SUCCESS STORY - Turning an ambitious plan for nature into reality
THE CHALLENGE
In 2020, the Board of Forest & Bird created a five-year strategic plan for nature, identifying the environmental outcomes they wanted the organisation to achieve. When Nicola Toki became the new CE of Forest & Bird in 2022, she saw an opportunity to accelerate progress towards achieving those outcomes using a new way of working.
The plan created in 2020 outlines 5 environmental outcomes for nature:
Climate safety
Economy that supports nature
Vibrant landscapes
Energised waters, rivers and wetlands
Oceans alive
Whilst these outcomes identified the environmental aspirations of Forest & Bird, it did not outline a clear plan for how the organisation was going to operate to achieve these aspirations.
CEO Nicola Toki had heard of the success of the MSH strategy design process and decided to approach MSH to address the core challenge Forest & Bird was facing.
“What was apparent to me was we had no way of drawing a line from our strategic plan to the delivery of our work. Being able to say how we are delivering on our environmental outcomes and the way that we work as a Society to implement our goals was very challenging”.
Nicola realised that in order to deliver on their aspirations, Forest & Bird needed to redevelop their operational strategy, which identifies how they are going to operate to achieve impact, to align with the 5 environmental outcomes for nature. Forest & Bird engaged MSH Consulting to work through their Steps 1-4 process.
MSH Consulting Director Andrew Darlington says Forest & Bird’s unique context provided an interesting challenge in trying to bridge the gap between their aspirational goals for nature and their operational reality.
“We were able to adapt our four-step strategy design approach to meet the unique needs of Forest & Bird by working out the relationship between the way they worked (their operational model) and what they wanted to achieve (environmental outcomes). We designed a strategy that mapped those interdependencies”.
CREATING THE OPERATIONAL STRATEGY
The first step in designing Forest & Bird’s operational strategy was to develop the Unifying Concept, which defined the primary customer of the strategy, as well as the overarching vision of the strategy.
Forest & Bird defined the primary customer of their strategy as community leaders & decision makers in NZ society. Nicola told us that “having a clear understanding of who our primary customer was helped focus our strategy and target our work towards one goal. MSH explained that when everyone is your customer, you cannot provide the right level of service to everyone. That has been one of the most powerful things in the strategy design process”.
INTEGRATING FOREST & BIRD’S 5 STRATEGIC OUTCOMES FOR NATURE
Once Forest & Bird had mapped how they were going to achieve their tomorrow state through the Strategy Map, the next step is where they were truly able to see the power of their operational strategy and the MSH strategy design process. The secret to making the Forest & Bird strategy so successful was their use of MSH’s reporting approach and aligning people to their strategy, which was through Steps 3 and 4.
“Bringing in the reporting process meant that we could see and report on our work and having staff help design the process, targets, and measures was a big key to it being successful. When staff started seeing results, they got on board with the process because the information they were getting was gold” says Nicola.
These steps took the operational strategy ‘off the page’ and turned it into a business plan which included key results areas, change initiative profiles, and quarterly performance targets. MSH took a slightly innovative approach to reporting, as Forest & Bird wanted the reporting to reflect the overarching impact they have for nature. MSH were able to embed Forest & Bird’s 5 environmental outcomes for nature into their business plan and MSH’s reporting system through ‘Strategic Priorities’ and ‘Conservation Project’ perspectives. This allowed Forest & Bird to measure how the conservation work they were undertaking worked towards achieving their environmental outcomes for nature, thus turning their aspirations into a reality.
Nicola says, “One of the powerful things about reporting is that our team are now getting back results and data they have never seen before, this has enabled us to make evidence-based decisions and demonstrated that we are delivering what we have promised we would”.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CLEAR ACCOUNTABILITIES
MSH’s reporting approach also enabled Forest & Bird to be clear about everyone’s individual accountabilities, which ensured that everyone had confidence that they are doing the right things, and that the Board had confidence that Forest & Bird could achieve their environmental outcomes for nature.
Nicola said that for staff, it was hard to have visibility of how their work contributed to the overall strategy of Forest & Bird.
“Using MSH’s framework meant we could have some certainty, accountability and transparency about the work of Forest & Bird. It also meant that all staff, no matter what their role was, could see themselves in Forest & Bird”.
The Forest & Bird strategy was made even more successful through the use of an SMO – Strategy Management Office. MSH were able to train up and work with Forest & Bird’s SMO, Justine Driver.
Nicola says that having MSH train up Justine helped to focus the organisation on the strategy at a deeper level of detail and with greater accountability. Having a fully trained SMO on the team gives the organisation confidence they will continue to successfully use the MSH strategy system even when MSH’s level of support reduces.
She worked closely alongside both MSH and with Forest & Bird internally to ensure the strategy was understood at each level of the organisation and everyone was aware of their accountabilities.
“MSH spent a lot of time working with Justine to tease out the strategic challenges and ensure the strategy was embedded in a meaningful way that allowed everyone to understand their role in the strategy design process and beyond. It has set us up for success in the long run because we now have someone with strategic expertise about the design and ongoing management and monitoring of the strategy”.
POWER IN THE ART OF COMMUNICATION
Andrew Darlington says that one of the most important steps in creating a successful strategy is communicating it to the whole organisation. For MSH Consulting, this step is key to ensuring that everyone knows what the strategy is, how they fit into it, and what they need to be doing to ensure its success.
“Strategic implementation often represents a fundamental shift in how an organisation operates, so the way it is communicated will dictate how successful the implementation is” says Andrew.
Nicola told us how Forest & Bird communicated the new strategic implementation process, by branding it as Mahi Ngātahi. This ensured that communications were clear, and purpose driven, helping people to understand the strategic approach and their role in its success.
“Everyone understands their role in Forest & Bird through Mahi Ngātahi. Parcelling the implementation of our strategy as Mahi Ngātahi has really resonated with staff because we communicated this crucial work in a way that meant something for Forest & Bird. Working together to deliver on the strategy and getting results has mattered a lot to the team”.
THE OUTCOME
Forest & Bird is an organisation with ambitious environmental goals and passionate people. MSH was able to develop the implementation of their strategy with Forest & Bird in a way that allowed them to turn their ambitions and passion into reality by creating a strategic implementation process that clearly outlined what they were wanting to achieve, how they would achieve it, and a reporting system that would monitor progress over time.
“The greatest impact is that Forest & Bird have come together as one organisation, we aren’t just a fragmented team of professionals and volunteers. We have a stronger profile and people listen to and engage with us because we have a solid base of evidence and people can see the strength of what we are doing. Our branches feel more confident, and our team are thinking in a completely different way. As a result, we can better deliver for nature and demonstrate how we have done so” says Nicola.
By redesigning their operational strategy to centre around delivering on the aspirations of the 5 strategic outcomes for nature using MSH’s Steps 1-4, Forest & Bird are now able to see a clear pathway to success and better understand their impact on nature.
WORKING WITH MSH
Nicola told us that what she loved about MSH was the consistency and quality of information, the natural progression of the work, the ability to focus her team on the strategy and their priorities, and the fact that there is always an answer.
“Working for a not-for-profit means there is significant responsibility to be hand-on-heart accountable to those wonderful people who choose to give us money. I feel better knowing we have a system and way of working that helps to make us more accountable and transparent to supporters”.