Module 2: Diagnosis, Identifying capabilities, resources and processes

Topic 2.1: Diagnosis and the ‘Strategy Journey Map’

Simply put, organisations that have a great ability to ‘temperature take’, are more likely to succeed.

This implies that successful organisations have an explicit and shared understanding of their overall strategy, their external operating environments and their internal capabilities. This includes strong knowledge about the ‘ways of working’, cultures, and knowing how to organise, navigate, and leverage. This ability may seem to some antithetical to a public sector context, however they are as crucial to the public sector, NGOs and other non-profits as they are to corporations and private businesses.

Diagnosis is a way of thinking about how to measure an organisation’s capabilities, resources, and processes in the context of rapidly changing, complex and ambiguous environments. In particular, diagnosis is mainly essential when people and systems are potentially operating in a state of uncertainty, when change is non-linear and discontinuous, and when events and trends in the environment act upon each other (Jackson, 2003)[1]. In the language of systems thinking, this is a situation where there is a large number of sub-systems that are involved in loosely structured interactions, and do not have predetermined or understood potential outcomes.

The underpinning principles of systems thinking were introduced in GSZ631 Managing within the Context of Government. Senior public sector managers try to address complexity and turbulence by designing adaptive organisations and processes so that they remain viable in rapidly changing environments. This thinking helps managers to recognise patterns over time.

This is a world of interconnected systems. One system is the organisation and its set of resources. While your influence and impact on the organisation and its strategy implementation and business model will vary, it is imperative that you understand the strategy journey, and your place in that journey. The following reading will give you some insight into this as it describes the impact of strategy in the public service regarding Product and process innovation. Look for the comments regarding these issues:

  • Patterns and actions that help achieve goals
  • The nature of strategy and its value as a communication tool
  • Public sector performance.

Required
15 mins

Favoreu, C., Carassus, D., & Maurel, C. (2016). Strategic management in the public sector: A rational, political or collaborative approach? International Review of Administrative Sciences, 82(3), 435–453.
Favoreu, Carassus and Maurel highlight “the need to combine different logics and approaches in the strategic control of public organisations” (2016 p.1). In your work context of strategic planning and management think about different logics and approaches that exist in your public sector context.

The Strategy Journey Map Check-List is a guide to approaching the development and execution of strategy.

To assist you in continuing to examine your place in the public value system, and assure your senior leaders, peers, teams and stakeholders of your progress on deliverables and outcomes, explore and trial the various processes, techniques, tools and systems that you can adapt and apply as you see fit.
In the workshop, you will be encouraged to create a ‘Strategy Journey Map’ that will function as your personal Strategy Tool Kit and also as a foundation to developing and completing your Workplace Project.
Find a strategic initiative in your organisation, either one in which you have participated, or have observed. Use the ‘Strategy Journey Map Checklist’, to identify which, if any of, the phases have been used to develop and execute the strategy.
The point here is that there is no one best, correct approach to developing and executing strategy. We encourage you here to explore, critique, modify and ‘patch’, to create an approach that you can justify and that you can present as a useful and productive ‘system of systems’. We suggest an ‘outside in’ approach – that is – start with the external operating environment, and gradually work ‘in’ – though you will see that we tend to ‘check back’, and integrate as we go!
We now lead you through a more comprehensive exploration of some of the key analytical tools.
Please note that during the Workshop experience, your Unit Coordinator will lead you through the application of many of these analyses. It is essential that you complete each of the exercises in this section, and begin to consider how and where they will apply in your Workplace project. That is, you can at least have in place a potential ‘strategy journey’ checklist that you can explore within your Workplace project.
  1. Jackson, M. C. (2003) Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers. Chichester, UK: John meyWiley and Sons. ↵

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