The Strategic Foundation Blueprint: 4 tactics for unshakeable organisations

"I don't understand why we keep missing opportunities that should be obvious," a business owner I'd been speaking with confided during a strategy workshop several years ago. Despite having talented people and ambitious goals, his organisation seemed perpetually unable to identify and address customer needs effectively.

It wasn't for lack of effort. The team worked long hours, created detailed plans, and even conducted market research. Yet they remained constantly surprised by "hidden" stakeholders who emerged at critical moments, unexpected customer complaints about seemingly small details, and internal bottlenecks that no one had anticipated.

This experience came to mind recently when I visited a small café that had opened just six months earlier. Despite being new to the industry, the owners had created a seamlessly functioning operation that seemed to anticipate customer needs before they arose. When I asked how they'd managed this, the owner showed me a surprisingly simple set of diagrams on the café's back office wall. "Before we ordered a single espresso machine, we mapped out everyone connected to the business, what they needed from us, where things might break down, and how everything fit together," she explained.

The contrast was striking. While the struggling business owner had jumped directly to execution, the café owners had taken time to build a solid foundation for their organisation—one that made subsequent decisions clearer and execution more effective.

After studying how successful organisations build this kind of foundation, I've identified four powerful tactics that consistently create strategic clarity and operational effectiveness. These tactical approaches aren't theoretical concepts but practical tools that reveal the often-invisible architecture of your organisation and its relationships.

Four Strategic Tactics for Building Organizational Clarity

The following four tactics from Strategy Tactics by Pip Decks provide a methodical approach to creating a solid foundation for any organisation:

1. Human Network: Uncovering the extended web of stakeholders who depend on your organisation
2. Promise Proposal: Understanding what needs your stakeholders expect you to meet
3. Seeking Specifics: Identifying pain points in your organisational systems
4. Value Chain: Mapping how all parts of your organisation interconnect to deliver value

Let's explore each tactic with practical examples from a café that used these approaches to establish a strong foundation from the outset, rather than struggling to retrofit structure after problems emerged.

1. Human Network: Uncovering Hidden Stakeholders

One of the most common causes of organisational blindspots is failing to recognise all the stakeholders who depend on your work. The Human Network tactic creates visibility into this often-overlooked web of relationships.

Why it works

Every organisation exists within a complex network of relationships—some obvious, some nearly invisible. When you focus only on immediate stakeholders like customers and direct managers, you miss the downstream ripple effects of your work that can return as unexpected problems.

The Human Network tactic systematically expands your awareness by tracing not just who depends directly on you, but who depends on them, creating visibility into second and third-order relationships that might otherwise remain hidden until they become problematic.

How to map your Human Network

1. Identify direct stakeholders
   • Write "Our Team" at the bottom of your workspace
   • Directly above, list all individuals and groups who count on your team for something
   • Include both internal stakeholders (managers, departments, colleagues) and external ones (customers, suppliers, regulators)
2. Extend to secondary stakeholders
   • For each stakeholder identified in step 1, ask: "Who counts on them?"
   • Add these secondary stakeholders above your first layer
   • Continue building upward until you reach the edge of your knowledge
3. Map relationships
   • Draw lines between stakeholders wherever relationships exist
   • Focus on dependencies and influences, not just formal reporting lines
4. Identify and evaluate needs
   • For each stakeholder, discuss their 1-3 biggest needs
   • Consider the consequences if those needs go unmet
   • Honestly assess which needs are currently being met and which aren't
   • Mark unmet needs with a star for further attention
5. Prioritise attention
   • Review all the unmet needs you've identified
   • Determine which ones most urgently require addressing
   • Create an initial plan for meeting the highest-priority needs

Real-world example

When planning their café, the owners mapped not just the obvious stakeholders (customers and staff) but also the less visible ones: the neighbouring businesses whose customers would park in shared spaces; the local council members who would receive complaints if garbage wasn't properly managed; and the early-morning commuters who would be affected by deliveries.

This exercise revealed several potential blind spots, including:

• Neighbouring businesses concerned about customer parking during peak hours
• Local residents worried about potential noise and odour
• Council representatives focused on waste management compliance
• Suppliers with specific delivery window requirements

Rather than waiting for these stakeholders to raise concerns, the café owners proactively developed simple solutions: designated staff parking areas to free up customer spaces, enhanced waste management procedures, and carefully scheduled deliveries to minimise disruption.

This proactive approach didn't just avoid problems—it created advocates. When the café later needed community support for an outdoor seating permit, these previously-invisible stakeholders became vocal supporters precisely because their needs had been acknowledged from the beginning.

2. Promise Proposal: Understanding Stakeholder Expectations

Once you've identified your stakeholders, the Promise Proposal tactic helps you understand what they expect from you—whether or not you've explicitly promised to deliver it.

Why it works

Organisations often focus on articulating what they deliver without fully understanding what stakeholders actually expect. This misalignment creates frustration on both sides—customers feel their needs aren't being met, while teams feel unappreciated for work that isn't valued.

The Promise Proposal tactic bridges this gap by treating all expectations as promises—whether explicitly made or implicitly assumed. This creates clarity about which promises you're keeping, which you're breaking, and which you should renegotiate.

