Story as Strategy Workshop

Strategic planning in organizations is often a stressful, time-consuming and technical exercise – done every few years or so, to plan for the next period. One of the problems with this approach is that by the time the strategy has been workshopped, discussed, and written up, there’s a good chance that a lot of it is out of date – particularly in these fast-changing times. Strategic documents can also be overly long – because while the ostensible purpose is to set goals and guide the organization to achieve them, the real purpose is often to persuade or please board members and funders – and so there’s way too much detail. It ends up being a document nobody reads and hardly anyone remembers the details of.

This workshop is a basic introduction to the Strategy as Story approach - a model that looks at strategy as a set of nested stories, which serve to guide the organization through key decision points in a complex and rapidly changing environment. It outlines the various elements of the approach and participants will begin to think about their organizational story as the first step.