We emphasize helping clients design results-based, action-oriented strategies, so even if they choose a long time horizon for their ultimate vision, they can start taking steps toward their goals immediately. We also help clients develop ways to measure their implementation progress, and results of early and mid-term actions, so they can learn how they may need to adjust their strategic approach.

We can provide a "Balanced Scorecard" approach to strategy development and performance management, in which we help clients identify the "performance drivers" to focus on to achieve their strategic, bottom-line results (e.g., community outcomes, service performance, financial results). Strategic results and performance drivers are organized into four or five "performance perspectives," such as the four in this diagram.

Depending upon a client’s situation, performance drivers may vary from internal business processes to community decision processes; from investing in internal information systems to customer or public communication systems; from investing in developing employee skills, to developing strategic partnerships. Our client ends up with a clearly focused strategy, a "wiring diagram for success" that shows how drivers are linked to results, and a limited number of strategic performance measures for each key "performance perspective," including measures of drivers and end results. Clients then have measures of drivers to track in the short term, before end results are expected, to see if their strategy is on track and to test their assumptions, so they know what strategic adjustments to make to achieve their longer-term performance goals.

In addition to facilitating organization-wide strategic planning, we also help clients devise and implement more targeted strategies for narrower performance needs, such as strategic deployment of resources, targeting services, improving productivity, and facilitating action planning teams to plan and implement strategic improvements.