In a nutshell 1: Elements of strategy based on the Golden Circle

Elements of strategy: How to get them? How to present them so that they are related in a logical, transparent way? What process and project takes place during their development?

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Strategy is a vision of the end. Where we’d like to be with our organization, what we want to create. Why, for what purpose and how. At Project: People, we define strategy based on the so-called “golden circle” – the model of Simone Sink. At its center is WHY of the company, why it was founded in the first place.

The elements of the strategy that are related to WHY, are often defined as the company’s mission – why we are creating this company, what we want to achieve. Not only in terms of goals, but also in the long-term mission, the value that we want to bring to the world.

Then we go to “How” – methods, tools and the way we do it. In our case, this is lean work – agile, fast with fast delivery of value, but also focused on quality and measurement of processes.

The last element is “what” – what we offer exactly, what resources we already have and what resources we need.

These three areas define the scope of the strategy at Project: People. These why, how, what are, however, on many levels.

WHY

If we take a look at “why” – it’s a vision, a mission that we want to achieve, but it means goals as well. “Why” shows very strongly why, for what purpose we do something, why we create a particular organization and what we want to achieve with it. There are two levels of operations here. When it comes to a high level of such a long-term, 20-year – why can be defined generally, high level. However, if we move to the annual, two-year, three-year level, we move to the sphere of goals that we want to achieve in the organization.

HOW

“How”, on a long-term level, means tools, methods, values, ways of achieving goals (using lean or high/low margin methods, for example). At the operational level, however, these are specific actions that we undertake – how we’ll reach the goal that we determined in “Why”.

WHAT

„What” means offer factors – what exactly we offer to our clients. But also what exactly affects our business, what resources we have. What we bring to our customers, recipients.

The Sink model addresses the elements of the strategy very precisely but at the same time, really globally. The strategy is also a holistic product that covers the entire organization. It deals with what, why, for whom we do all this.

Elements of strategy versus process and project

But on the other hand, it leads to a thought process – a process that happens in the minds of the owners of the organization. This is a research and analytical process, but also a process of joint work that will lead us to the strategy being created. And, obviously, strategy is also a project. It should close in a certain time frame. Of course, it’s happening in our thought process, in our heads constantly. But it should close, for example, in a draft 3-month strategy summary. That a document could be created, which the team and the whole company can stick to for a whole year, for a few years or for years. A document that would be a guideline for the whole organization.

Are you interested in the Golden Circle method? You can find more information in our presentation Project: People Toolbox #7 Golden Circle >>

Project team, i.e. who was responsible for what

Author of the post

Beata Mosór-Szyszka Co-Owner & Managing Partner w Project: People

Beata is a serial entrepreneur, co-founder & managing partner at Project: People and Project: Values, and CEO of Hermes & Partner cooperatives. She is also an investor at ProEco Leaders foundation, co-author of The LiGHT Book (together with et al. Phillip Zimbardo, Robert Cialdini), and the author of diverse business tools (e.g. Values Poker, Lean Marketing Sprint).

Beata is a strategist, marketer and lean consultant with over 14 years of experience in the international market. She has cooperated with companies such as Sabre, T-Mobile and Google. She shares her knowledge and experience as a mentor in acceleration programs (like EIT Digital, Google LaunchPad), and as a lecturer at Tischner European University & WSB University in Gdańsk.

Project: People is a lean strategy agency that Beata established together with Joanna Ostafin in 2016. The company gained more than 160 clients from 16 countries in just 4 years (2016-2020), has 18 people on board, and achieves impressive growth of 200% Y2Y.

Beata built the females-first organizations, where ~60-75% of team members are women. She is also open to investing in the female businesses with a vision.

As a speaker, Beata performs at Polish and international conferences (e.g. Lean Startup Days Paris, VC night by Viva Technology, Open Living Lab, Product Marketing Summit London).