This article is part of our Organizational DNA series and is tailored for government agencies. For an overview across all sectors, read the main article here.
Government leaders often face an uphill battle: too many initiatives competing for too few resources, intense scrutiny over how funds are spent, and annual budget processes that default to last year’s projects and whoever argues loudest at the table. The result is a mix of projects that may or may not support your agency’s mission or the outcomes citizens care about most.
There is a better way.
Instead of starting with what you are already doing, start with your organization’s DNA. When you start with your organizational DNA, you choose and prioritize projects that directly support your strategy. A focus on organizational DNA identifies strategic performance measures, strengthens project tracking, focuses corrective actions where needed, and improves alignment of people, processes, technology, and budgets to strategy and goals.
What is Organizational DNA?
By “organizational DNA,” I mean the strategic objectives that describe the organization’s strategy. Just like human DNA, each organization’s strategy is unique. These powerful building blocks of uniqueness form the core of your strategy and drive your selection and prioritization process.
Strategic objectives are specific, actionable statements of intent. These objectives, taken together, describe your organization’s strategy, whether you are a government agency, nonprofit, or private sector company.
Examples for government agencies include::
- “Reduce client or citizen wait times”
- “Improve the cost-effectiveness of citizen services”
- “Increase client satisfaction”
- “Reduce operating costs”
Why Strategic DNA Matters for Government
Collectively, a dozen or so well-crafted strategic objectives, when linked together in a strategy map, tell the story of how your agency creates value for citizens. The strategy map uses cause–effect logic to visually show how value is created and sustained. When government agencies prioritize projects based on strategic DNA, they experience benefits such as:
- Better citizen outcomes tied to clearly defined strategic objectives
- Clearer alignment between programming and citizen needs
- Stronger budget defenses for chosen priorities, even under tight fiscal constraints
- Improved communication across departments and levels of the organization
- Better employee understanding of how their work contributes to mission and vision
Other sectors benefit too, nonprofits improve member support and mission alignment, and companies strengthen processes, coordination, and communication, but the core logic is the same: initiatives that are not clearly linked to strategic objectives are hard to defend and rarely deliver the desired results.
Start With the End in Mind
Drawing on a principle popularized by Stephen Covey – “Start with the end in mind” – the approach is straightforward but requires discipline, a “connect the dots” mindset, and the willingness to move beyond incremental, project-by-project decisions.
For government agencies, that means beginning with mission and vision, not with “What are we funding now?”
- Translate mission and vision into three or four high-level strategic themes and results (goals), such as “Improve citizen experience,” “Strengthen stewardship of public funds,” or “Enhance public safety”
- Develop approximately a dozen strategic objectives – the actionable components of those themes
- Link the objectives in a strategy map to show how investments in people, processes, and technology drive better citizen outcomes
These objectives form your agency’s DNA, the structural blueprint of your strategy.
Once that structure is in place, strategic performance measures, project selection and prioritization, and program, process, technology, and workforce alignment become much easier and more defensible. A concise, one-page balanced strategic plan clearly communicates goals, direction, priorities, and accountability to internal and external stakeholders.
The example shown above is from a government agency. If you work in a nonprofit or private business, see the nonprofit and business editions of this article for sector-specific examples.
The Strategic Prioritization Process
In the figure above, the rightmost column is the result of a disciplined prioritization process, with initiatives linked directly to strategy. The steps are:
- Identify potential projects (initiatives) – create the starting list of potential investments
- Develop strategy-supporting selection criteria and a project proposal template – create a level playing field for evaluation
- Describe candidate projects using the template – understand project benefits, costs, and strategic impact
- Select a prioritization ranking framework – promote consistency and build consensus
- Consider additional influencing factors – apply informed judgement (for example, legal mandates or political priorities) to analytical results
- Rank projects against the selection criteria – create A list, B list, and C list project portfolios for budget discussions
- Fund prioritized projects based on available resources – build the STRATEX, CAPEX, and OPEX budgets
Improving Strategy Execution in Government
We have used this strategic prioritization approach successfully with public sector clients in many countries over the past 25 years. Agencies that adopt this approach build more defensible portfolios of projects, with a logical way of saying “yes” to initiatives that support strategy and a clear, evidence-based way of saying “no” to those that do not.
If you want to start with the end in mind, use strategy DNA to improve project selection and prioritization and to improve citizen outcomes, consider attending one of our facilitation workshops or our professional certification programs, offered worldwide in conjunction with George Washington University College of Professional Studies:
Strategy Execution Professional
Key Performance Indicator Professional
Balanced Scorecard Professional
OKR Professional
Howard Rohm is President & Co-Founder of Balanced Scorecard Institute, a Strategy Management Group company. Howard is an author, performance management trainer and consultant, technologist, and keynote speaker with over 40 years’ experience.