The Lost Art of Strategic Assessments
In fields as varied as finance, retail, and Government, today’s conversations focus on speed: organizations must be fast, agile, and dynamic, and they must be able to quickly seize opportunities and head off threats.
As rapidly changing contexts focus short institutional attention spans on the tactical, strategic assessments have somewhat fallen out of favor. Broad, strategic thinking comes across as an unaffordable luxury at a time when the emphasis is on action and the pace of activity is often frenetic.
While many leaders feel that they can’t afford to spend time and money on strategy, in reality, they can’t afford not to.
Strategic assessments remain a crucial tool for organizational self-awareness and success. Acting and reacting rapidly in pursuit of your objectives – what we at Arc Aspicio refer to as Speed to Mission – is indeed vital. Success comes only if those objectives are well-chosen and well-understood from a strategic perspective.
During a strategic assessment, a diverse team of domain experts analyzes and documents the operational landscape and the organization’s place within it – the context. The team defines strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Critically, a good assessment lays out strategic alternatives an organization can take and their associated pros and cons. These options have follow-on and second-order impacts – customers, stakeholders, and competitors all react to a company’s chosen path. A strong assessment thinks through and wargames the various alternatives whenever feasible.
With our Speed to Mission capabilities and methods, Arc Aspicio stands ready to help Government clients complete strategic assessments of programs, offices, or even an entire agency. We provide actionable alternatives and insights that make it possible to achieve speed to mission in a dynamic climate. This builds trust between our team and our clients. It also allows our clients to build trust with their stakeholders – the key to dramatic mission performance.
