3 lessons from over a decade of facilitating strategy work - and 5 of my most used activities in a cheatsheet!
As we head into the autumn, I am coming to the end of two consultancy projects - one leading the facilitation of a 6-month strategy process for a national arts organisation, and the other facilitating a collective theory of change for a group of partners who are beginning to work together and wanted a process to help them get aligned on their shared priorities. In these projects, I am often facilitating the process - designing and delivering workshops and conversations that help the group get clarity and set direction - and also holding the pen, drafting strategic objectives that are then the basis of written or visual outputs from the work.
I first started leading strategy work when I was an Assistant Director at the GLA ten years ago. I led my teams through two Mayoral strategy processes, some involving external consultants, others led by our own teams. Since going freelance in 2019, strategic reviews and developing strategy - at the programme and the organisational level - have been a strong feature of my work. I love it - and I also find it incredibly challenging.
Strategy work involves exploring big questions, and making choices and trade-offs that aren’t always easy to do. It’s why I started running a dedicated course on Facilitating Strategy in late 2025, which has easily been the most popular course we’ve launched. It turns out a lot of people are being expected to facilitate strategic work with teams, and want to build their toolkit to help them do this.
As I come to the end of a series of strategy projects, I wanted to share 3 lessons on facilitating strategy work, and 5 of my most used facilitation activities that I use in these projects - which are available to download in a cheat sheet at the bottom of this blog.
Lesson 1: the importance of mission and vision
Many organisations don’t pay much attention to their mission and vision. It often sits in a hidden corner of their website, drafted and then forgotten by most people within the organisation. I’ve met very few people within organisations who can easily recall their mission, and yet for me a clear mission and vision act as an essential anchor point when making strategic decisions.
A clear mission and vision can help you make decisions about what’s in and what’s out of future strategies, and what’s yours to do as an organisation when you face hard choices or trade-offs.
Big decisions, like whether you should invest in a new piece of technology, expand into a new geographic area, or close down a programme of work, can all become easier when you ask the questions:
Does this help us make progress towards our vision?
Is this aligned with our mission?
I sometimes find that organisations don’t want to review their vision and mission when they’re developing a new strategy, but I’ve learnt the hard way that if we don’t step back and explore whether it’s still the right one, then a few sessions in, someone inevitably says - when weighing up a big decision - ‘’but how does this fit with our vision’’. A good vision and mission is much more than some well-crafted words on a website, but a clear articulation of what the organisation stands for.
Lesson number 2: Working out what not to do is incredibly hard
I’ve noticed that teams find it relatively easy to write a long list of their ambitions and what they want to achieve, but find it much harder to work out what they won’t do. Saying ‘no’ to things can feel restrictive, but having a conversation about what will be deprioritised is crucial if teams are able to focus on shifting the dial on a smaller number of things.
If I find teams are really resisting a discussion about what to deprioritise, I find it can be easier to take a step back and look at their role within the broader ecosystem: what is theirs to do, and what isn’t theirs to do. This can help draw some boundaries of what is theirs to do, and what sits outside of their role (though it’s not quite as powerful as a list of things they actively won’t do, or will stop doing).
Lesson number 3: make things visible - and memorable
One of my favourite stats to cite when kicking off a strategy project with a new team is this article. It shows an MIT Sloan research team who surveyed 124 organisations and found a huge gap between what leaders think staff know about strategy, and what they actually know. Only 28% of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could list three of their company's strategic priorities. And at one large tech company, 97% of senior leaders told an engagement survey they understood the company's priorities clearly. But when asked to actually name them, only one-quarter could list three of the five priorities, and a third couldn't name even one.
I’m always thinking about this when I’m in the middle of a strategy process with a team. The ‘’messy middle’’ as I sometimes refer to it, is where the thinking is at its most complex and detailed. There is a risk that the end result of this thinking is a product or plan which looks dense, rather than clear. I often see my role as a facilitator as helping the team to distill their thinking until it is expressed in the simplest and clearest way. Only then can I be reassured that they will remember their objectives and be able to keep them in mind when making decisions day in and day out.
Visual artefacts can also be helpful: a ‘strategy on a page’, an infographic, stickers or email signatures can all help to keep the team and organisation’s focus on a small number of strategic objectives.
There will be many more lessons to learn over the years, I’m sure. No two teams or organisations are the same, and each teaches me something new.
If you find yourself facilitating a strategy session for your team, or a client, I hope you find this resource useful. It’s got 5 of my most-used activities with teams, and draws on examples which I’ve used in all my strategy work over recent years. If there’s an example in there, it’s because I’ve used it and found it genuinely helpful.
And if you’re interested in going deeper and building your skills and confidence through one of our ‘Facilitating Strategy’ courses - take a look at our upcoming dates here.
