The era of predictable implementation of strategic plans is gone. Organizational strategy, when conceptualized as a plan for reaching a set of goals, is often no sooner inked than it is out of date. In fact, a staggering 60-90% of organizational strategies are never fully launched. Blame an uneasy geopolitical landscape, the polycrisis, and whatever combination of local and national upheaval is going on, for this volatility. Even the day-to-day life of organizations—staff turnover, high workloads, low engagement—can make strategies much more difficult to create and implement. 

​​

Sometimes this uncertainty calls for un-strategizing, which we describe as a deliberate act of unflinching learning, and deep listening with no immediate intent to create a strategy. ​When strategic planning is required, our mantra is that it should come with big doses of imagination. It should also be “easy, feasible, and effective.” Explore some of the ways in which we do this below.