about where to invest time and energy in order to move an early childhood service closer to its vision. Having a clear set of strategies can also help with the alignment of actions between different teams in an early childhood service[115].

What might this step involve?

• Reviewing the information from previous steps – the mission, mandates, SWOCs or SOARs, data about the internal and external context, and research – to trigger strategic ideas for improvement. If you created a visual strategy map[VH10] , it can be helpful to revisit this, thinking about different ways to weave links between different potentials and resources[116].
• Setting goals. Think about what the strategy is intended to change, in terms of skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours, for example, and the kind of outcomes hoped for[117]. This can help teams to develop goals that are specific and detailed enough to enable strategy design[118]. Goals should be achievable, measurable, motivating, and flexible.
• Thinking about implementation, andthe actions, budgets and resources needed to implement a strategy[119]. Strategies might involve introducing new ideas and practices, or discontinuing an existing practice or structure that is not working well.
• Researching possibilities for new practices and solutions. This should help leaders and teams to consider a broad range of ideas and be more creative in solving their problems of practice. Research might even lead into small-scale and rapid testing of a few ideas, assessing their feasibility and likely effectiveness[120].
• Agreeing criteria for evaluating proposed strategies. More generally these might include things like
  • how well-accepted strategies would be across the early childhood service’s community[121]
  • how consistent the strategies are with the mission, vision, and culture of the service[122], and with existing strategies and practices[123]. What will need to be adjusted in order to accommodate or enable the new strategy?
  • how ethical they are in terms of being fair[124] and inclusive, and providing a positive impact to the full range of children and families that attend.
  • their underpinning logic[125], or what would have to be true about you as a team, about the community you serve, and the early childhood context for this strategy to work. This is your theory of change[126] and is helpful as it enables you to tweak your strategy if you find that one of your assumptions is found to be inaccurate, to have changed[127], or is challenged by new insights and discoveries[128].
  • how the strategies fit with the strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities of the internal and external environment of the early childhood service[129].
  • the connections that might need to be forged or enhanced with key stakeholders or community members and how these may influence strategies[130].
  • the clarity and communicability of strategies and goals. Are the strategies and goals easily translated into hypotheses that teams can use to evaluate and test ideas[131]?
  • other factors and intervening variables may exist that may affect the level of change[132], such as an upcoming ERO inspection, or a change in staff. 
• Breaking larger strategies into smaller, manageable steps. A number of small steps can lead to a big leap of change in practice[133].
• Summarising and sharing strategies, targets, and intended outcomes using simple words and phrases to make them memorable. Any documentation should be useful and used! Long and complicated documents will quickly be put aside and forgotten by team members[134]. Strategic plans [VH11] can be kept direct and uncomplicated when they are restricted to a single page[135], and are focused on strategy rather than operations[136].  Strategies might also be visually depicted in a strategy map[137]. The main goal is to effect positive change, whether a formal strategic plan is created is not as important[138]. 

Useful exercises for this stage include the snow card technique and the five-step process model. See this guide for an explanation of these exercises and how to use them to support this stage of the Strategy Design Cycle.

 Where to from here?

It is important to take action when action is useful. It is far better to get started than to spend lots of time wondering about different potential strategies and their impact. The best strategies are not designed to ensure perfect outcomes, but rather result from the rough thinking and sketching of possible actions, and a brief assessment of what is realistic to try and what is likely to be most successful[139]. Knowing that plans don’t have to be perfect and can be revised or dropped at any point can help teams to be prepared to take more risks[140]. The team will be able to quickly ascertain whether particular strategies are likely to be effective, and correct or adapt them as necessary[141], in the next stage of the Strategy Design Cycle.

 Alternative processes

Rather than setting goals, teams may consider setting principles for strategising, particularly where strategising is bottom-up, adaptive, and emergent, dependent on teachers’ learning as they try things out and innovate what will work for their context. Principles can ensure value-guided choices while being more flexible than goals, providing direction without prescribing particular actions. Principles-focused strategising is more appropriate where there are complex issues, multiple people involved, shared power in decision-making, and many variables that impact on the success of actions.  This kind of strategic learning can help teams to understand what the goals should be[142].

