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How to turn an existing strategy document into a working strategy

Turn an agreed strategy document into priorities, measures and review dates while keeping the terminology your leadership team uses.

1 min read

Start with the last version your leadership team agreed. If the board deck and the workshop notes disagree, keep the difference visible. Otherwise a tidy new strategy can quietly turn a suggestion into a decision.

Keep the source beside the priority

Take each agreed priority and note where it came from. Keep the terms your team already uses. If you infer a priority from several passages, mark it for review and ask someone who took part in the original discussion to check it.

Agree what the document leaves open

In this fictional example, page 4 of Northline’s board deck says “grow without compromising delivery”. The team records reliable delivery as a priority and asks its operations lead how to measure it. Order records show a typical delivery time of 14 days. The team agrees a target of 10 and sets a review date. The board deck supplied the direction. The records supplied the baseline. The team made the new commitment.

For each priority, record the source and page, agreed wording, any proposed interpretation and who will confirm it. Keep unresolved questions visible when you share the strategy.

If you’d like help setting up the strategy you already have, see how to get started with Suunta.

From Suunta.ai / from reading to action

Put an idea from this article to work.

Discuss one idea with your team and decide what you would change. The example below shows how to connect that choice to a goal and work in Suunta.ai. It is separate from the author’s article.

  1. Agree the choice

    Prioritise reliable delivery.

    Review the proposal with your team.
  2. Connect a goal and work

    10-day delivery. Trial a setup checklist.

    Owner / Operations lead
  3. Review the outcome

    Did shorter setups help delivery?

    Use the result to decide what comes next.
Illustrative example · fictional data. This workflow illustrates Suunta.ai; it is not a customer result.
Follow the example in Suunta.ai