You wouldn’t think of embarking on a new ad campaign or product launch without the benefit of a well-crafted strategy. Yet many internal agencies think nothing of continuing to grow without the benefit of a purpose-driven organizational strategy. The reality is that a lot of in-house teams have evolved organically over time—initially formed to respond to quick-turn, low-cost project demands only to find themselves laboring to keep pace with today’s multichannel, multinational marketplace.

Like marketing strategies, organizational strategies begin with an objective that clearly states where you want to go. In defining your desired state, it’s equally as important to articulate your current state—where the organization is today. After evaluating where you are and where you want to be, the ideas that you come up with for how to move from current state to desired state are essentially strategies that you can consider implementing to get from Point A to Point B.

The process of developing an organizational strategy isn’t difficult—though it is deliberate and in order for it to be successful, you need to take a disciplined approach to moving from discovery to design to deployment. At the core of every successful organizational strategy is an assessment of risk and the acceptance of change, as fear of one or the other is typically what keeps us stuck in the status quo.

We’re exploring Organizational Strategy this month at IHAF, recognizing that everything we do to evolve our respective organizations should be driven by long-term goals, supporting strategies and resulting actions that can lead us from where we are to where we want to be. Join us.