Last year as Action Hampshire started to put together a new strategy, after spending some time articulating our vision, purpose and mission (follow this link to read a blog entry about that process), it was clear that we needed to understand what the situation was that our new strategy would be seeking to address and work within.
Our organisation had experienced significant change – not just because of Covid-19, which turned us from a fully-in-person to a largely-remote working environment, but following the resignation of our long-standing CEO and other members of our senior leadership team, who found the pandemic was a time to reflect and explore new opportunities. It was that same feeling which brought me to Action Hampshire, after a decade of working at an international network. So within Action Hampshire we had a mixture of staff who had been in the organisation for 15+ years, a new CEO, new Chair, and quite a few new staff, and everything in-between.
In order to set an agreed direction, we needed a process that would get us on the same page about what the context and situation was. This process would also help us to generate options. We sought the following information:
Internal Situation
– Our financial situation including costs, investments, secured income, and our financial performance over the past 15 years
– Staff wellbeing, happiness and skills
– Previous strategy and impact documents
– Our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)
External Situation
– Sector trends, including Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental (PESTLE)
– Our role within the ‘markets’ we operate within
– Other organisations working in those spaces
To get this information, we:
– Reviewed 15 years of annual accounts and other relevant internal paperwork
– Conducted a staff survey covering questions about work-life balance, internal processes, stress, happiness, working environment preferences and psychological safety
– Reviewed accounts and communications materials of other infrastructure organisations across the country
– Did a SWOT analysis and reviewed previous SWOT activities done by the board
– Gathered feedback via 20 stakeholder interviews including our partners, funders, consultant affiliates, ambassador, and critical friends
As we compiled this information, I compiled this information into what became a ‘situation summary’, which was split into four sections – our staff, our processes, our external image/profile and our sustainability. I triangulated the information and prepared a 4-page document which was then shared with the board and full staff team, who were all given an opportunity to share their feedback. There were a couple of clarification questions, but no one disagreed with the findings of the situation summary.
Preparing the situation summary also identified some of the options which we would look at in the next phase of our strategy development, where we decided what our strategic intent, goals and actions were going to be (in other words, ok this is the situation, what are we going to do about it?). Watch this space for more information on that in the 3rd edition of this blog series!
