Case study: Co-creating a strategy

I was approached by the senior leadership team of a university that was looking to create a new institutional strategy for the next decade.
They had hosted stakeholder engagement sessions and several away days as a team, but needed an external perspective to help bring together their ideas and create a strategy that was easy for their audiences to understand.
They were working to tight timescales as they needed to submit the final draft to their board of governors within six weeks.

I started by creating a project plan to identify the small window for crafting the draft content.
I created an outline structure based on some example strategies that the senior team liked and reviewed all of the team’s work to date to look for themes, key phrases and messages.
I wrote a first draft of the strategy and highlighted gaps for the leadership team to consider. I also challenged on the areas of the strategy that felt least developed and worked with the team to clarify and add more detail.
We co-created a final version which was then designed by an external agency.

We hit all our targets and got a designed version of the new strategy to the board of governors on time.
The strategy was well-received by the board, which noted that the ideas were more cohesive and easier to understand.

“This would not have been possible without your input, which was invaluable.”
– Vice-Chancellor’s team