From sticky notes to shared direction
I’ve been doing a lot of strategic planning work over the past few months. Working with all different organisations, contexts and challenges.
One of the things I’ve been reflecting on is how little the core of my process has changed over time.
The structure is familiar and the tools I use aren’t particularly new. If anyone remembers me talking about the 3Ps (purpose, priorities, pan), guess what? They still hold!
Yet, the outcomes keep surprising me — in a good way!
Because when a group connects their work to what matters, things tend to fall into place.. And I love being part of that process.
Which brings me to something that came up again in a recent session I facilitated.
Connecting vision to work
The first of the 3Ps is ‘purpose’ – which sits between your vision and values.
In this particular session, there were sticky notes and butcher’s paper everywhere, people moving around the room having great conversations. All the things you’d expect.
Someone made a comment, though, that made me want to pause all the momentum. I can’t remember the exact words — it was something along the lines of: “we just need to land the measures now”.
So many of us steamroll toward strategies, measures and targets. Which are only useful if you know why you’re doing the work.
So we came back to a simple set of questions.
- What is your organisation’s vision and purpose and values?
- What do they mean to you? What do they look like in practice? When have you seen them showing up at work?
It might surprise you how much time I spend with groups grounding their vision. It’s not that it’s unknown.
Sometimes it’s fuzzy and needs to be put in focus. Sometimes people hold different ones because an agreed collective vision has never been fully articulated, or if it has been, it’s not been socialised. And sometimes, it’s just been forgotten over time —becoming part of the proverbial furniture instead of something that guides how we work.
Actually putting a plan on a page
So once we’d spent a bit of time reconnecting to the vision, I brought in my trusty friend: “plan on a page”.
This is one of my favourite ways of asking: if this needed to make sense in one glance, what would we actually include?
Most groups don’t struggle to generate ideas, they struggle to distil what they are there to do, what that looks like in the work, and what to focus on first or next.
You might recognise the 3Ps sitting quietly in the background in this process. They’ve been with me for years, and look how well they still do the job.
Purpose gives you direction, and priorities give you somewhere to put your attention. A plan on a page connects the two in a way people can actually use.
And importantly, it gives you something you can test.
- Does this strategy link back to what we said matters most?
- Are there areas where this is already showing up? (There always are, even if we have to dig.)
- Can we easily identify the areas we need to prioritise most?
If the answer is no, it’s usually not a problem to solve straight away — it’s a signal to come back up a level and see the bigger picture.
If you’re working through something similar, you don’t need to recreate the whole process. You can start smaller.
Take a page — literally or digitally — and ask:
- What’s the purpose I’m working toward?
- What are a few priorities that will help me get there?
Putting your plan where you can see it
If it can’t be seen, it’s hard to use. And if it’s not being used, it’s probably going to be forgotten.
Which is why I like one on a page.
I’ve seen them on whiteboards in offices, you could have it stuck behind your computer (harder now if you hot desk). You could even make it your computer background!
It’s only useful if it’s easily accessible. That’s what keeps strategic direction alive — in the work, not just in the document.
A few questions to sit with
- Do you know what your organisation’s vision is?
- Is it summarised in a plan (perhaps already on one page)?
- Do you know where to find it?
- And when was the last time you looked at it?
If this is feeling familiar
If those questions are hard to answer and you’d value some support — I work alongside boards, CEOs and executive teams to bring clarity to strategic thinking and help translate that into something usable.
Whether it’s a strategic planning process, a reset or a conversation that hasn’t quite landed yet — it can be useful to have someone outside the room to help hold the thinking. Feel free to reach out for my facilitation or coaching support.