6.      Action and reflection

This final stage in the Strategy Design Cycle involves pulling everything together and communicating decisions and plans in effective and motivating ways. It also ensures that both strategy design and implementation are performed in ethical, wise, and workable ways[143], and are regularly monitored and evaluated. Leaders have an important role in ensuring that teams stay motivated and on task, providing support for them to develop the knowledge, skills, and competencies[144] that are required for strategic goals to be realised[145].

 Why is this step needed?

Putting planned strategies into action and evaluating their impact enables the revision and refinement of strategies to continually move practice towards desired outcomes. Over time, and with plenty of refinement, implemented strategies may result in teams embedding new norms, shared expectations, and principles into daily practice, and developing new attitudes and patterns of behaviour[146].

 What might this step involve?

• Forming action plans which focus attention on the necessary actions, timescales, expected outcomes, and people responsible. Spending time thinking through processes for the implementation of agreed strategies before implementation itself can minimise later difficulties. Implementation might be staged so that change takes place in waves. This is sensible when teams are involved in developing innovative approaches to problems of practice, which might involve testing ideas in smaller ways before applying them more widely. More direct and fast-paced change can be appropriate when changes are simple and there is lots of enthusiasm for the change[147].
• Outlining changes so that they are conceptually clear and the reasons for change and expected outcomes are well understood. Changes that can be introduced quickly and easily are best. It might be helpful to demonstrate new practices, and to give people time to learn about the changes to adopt and adapt them to actual situations[148]. It is also important to keep some things steady, as constant change can be exhausting[149].
• Putting processes and structures in place to support new actions and new habits[150]. For example, Digital and social media might be used to keep improvement efforts top of the agenda and to support implementation and professional learning[151].
• Supporting and encouraging staff members. Leaders might encourage groups to explore feelings of doubt and uncertainty, and offer multiple opportunities for people to develop shared meanings and appreciations about the strategic change taking place[152].
• Maintaining momentum through very active forms of documenting and reporting that encourage conversations and group reflection, as well as celebration of small steps of success and any mistakes made (celebrated as demonstrating risk-taking[153], learning, and resilience[154]). Sometimes the goal leaders and teams are trying to address is a moving target, and success might be only temporary[155]!
• Regularly evaluating strategies. Important questions to ask are ‘what have we changed? What impact has that had?’, and ‘Should we change direction?’ Where outcomes have not been achieved or have not been as beneficial as expected, leaders and teams should seek to understand the causes[156] through the careful collection of and reflection on data. Review also gives leaders the opportunity to provide constant feedback about how what teams and individuals are doing connects to the vision[157].

 Where to from here?

The new learning that occurs and the skills and practices that develop in this stage of the Strategy Design Cycle will enable leaders and teams to spot new opportunities and adapt responses to changing circumstances and contexts[158]. This will invite teams to return to earlier stages of the cycle, perhaps revisiting vision, or identifying new strategic issues that have come up. Strategy design is an ongoing process that is intimately tied to the implementation of plans[159], and thinking strategically should be a continuous process that creates a dynamic, living strategic plan[160].

Endnotes

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[1] Collis, D. J. (2021). Why do so many strategies fail? Harvard Business Review, June/July 21, 82-93.

[2] Gausmann, G., & Lima Ricci, G. (2020). Strategic leadership: A paradoxical mindset of value creation. In N. Pfeffermann (Ed.) New leadership in strategy and communication: Shifting perspectives on innovation, leadership, and system design (pp. 47-62). Springer.

[3] Goltz, J. W. (2020). Higher education leadership strategy in the public affairs triumvirate: College and community engagement. Palgrave Macmillan.

[4] Gausmann & Lima Ricci, 2020.

[5] Bryson, J. M. (2018). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement.

[6] Waniganayake, M., Cheeseman, S., Fenech, M., Hadley, F., & Cheeseman, W. (2012). Leadership: Context and complexities in early childhood education. Melbourne: Open University Press.

[7] Bryson, 2018.

[8] Bryson, 2018.

[9] Bryson, 2018.

[10] Bryson, 2018.

[11] Bryson, 2018.

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