Ah, the New Year. A time of good intentions, resolutions, revisiting your lifestyle and habits...but how can you harness that same enthusiasm come February? We might not be able to help keep off those pesky 10 lbs. (we'll leave that to Dr. Oz!), but we can offer some words of advice to faciliate a kickoff meeting to discuss launching a better strategy management system in 2013. And why should you care? We have watched organizations with great missions learn the hard way that floundering without a comprehensive yet easy-to-follow and approachable strategy management system is a sure-fire way to chase your proverbial tail when it comes to measuring impact in a mission-driven organization. So hear us out, then chime in with your own tips and best strategies. Here's to a measurablely good 2013!

I was working with a client last week, preparing for his unit’s strategy map workshop by pre-briefing him on the draft strategy map we had developed based on interviews with his leadership team and the overall organization’s strategy map.

After we reviewed the draft map and he felt we were pretty close, he asked, “OK, so at the end of the workshop, when we have consensus from the team that we are 80% there with the strategy map, how do we know?  Can we stress test it?  Can we think up a few potential scenarios that we may encounter and see how, if we are focused on the strategic objectives, the strategy map will help us deal with the scenarios.

Let me quickly describe a dysfunctional organization. It is one whose leadership team meets on a regular basis. Maybe they meet weekly for 1 hour or monthly for 2-4 hours or even quarterly for 4-8 hours. They talk about all the things that are important to their organization. They discuss all of the challenges and successes. They fret over the complex and difficult issues, and then they break for the day and meet back again the next time. This might not seem all that unfamiliar to you.