Strategic Impact Analysis
The Strategic Impact Analysis is all about focus.
Use it to find the number one priority for your organization.
And then to communicate it, to invest in it, to rally the team. And then to adapt, adjusting resources when the priority is threatened by internal or external risks.
It is mission critical to success.
Perhaps it is more than one thing. Maybe three, or five. But still focused. With deadlines and metrics and an “all-hands-on deck” sense of purpose and mission.
Conducting a Strategic Impact Analysis provides this focus.
It’s a concept pulled straight from the Operational Resilience playbook, where a proper Business Impact Analysis (BIA) provides focus for investments in resilience. A BIA identifies the things that are mission critical to your organization’s operations, the things that can break, and if they break, it’s a problem. The BIA helps focus limited resources on those things that are most important.
In a similar way, the Strategic Impact Analysis identifies and prioritizes an organization’s strategic initiatives, to identify what must happen this month, this quarter, this year for a strategy to succeed.
Conducting a Strategic Impact Analysis is a vital step towards building strategic resilience.
How to conduct a Strategic Impact Analysis
At first, keep it simple.
Some organizations are excellent at identifying, communicating, and executing on their priorities. If that is the case, then just use the existing list of prioritized strategic initiatives.
We recommend focusing on the top 3 to 5 strategic initiatives, especially when the program is getting started. Even for over-achievers, we don’t recommend identifying more than 10 mission critical strategic initiatives.
The point is focus.
Here are the steps to conduct a Strategic Impact Analysis (SIA):
Identify the internal executive sponsor, and stakeholders who will review and sign-off on the recommended list of mission critical strategic initiatives. If you made it this far, you have probably developed a Strategic Response Team for your organization. Start with them.
Identify the departmental points of contact you will survey, to identify all of the initiatives underway or planned within your organization. Following the organizational chart is common sense and works great. Have your executive sponsor guide the communication here, so that you get the response you need.
Conduct a kick-off meeting with the points of contact to explain the SIA project and the timeline, and to share an example of the tools being used to gather information.
Provide your points of contact with the Strategic Impact Analysis survey questions. You may use or modify our free spreadsheet template, which includes initial survey questions. It’s available for download below.
Set up one-to-one sessions with each point of contact, to help describe the purpose of the SIA, and guide them through their answers. This can usually be accomplished without much trouble, especially around budget season. Sorry, corporate humor.
Gather responses for all departments, normalize and aggregate responses into one list that can be sorted based on the responses provided. Plan time for some follow up, with each team to confirm they completed the SIA properly, and to make adjustments as needed. Some departments may believe all of their initiatives should be considered the highest criticality, so tactful coaching may be needed.
Conduct a SIA Results Preview session with the departmental points of contact, and provide them with the aggregated draft of the results, including a summary recommending the top 10 strategic initiatives. Include all of the ranked initiatives to help the group identify what landed where, and to provide the opportunity to advocate for adjustments. This step is extremely helpful for gaining organizational support, as departmental owners see how their initiatives compare to other departments. It provides everyone with a top-down enterprise-wide view. Make adjustments as appropriate.
Conduct one-to-one sessions with the top executives from each department, and the members of the Strategic Response Team to gather their input on the draft results of the SIA. This step is even more valuable for gaining organizational support, and if needed financial or other resource support. Make adjustments as appropriate.
Publish the Strategic Impact Analysis results report, with focus on the top 3-5 strategic initiatives, the dates when these initiatives need to be completed, and the person responsible for them. Your next step will be to work with these owners and their teams to develop a Strategic Continuity Plan for each of the 3-5 mission critical strategic initiatives.
There are plenty of software companies that have tools to help gather and prioritize things, and if you have one of those tools, that’s fine. However we recommend starting with a spreadsheet and growing from there. Nearly all employees can use a spreadsheet without training. Again, we’re working to keep it simple. And we don’t need to add overhead to the program from the beginning.
How long does a Strategic Impact Analysis program take?
Best case scenario for small or very focused organizations: 1 hour meeting
Best case scenario for medium to large organizations: between 1 week and 1 month
For organizations who already have a prioritized list of strategic initiatives, the SIA project will require a little time to understand the existing ranking criteria, and then describing to key stakeholders how and why this information will be used to develop Strategic Continuity Plans.
This may only require a few one-to-one meetings or a presentation at a weekly leadership meeting. The point is awareness, and communicating the purpose behind the Strategic Resilience program, and the importance of the SIA results to the process. The timing is dependent on availability of information, the timing of meetings and availability of key individuals.
Likely scenario for medium to large organizations: between 2-3 months
For organizations who do not have a prioritized list of strategic initiatives, there will be some time required to develop the ranking criteria, and to survey departmental points of contact, and to gather and aggregate the results. There is also time required to gather departmental feedback and build organizational support for the SIA results with the executive leaders.
Conduct a random survey of 10 people within your organization, asking them: what are the 3 things the organization must accomplish in the next 6 months for our strategy to succeed? If their answers are all over the map, you need to conduct a SIA.
Talk with a few selected leaders about the annual budget cycle, to understand how decisions are made about which projects and initiatives receive the most funding. If they cannot articulate the process for making trade-off decisions, or the process lacks rigor, or wouldn’t withstand the scrutiny of an activist or friendly investor, you need to conduct a SIA.
Review this year and last year’s capex, opex, and R&D budget to identify how much money is allocated to the organization’s top priorities. If the organization’s financial resources are being spread too thin using the “peanut butter” approach, or on the wrong things, you need to conduct a SIA.
Review your organization’s top priorities, as expressed to employees during team meetings, to shareholders during quarterly meetings, or to major customers. If these priorities do not provide a clear path to improve outcomes for your customers, you need to conduct a SIA.
If your organization has been successful recently, and is deciding how to distribute surplus funds, and there is a lack of clarity regarding whether to distribute profits to shareholders, buy back the stock, invest for future operational efficiencies, or invest to improve future customer outcomes, you need to conduct a SIA.
The Strategic Impact Analysis provides leaders with a consistent way to focus their teams and resources on what matters most to the organization’s success.
This ties into the Strategic Response Team, which provides the organization with a way to adapt and adjust resources or the priorities in mid-cycle as needed, when the internal or external situation changes.
This builds strategic resilience.
How to decide if your organization needs to conduct a Strategic Impact Analysis