Shifting the dynamics of a strategy conversation in WaterAid

A quick reflection on GameShift’s strategy pop-up with Olga Ghazaryan, William Garrood and John Higgins

We were fortunate today, to get an insider’s view of the participative strategy process behind WaterAid’s next ten years. Olga and William led the strategy process, and generously agreed to share their reflections with John Higgins. This has led to their superb article, coming out shortly in European Business Review.

I’m not going to talk about that article here – it’s out soon and it’s discussed in the film of the pop-up event. Instead, I’m going to pick out a few reflections that I’m sitting with from the morning’s conversation.

Seven things really stood out for me today:

• “Participative strategy takes time – but what you lose on the upstream part you gain on the downstream”, said Olga. That’s important: including people isn’t speedy. But when you consider putting intention into action, you get there quicker by involving people sooner. Strategy isn’t a document, it’s a coherent set of action over time. Participation gets you there more strongly.
• It won’t be the same elsewhere. Both William and Olga said they’d learned a lot from the process – and they were confident of being able to use it elsewhere. At the same time, they were clear that every process needs to meet the style, needs, history and culture of the organisation. It is important to design the process to suit the organisation and the need.
• Always ask “who is this strategy for” and design a process to include them and get a result that makes sense for them. In this case, WaterAid’s work is carried out in the field, in project teams far from HQ. It was vital to create a strategy that spoke to delivery and priorities in those places and was developed through a process that worked for these people.
• Giving the work to the people doesn’t mean dumping the work on the people. The small steering team bore a lot of frustration, doing repetitive work, having the same conversation over again with different teams. This allowed the strategy process to fit around the operational work in the field, not the other way round.
• Relationships matter. The small central team did a lot of emotional labour. They were the relational glue. Without their connections and knowledge of the organisation this wouldn’t have worked. This was particularly important when it came to handling the inevitable conflicts during the process. As William noticed, “You can’t spreadsheet your way to your toughest decisions”. When there are tough choices, relationships allow the work to progress.
• Learning to disagree well is important. There were tough choices to make, and the outcomes were never going to suit everyone. The central team, and the Global Executive, decided up front what wasn’t on the agenda at all, and what would be decided centrally. Participation is not a free-for-all. Good participation has good boundaries.
• Technology was part of the success. The process was entirely virtual – because of Covid rules. As it turned out, this added to the quality of the participation. Running a virtual process relaxed a previous hierarchy of locations, and yielded what Olga termed “an equality of experience” between the HQ team and teams based in the global south.

The article has so much more, including Olga and Will’s own top lessons, which are not the same as mine. They talk about these in the recording too.  It was such a valuable and fascinating session.

We’re so grateful they agreed to share so fully, and we hope you enjoy reliving it in the recording.