Three weird, big NGO strategy errors

Soo much is being written about NGOs doing strategy and all the pitfalls that loom along the way. What’s there to add? Now I am not really a strategy guy, but over the last twenty years have been involved in or exposed to strategy process and strategizing in the policy world in NGO, IGOs and the government as intern and employee, strategy team member, consultant or simply baffled sideline observer. And every time when I read new strategy documents I cannot help but thinking about three things that seem to go persistently suboptimal. Here they are:

1. A “leading” source of problems

Does escalating the ubiquitous ambition to become the “leading” organization for whatever area you work in really convince funders that you offer the best return on investment? Or does it rather evoke a picture of someone rather ruthlessly and selfishly elbowing their way to the front and seeking the limelight in what is meant to be a team effort? And does it convey to current and former staff that this is really the go-to-place to work or rather instill a Muskian sense of imminent “let’s be hard-core” exploitation and an unsettling expectation of being surrounded by over-confident and under-reflective peers and managers. Perhaps I am wrong but my sense is that it is rather the latter option that applies in both cases.

2. Ambient unawareness — solipsistic strategies for a world of relations

Another way I find the ambition to become the leading org on xxx problematic is that it looks less like a convincing proposition and more like a lazy shortcut to skip a serious discussion of your unique selling point vis-à-vis your competitors and friends. Or more in NGO spirit, it craves for a much needed explanation of how you fit most synergistically into a policy domain or sector, how your distinctive capabilities can be deployed most effectively to help the entire field move along. How many NGO strategies have you seen that seriously discuss how their five most comparable peers approach their work and impact and how you propose to add maximum value and help everyone succeed? How many NGO strategies explicitly provide an explanation for why they plan on putting a new thematic focus on trend x [insert AI, energy transition, infodemic or any other issue here that features in any and all horizon scans that NGOs commission] when all your peers most likely make the same move at the very same time. Why are YOU really best positioned to scope out and scale this up? All this is bread and butter of a good business plan, yet seems to be fairly uncommon for NGO strategies. Despite a vocal embrace of partnerships, collaboration and consultation and despite detailed depictions of external context and trends most NGO strategies shy away from this type of open analysis of peer capabilities and joint complementarities.

Doing so is more a sign of confidence, strategic savviness and true impact thinking rather than making yourself look vulnerable and weak — a concern that might implicitly shape the strategists thinking and help explain why such “market” analyses are rarely part of the strategy doc.

Or to make this even more poignant with a bit of an exaggerated chess analogy: isn’t it a little like the white tower plotting a strategy how to win against the forces of black all by herself without considering what all the other white bits on the board are capable of doing and will do going forward. Sounds not quite right, does it?

For organisational scholars this has been a major tenet since at least the 1970s when Howard Aldrich a seminal contributor to the field noted

“the major factors that organizations must take into account are other
organizations.” (Aldrich 1979)

Strategy is so relational, yet rarely written and built as such.

3. Why 70%-in is better than all-in

Another way excessive ambition can backfire beautifully is when the strategy does not tire to repeat over and over that everything and everyone will be aligned with the new plan, the org firing on all cylinders to make the new strategy come true. Again, it sounds like the type of highly coveted all-in spirit that oozes total commitment and value for money. Yet, is it smart and realistic? There are likely to be many things that you are doing that are super useful, highly effective and good to keep yet that will not quite fit under a new all-encompassing strategy narrative. Drop the good just because it defies easy storyfication? Probably better to go pragmatic and accept that your new story only and inevitably describes part of who you are and what you are going to be.

But more importantly — and I have seen this first hand several times — a call for a total all-in will maximize anxiety and unleash all kinds of counterproductive forces. It will trigger a pre-emptive push-back by the ones that are afraid to thematically end up on the outside of the new cool script and lead them into quiet quitting during execution of the new strategy. And this type of all-enveloping strategizing will encourage the ones that work on issues that are marginally compatible to do everything they can to stretch the focus and water down the narrative so that they can slip under its cover. All this is likely to turn what is meant to be a deliberative processes and honest engagement with strengths and weakness in the strategy process into pure politics and elaborate word-smithing. The result is a watered-down, unfocussed strategy, spewing motherhood and apple-pie platitudes with a nod to everyone and everything, a rather useless outcome of a laborious process. Or perhaps even worse it will birth a strictly bounded strategy scripture, religiously policed and subject to intense textual exegesis by the C-suite priests and the common workforce worshippers, ala “what did the strategists intend to say here”. Understandable impulses when strict delineations were so badly fought over and are too painful to rejig and renegotiate. Yet, not exactly very hepful in a world that puts a premium on agility and adaptation.

So how about stating at the outset that your new strategy will be more humble and only apply to say 60 or 70% of what you are doing? That it is about establishing a bunch of new thematic focal areas to cluster some of the work, ongoing and upcoming, around and attach some fund-raising and new hiring to these clusters? How about making explicit when you embark on this that who is not in can still be cool? This does not mean to say that it is business as usual and some new work loads will just be bolted on. It is making a genuine offer that whoever wants to move into these new or deepening thematic spaces will get some extra support in getting there. Offer new options and promising ways for being in rather than an ultimatum for jumping ship. And give reassurance that despite a novel focus there are still other very useful ways of contributing and being acknowledged.

Again, I am not a strategy expert and these are just some thoughts and observations. You may or may not agree with me or perhaps you prove me wrong by pointing at the many examples of strategies out there that are different and do take some of these points on board. The latter would actually be really nice. I would love to be proven wrong.

References

Aldrich, Howard. 1979. Organizations and Environments. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.