How to evaluate your promises

1. Identify stakeholder needs
   • Select a key stakeholder from your Human Network map
   • List all the needs you believe you meet for this stakeholder, one per sticky note
   • Be comprehensive, including both obvious and subtle needs
2. Assess expectation levels
   • Create a scale from 1-5, where 1 is "nice to have" and 5 is "absolutely essential"
   • For each need, ask: "Which number best represents people's expectations of the promise you're making?"
   • Place each sticky note along this expectation scale
3. Evaluate delivery effectiveness
   • For each need, assess how well you currently fulfil this promise
   • Be honest about gaps between expectations and delivery
   • Note areas where you're exceeding expectations as well as falling short
4. Determine appropriateness
   • For each promise, ask: "Is this the right promise to be making?"
   • Consider whether it aligns with your capabilities and strategic direction
   • For promises that don't align, decide whether to break, renegotiate, or replace them

Real-world example

The café owners used Promise Proposal to analyze what customers expected from their experience. They identified several key expectations:

• Quality coffee (expectation level: 5)
• Quick service (expectation level: 4)
• A place to socialize (expectation level: 4)
• A place to work (expectation level: 3)
• Unique food options (expectation level: 2)

When evaluating how well they could meet these expectations, they realized that "a place to work" presented a challenge. While many cafés provide workspaces, doing so would conflict with their ability to deliver on the higher-priority promise of "a place to socialize" due to limited seating.

Rather than attempting to meet both needs poorly, they made a deliberate choice to focus on socializing and set clear expectations about workspace limitations. They designed the café with comfortable seating arranged for conversation, limited power outlets, and no dedicated work areas.

This clarity allowed them to confidently communicate their focus and avoid disappointing customers who might otherwise assume the café would function as a workspace. When occasionally asked about working facilities, staff could comfortably explain the café's focus on social connection rather than appearing defensive about a "missing" feature.

3. Seeking Specifics: Identifying Organizational Pain Points

With clear stakeholder expectations established, the Seeking Specifics tactic helps identify where your organizational systems might struggle to deliver on those expectations.

Why it works

When something isn't working in an organisation, vague diagnoses like "our customer service needs improvement" or "our operations are inefficient" don't provide actionable insights. Like telling a doctor that "something hurts somewhere," such generalizations make solutions nearly impossible to identify.

The Seeking Specifics tactic breaks down these broad areas into discrete components that can be individually evaluated, creating precise diagnostic information that guides targeted improvements.

How to identify specific pain points

1. Select a critical need
   • Choose one high-priority need from your Promise Proposal exercise
   • Focus particularly on needs where delivery is falling short of expectations
2. Identify components
   • List everything involved in delivering value for this need
   • Include tangible elements (technology, spaces, tools) and intangible ones (practices, knowledge, relationships)
3. Break down into smaller parts
   • For each component identified, break it down into more detailed elements
   • Continue this decomposition until you reach a useful level of specificity
4. Evaluate component health
   • Rate each component on a scale from 1-4, where 1 is "languishing" and 4 is "flourishing"
   • For components that are difficult to rate, break them down further
   • Look for patterns in your ratings to identify systemic issues
5. Prioritize improvements
   • Review the components with the lowest ratings
   • Consider both the severity of the issue and its impact on stakeholder needs
   • Identify which specific components most need attention

Real-world example

The café owners focused on "creating a place to socialize"—a need they had prioritized in their Promise Proposal. They broke this down into components including:

• Physical space (seating arrangements, acoustics, lighting)
• Service approach (staff interactions, order process)
• Atmosphere (music, decor, ambiance)

Breaking these down further, they identified specific elements like "table configurations," "background music volume," and "staff conversation starters."

When rating these elements, they discovered several potential pain points:

• Table configurations (rating: 2) - Standard tables wouldn't facilitate group conversation
• Acoustic management (rating: 1) - The building had hard surfaces that would create noise problems
• Staff conversation starters (rating: 2) - Staff might not naturally facilitate social connections

This specificity allowed for targeted solutions: they installed custom round tables that seated 4-6 people, added sound-absorbing panels disguised as art pieces, and created conversation-starter cards that staff could use with customers who seemed open to socializing.

These precise interventions addressed the specific components that would have otherwise undermined their promise of creating a social space—a far more effective approach than generic improvements to "the café environment."

4. Value Chain: Mapping Organizational Interconnections

With stakeholders, promises, and pain points identified, the Value Chain tactic creates a visual map of how all these elements interconnect to deliver value.

Why it works

Organisations often operate with implicit, unexamined assumptions about how their various components work together. This tacit understanding creates blind spots and makes it difficult to diagnose problems when they arise.

The Value Chain tactic makes these connections explicit, creating a shared visual model that can be examined, critiqued, and refined. By mapping how value flows through your organisation, you can identify bottlenecks, dependencies, and opportunities that might otherwise remain hidden.

