Strategy – a walk in the park?

Wednesday saw me facilitating strategy in the park for the good folk of the Bretton Woods Project. BWP scrutinises the work of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and provides up to date information to campaigners and campaigning organisations.

The park in question was Waterlow Park in London. And it’s worth a quick diversion to mention that the Waterlow Park Centre was a great venue for small or medium-sized groups. I’m told it’s hire rates are also very reasonable. It helps that it’s in a park and the sun was shining, but a good venue nevertheless….

BWP have undertaken a strategy process that’s impressive for an organisation of their size, and much of the agenda preparation was already done for me. I hope to bring you more on that soon in the form of an interview with a member of the BWP team.

Even so the tensions between time and achieving depth of thought and quality of decision-making were inevitably apparent in the one day I spent with them. My brief had been mainly to help them implement the thinking that they’d already agreed on. It became obvious quite quickly that there was less agreement than was perhaps assumed, and we had to take a step back. Rule number one of any process – clarity on assumptions: are they shared, are they accurate? I’ve been heard to say on many occasions that what’s obvious to me may well differ from what’s obvious to you. It was a useful reminder of this in practice.

The evaluation of the day was generally very positive. Here are some snippets:

The facilitation was focused and task orientated. We moved forward and made progress… The structure of the day was well thought out…We were flexible, which is important in strategic planning

There was, of course, room for improvement:

The introduction was too long – we’ve had similar facilitation in the past, so it was unnecessary…We spent too much time re-defining the process part way through the day