What is a fully articulated strategy?

Because of my biases, I don't consider a strategy to be fully articulated unless it addresses 8 of the following 9 considerations - and not really in chronological order.  Resources are too finite and precious to be squandered on let's-wait-and-see approaches.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the strategy itself is a performance and, therefore, subject to assessment (i.e., measurement); it's articulation is a performance, the person articulating it is a performer.  We cannot refer to a partially articulated strategy as a "good strategy." For a strategy to be accepted as "good," it must tell a plausible and compelling story of how a constellation of moving parts in a culturally-diverse and politically-charged setting will facilitate the managed and documentable conversion of resources into results, promises made into promises kept.

Here's one way of looking at it:

What is a fully articulated STRATEGY?

1.     Identify the desired External (community) and Internal (organizational) Outcomes corresponding to the required “effort” and intended “effect.”

2.     Identify the direct and indirect Targets of the strategic initiative (i.e., customers, clients, beneficiaries, communities, and of course, the intended consumers and/or users of the performance information that will be generated throughout the execution of this initiative).

3.     Identify the Desired Effects of the strategic initiative on the targets (i.e., gains in knowledge, awareness, attitude, skills, and conditional status) along with Measures of Quantity & Quality to provide evidence of the attainment, internalization, acquisition, or approximation of those effects among the targets.

4.     Develop the work-in-progress articulation of the Strategy to outline how the strategic initiative will facilitate the attainment, internalization, acquisition, or approximation of the desired effects among the targets

5.     Identify the Direct, Indirect, and Collaborating Service Providers who are positioned to and/or capable of bringing about the attainment, internalization, acquisition, or approximation of the desired effects among the targets

6.     Identify how the Direct, Indirect, and Collaborating Service Providers are expected to perform by establishing Measures of Efficiency and Equity in resource management, collaboration, and service delivery, i.e., the “effort,” so as to envision how much service is/how many services are to be provided and how well those services are to be provided.

7.     Set forth some idea of how the Performance Information, generated by Items #3 and #6, will be collected and used, by whom, how frequently, for whose benefit, for what internal and external purposes (e.g., mandatory reporting, voluntary reporting, resource allocation, decision-making, public education, marketing, continuous improvement, and so forth).  There will be an ongoing challenge to explain the relationship(s) between OUTPUTS and OUTCOMES in an evidentiary, valid, and credible fashion.

8.     Some articulation of the Tangible and Intangible Resources needed to execute, maintain, and grow the strategic initiative.

9.     Repeat Steps 1 – 8 in no particular order.