How to create a Value Chain map

1. Identify primary stakeholder and need
   • Select a key stakeholder from your Human Network
   • Choose one need from your Promise Proposal to focus on
   • Place the stakeholder at the top of your workspace ("Who")
2. Define the value delivered
   • Directly beneath the stakeholder, place the need being met ("What")
   • Ensure this represents the value from the stakeholder's perspective
3. Identify key activities
   • Beneath the need, place the activities that deliver this value ("How")
   • Focus on direct contributions to the need being met
4. Connect the elements
   • Draw lines connecting the Who, What, and How elements
   • Test the connections by reading them as "depends on" statements
   • Refine until the connections make logical sense
5. Expand the chain
   • Add more Hows, Whats, and even Whos to create a more comprehensive picture
   • Include technologies, practices, data, and knowledge that support activities
   • Continue expanding until you have a comprehensive map of the value system

Real-world example

The café owners created a Value Chain map starting with "Customers" as their Who and "Being social" as their What. They then identified several key Hows that enabled socialization:

• Comfortable seating arrangements
• Appropriate noise levels
• Conversation-friendly staff

As they expanded the chain, they mapped how each of these elements depended on other factors:

• Comfortable seating arrangements depended on table design, chair quality, and space layout
• Appropriate noise levels depended on acoustic treatments, music selection, and crowd management
• Conversation-friendly staff depended on hiring practices, training, and scheduling

This mapping revealed several critical insights, including the central importance of staff scheduling. The map showed that having appropriate staffing levels was a common dependency for multiple value pathways, making it a potential single point of failure that warranted extra attention.

The owners used this insight to develop more robust staffing models and backup systems than they might have otherwise, correctly anticipating that staffing issues could disrupt multiple aspects of the customer experience simultaneously.

From Tactics to Strategy: Building Your Organizational Foundation

While each of these tactics provides valuable insights individually, their true power emerges when used as an integrated system for building organizational clarity:

1. Start with Human Network to understand the full ecosystem of stakeholders your organization touches
2. Use Promise Proposal to clarify the expectations these stakeholders have of you
3. Apply Seeking Specifics to identify where your organizational systems might struggle to deliver
4. Create a Value Chain to visualize how all these elements interconnect

This systematic approach transforms vague aspirations like "improve customer service" or "increase efficiency" into specific, actionable insights about exactly what needs attention and why.

Addressing Common Objections

"We don't have time for all this analysis"

The reality is that you don't have time not to do this work. Every organization will eventually need to understand its stakeholders, their expectations, its pain points, and how its systems interconnect. The only question is whether you'll gain this understanding proactively or reactively.

Proactive clarity-building typically requires 4-8 hours of focused work. Reactive problem-solving when things go wrong often consumes hundreds of hours over months or years—not to mention the opportunity costs of missed connections and damaged relationships.

"We already know our business"

Most organizations dramatically overestimate how well they understand their own operations and stakeholder expectations. A recent study found that 89% of executives believed their companies delivered "superior experiences" to customers, while only 8% of customers agreed.

Even in small, seemingly simple organizations, these tactics regularly reveal critical blind spots that would otherwise remain hidden until they cause significant problems.

Flexible Implementation Approaches

There are several ways to incorporate these tactics into your organizational development:

• 20-minute challenge: Choose one tactic (Human Network, Promise Proposal, or Seeking Specifics) and try it with a colleague to gain initial insights
• Sequential approach: Implement the tactics as separate sessions over days or weeks, allowing for reflection between each
• Full-day workshop: Dedicate a day to working through all four tactics with key team members, with breaks between each activity

The approach you choose should reflect your organization's size, complexity, and immediate needs. What matters is not the specific format but the commitment to building clarity rather than proceeding on untested assumptions.

From Foundation to Execution

Remember the struggling business owner I mentioned at the beginning? After implementing these four tactics, his organization experienced a remarkable transformation. The previously "invisible" stakeholders became known partners. Customer expectations were clarified, preventing disappointments and allowing for more accurate prioritization. Specific pain points were addressed with targeted solutions rather than general initiatives.

Six months later, he told me: "I used to think we needed to move faster. Now I realize we needed to see more clearly. Once we had that clarity, speed actually increased because we stopped tripping over ourselves."

That's the paradox of building a solid organizational foundation—what initially feels like slowing down to analyze actually accelerates progress by preventing the continuous cycle of misalignment, correction, and rework that plagues organizations built on assumptions rather than clarity.

Take Your Strategic Thinking to the Next Level

Ready to build an unshakeable foundation for your organization? These four tactics are just the beginning of a more systematic, effective approach to strategic clarity.

For a complete toolkit of strategic practices, Strategy Tactics by Pip Decks gives you 54 practical strategic tools in a beautiful card deck, covering everything from foundational clarity to execution planning. Each card provides clear instructions and examples you can apply immediately to your organization's challenges.

Developed through work with hundreds of organizations across industries, these tactics have helped thousands of leaders transform their approach from assumption-based to clarity-based strategy, dramatically increasing their effectiveness while reducing wasted effort.

Get Strategy Tactics →

The difference between occasional strategic success and consistent excellence isn't luck or even intelligence—it's methodology. Start your journey to greater strategic clarity today.

Based on tactics from Strategy Tactics by Pip Decks.

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