Overflow 25 Strategy Management
During the strategy design process, Living Water’s global community spent a year asking God to reveal himself to us—to uncover insights through analysis, excite our imagination through new visions, and inspire us through the power of his Spirit. We worked to clearly define who God is calling us to serve (both our supporters and program participants). We are committed to building a culture and systems that enable us to listen and learn so that we deeply understand our neighbors’ wants, needs, and motivations. The result was Overflow 25, our three-year strategy.
Now, we have the task of managing the strategy well, so we steward the opportunities ahead of us. The Strategy Management Framework helps us in this endeavor, turning the strategic design into coordinated action so we can achieve our aspiration.
Overflow 25 Aspiration: For the global Christian community to pursue the physical, spiritual, and social flourishing of all people lacking basic WASH services. We will fuel this mission into the next generation by innovating holistic, sustainable WASH programs and high-quality relational experiences.
The framework consists of three parts: 1) Philosophy 2) Process 3) Tools. Use this framework as a reference and guide along other tools at Living Water.
Strategy management is a disciplined approach to ongoing assessment, learning, agility, and coordinating action.
DEFINING STRATEGY & STRATEGY MANAGEMENT
The term “strategy” can mean many different things depending on the context and application. At Living Water, strategy is a design for accomplishing the mission in a particular time and context. Therefore, mission always precedes strategy. Flowing out of strategy, we create action plans.
STRATEGY is A design for coordinated action.
Strategy is about:
1. Making choices: We use strategy to discern hard decisions together.
2. Increasing the likelihood of mission success: We design strategy for a purpose – to better achieve our mission.
3. Integrating faith, creativity, and evidence: We see our faith as a strategic advantage in ending the water crisis. We integrate faith with creativity to generate new possibilities and the rigor to test them.
Our process for strategy tends to follow these steps, though various strategy design methods may be used (Fig 1).
Good strategy is much more than a design, it also requires management through ongoing assessment, learning, agility, and coordinated action. Our strategy management approach is based on three principles:
RHYTHMS: Practice monthly and quarterly rhythms, learning from taking action, tracking results, and celebrating progress
ROADMAP: Take action through agile project management, setting clear project scope, roles, and measures
REPORTING: Maintain a sharp focus on strategic objectives and tracking them through a compelling scorecard (the Strategy Compass)
There are many tools we use to support strategy management. If you would like to learn more, or have questions about the Living Water Strategy Management Framework, we invite you to reach out to an S&I team member. They will be happy to discuss this with you!