Laying a strong foundation of strategy work is an essential part of the roadmap to achieve any organizational goals, including talent management, DEI, and engagement goals. Solid strategy preparation helps you set the stage for successful execution so that your organization can reap the long-term benefits of investing in your talent. To build an effective strategy plan, our team at Orange Grove recommends using the following roadmap:
Understanding Organizational Objectives and Goals
Before beginning strategy work, you’ll want to first understand your organization’s overall current objectives. These are the goals your leaders have set to achieve – and whether indirectly or directly, your strategy should ultimately support those goals. Knowing what your leadership and organization are working towards will help you create a strategy that supports and benefits those organizational objectives.
Defining or Redefining Organizational Values
Do you have organizational values? If not, it’s time to explicitly define values for your organization, and if you have values in place, then take time to review them in the context of the strategy you will create. This is so that your overarching organizational mission and values feeds into your strategy initiative.
When you are creating an inclusion strategy, we recommend integrating your DEI values into your existing organizational mission and vision, rather than creating a separate set of DEI values. For example, a common value that companies hold is transparency. To put the value of transparency in a DEI lens, your company could share what’s happening in your talent process with different demographic groups, and address the differential treatment to ensure that your talent processes are more objective and fair.
Understanding Your Organization’s Current State
Understanding your organization’s current state is a foundational step that asks you to gather factual and objective information to ensure that your strategy work is precise and targeted. Data collection is essential to understanding the gap between how you’re doing and where you’d like to be. In this stage, you’ll collect both quantitative and qualitative data, through a range of potential activities: conducting observations, collecting survey responses, analyzing quantifiable data such as from your HRIS, and hosting interviews & focus groups. Data will both dispel any assumptions in your organization as well as shed light on areas that may require more attention.
Establish a Strategy Committee
You’ll need a team of key stakeholders to help you plan and execute your strategy. That’s where establishing a strategy committee comes in – the committee will be the bridge between your organization’s management and employees. Having influential figures on the committee will help you implement strategy work more effectively as well as ensure that there’s a diverse range of voices heard during the process. It’s important that there are people on the committee that have decision-making powers because without them, it can be difficult to get buy-in across the organization at the implementation stage if the strategy committee team members are too junior. Having operational and institutional expertise is an essential part of the power dynamic when selecting team members on a committee.
It’s important to remember that successful strategy work is an ongoing process. Aligning and implementing your organizational goal requires continuous effort, so you’ll want to regularly monitor your progress and update your strategy if needed. By determining organizational objectives to align with, understanding your current state through data, and establishing a strategy committee, your organization will be well on the way to successful strategy creation.
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