Who uses this toolkit

Strategy Facilitation cards provide strategists, strategy facilitators, CEOs and general
managers with practical tools needed to plan, design and facilitate a strategic planning
workshop, and communicate the strategic plan effectively.

What they are 

Strategy facilitation cards were developed by Ruth Tearle who has 20 years experience
in facilitating strategy workshops in a wide range of industries, companies and regions.
Her approach to strategy has been described as ‘innovative, fresh and hugely effective.”

In these cards, she shares her hard won experience by providing you with practical tips and activities to help you to:

• Plan and design a powerful strategy formulation workshop 
• Identify the stakeholders of your strategy workshop. 
• Agree on the end result of the workshop. 
• Agree on the content and process benefits the stakeholders wish to achieve. 
• Deal with politics, hidden agendas and potential saboteurs. 
• Select delegates. 
• Identify and deal with issues that could sabotage your workshop. 
• Collect strategic information you will need.

Faciliate a strategy workshop (using rational, emotional & spiritual intelligence)

• Organise your groups to encourage strategic thinking. 
• Create a climate for creative thinking. 
• Encourage a group to challenge existing paradigms and create new ones. 
• Do all strategic analyses (stakeholder, trends, opportunities, scenarios, key success factors, internal, competitor). 
• Develop a competitive advantage. (identify core strengths, choose target markets, develop a unique competitive advantage). 
• Develop a comprehensive vision. Showing your organisation in the future, with everything in place to support the competitive advantage.
• First steps to implementation. 
• Plan projects to implement the strategy. 
• Plan to communicate your strategy to key stakeholders - in appropriate ways.

How the cards work

The front of each card describes: 

• A simple definition of each strategic analysis you need to do. 
• A specific objective you or your group need to achieve.

The back of each card contains a ‘recipe’ for each step in the strategy formulation
process. This includes: 

• A small group activity carefully designed to achieve a specific analysis or result. 
• Instructions on how to handle feedback after the activity. 
• The materials you will need. 
• The way you need to arrange your groups in the workshop

When to use the Strategy Facilitation cards

Before your workshop
Before you design your workshop, meet with the CEO or sponsor of the strategic
planning workshop. Together decide how to work through the activities in the ‘Plan
your workshop’ cards. You may choose to either interview the executives who will
be involved in the strategic planning process, or to hold a pre-planning workshop
to identify the scope and benefits you want to achieve from your strategic planning
exercise. Then based on this pre-planning, choose the appropriate facilitation cards
you will need to help you achieve the benefits you’ve chosen. Going through all the
cards in order will help your team to develop a comprehensive organisational strategy.
However for simpler strategy workshops where only a few benefits are required, you
may choose just a few of the cards.

During your workshop
Read the purpose/definition of each card to the group. Get the delegates to complete
the group activity defined on the card. Then handle the group feedback as described
on each card.

After the workshop
Use the cards to guide you in writing up a formal strategic plan, and communicating it
to your stakeholders.

Why use Change Designs Strategy Facilitation cards

Experienced and new strategists use our tools to:

• Inject some fun and creativity into their workshops.
• Get fresh tools to encourage their teams to think strategically.
• Make strategic planning practical and simple - so that groups who may not be experienced in strategy theories and models, are still able to think strategically and put together a powerful strategy.
• Help groups to use the power of both left-brained, analytical thinking, and right- brained, creative thinking.
• Get away from traditional templates, worksheets and theoretical models, and make strategy come alive and meaningful.