From plan to practice
Organisation design and strategy implementation.
A short, focused look at closing the gap between plan and practice: devolution reform as strategic choice, structure that follows strategy and implementation that sticks.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Strategic Thinking
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Leaders turning strategy into change in reorganising public services
Overview
A defensible strategic choice can still leave little changed eighteen months later. From plan to practice focuses on the distance between strategy and delivery. It treats the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 and the Best Value Duty consultation as live strategic-choice problems rather than compliance updates. It then applies Chandler's finding that structure follows strategy, using Target Operating Models kept traceably tied to Rumelt's kernel, and examines the say-do gap and the places implementation breaks down. Three cases, the London Congestion Charge, Aldi and Lidl, and Orsted's transformation, test the toolkit under pressure.
Aims
This programme aims to help leaders in reorganising public services turn strategic choices into lasting change, by responding strategically rather than only compliantly to reform, designing structures that follow strategy, and building ownership, focus and honest review into implementation.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Analyse current local government reform as a strategic-choice problem, distinguishing what is mandated, what can be shaped locally and what is easily missed.
- Design or pressure test a Target Operating Model that stays traceably linked to your strategy across process, people, technology and service.
- Plan implementation with fewer priorities, named owners and honest review, anticipating where the say-do gap is most likely to open.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Distinguish what new legislation mandates from what it leaves open to local choice and what is easily missed.
- Apply Cynefin, Five Forces and the Strategic Choice Approach to the same legislative change, explaining what each lens reveals.
- Explain Chandler's finding that structure follows strategy and identify when a proposed reorganisation reverses that sequence.
- Use the five elements of a Target Operating Model and four pressure tests to assess whether a proposed design holds together.
- Identify which of the four breakdown points, ownership, translation, competing priorities or review, is undermining a strategy and describe the remedy for each.
- Identify which frameworks, including the Strategic Choice Approach, Cynefin, Five Forces, Blue Ocean and Rumelt's kernel, were in play in each of the three cases.
Built from 2 parts.
2 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Shaping the organisationOrganisation design and target operating modelsBitesize2 modules
- 02Making it stickStrategy implementation and deliveryBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Strategic Thinking topic, also sold whole as The strategic mind.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 2 hours 30 minutes, £69
- Next stepExplore, Strategy into action, 4 hours, £129. Already own the Focus? You pay £60.
- The whole topicImmerse, The strategic mind, 7 hours 30 minutes, £249. Already own the Focus? You pay £180.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms