Strategy fails at the translation layer
Organisational direction, restructuring, growth, organisational design, and strategy that country teams and partners can recognise and use.
Why this is hard.
A strategy is rarely wrong in its ambitions. It fails in the gap between the document and the people expected to implement it, where terminology means different things in different offices, where a principle has never been turned into a procedure, and where country teams received a strategy rather than helped build one.
We work on strategy as a process as much as a document. The consultation design determines whether the resulting strategy is recognised and used, which means decisions about who participates, in what language, and with what influence are strategic decisions, not logistical ones.
We also work on the organisational development that strategy implies: structure, roles, capacity and the sequencing of change.
What we work on here.
- 01 organisational and regional strategy development
- 02 multi-country and multilingual strategy consultation
- 03 theories of change
- 04 organisational design and restructuring
- 05 growth and scaling
- 06 operating models
- 07 programme and portfolio strategy
- 08 strategic prioritisation and trade-offs
- 09 translating principles into operational practice
- 10 organisational transitions, including leadership succession and founder transition
- 11 strategy implementation and review
How our services apply here.
This is a subject area, not a service. You commission one of the five below, applied to it.
| Service | Applied to Strategy & Organisational Development |
|---|---|
| Research & Assessment | Evidence to inform strategy; context and stakeholder analysis; review of why a previous strategy did not take hold |
| Frameworks, Policy & Governance | Strategy documents, operating models, structures, roles and responsibilities, implementation plans |
| Learning Design & Delivery | Preparing teams to work with a new strategy, structure or way of working |
| Facilitation & Conflict Work | Strategy consultations across countries and languages; leadership retreats; prioritisation and trade-off discussions |
| Advisory & Accompaniment | Support through implementation, restructuring and transition; regular strategic review |
Questions organisations bring us.
- "We have a strategy. Our country offices do not recognise it."
- "We need to consult fourteen countries and three languages without the result becoming unusable."
- "We have grown and our structure no longer fits."
- "Our principles are clear. Nobody can tell me what they require in practice."
Selected work.
A regional strategy shaped by country teams and partners
multilingual consultations across the Middle East, Africa and Asia involving country teams and four regional offices. The process identified unclear terminology, gaps in localisation, and commitments that had not been translated into practice.
Talk to us about strategy.
Tell us the issue, the decision or the change in front of you. We will tell you honestly which of the five services fits, whether you need more than one, and whether CTDC is the right organisation for it.
The first conversation is free and carries no obligation.
