Case Study 12 - Strategic Review

Client Type: Public sector agency

Challenge/Opportunity

The client provided a very broad range of services within a common mission and had enjoyed success through a combination of good systems, talented people and effective marketing.  Some recalcitrant longstanding issues remained and the Executive Team were looking to review the range of services and how they were delivered in the future as growth slowed and more ambitious targets remained out of reach.

The brief included the need to improve service quality including reducing delays, service inconsistencies, inefficiencies and redundant effort and to identify how to better align services to strategy.  The review team were asked to review documents, conduct interviews, gather data, synthesise all the information received and provide recommendations.

Value Delivered

Hague Consulting provided a presentation to the Executive Team backed up by a succinct report with a small number of actionable recommendations.  The report highlighted the strengths of the organisation, centred on talented people, strong relationships and specific technical skills.  It also identified a lack of specific investment in certain areas of operational capability which hindered delivery of consistent and scalable service provision.  There were also recommendations for changes to some core service lines.

One specific recommendation was that the organisation reconsider one of the core assumptions behind its organisational strategy because that assumption appeared to be driving behaviours which were hindering some of its core relationships and growth prospects.  The Chief Executive and other members of the Executive Team maintained contact for a prolonged period after our engagement ended to discuss progress as some recommendations took a long period to work through into operational changes. 

Hague's Approach

Hague and the client worked together to develop a carefully-worded brief designed to enable a full and frank review but to exclude areas that had been well-traversed already and which the client did not wish to revisit.  Hague accepted those constraints as a virtue rather than a hindrance as they provided a clear focus for a review which remained complex despite its restrained scope.  Our approach was to avoid the easy and obvious paths of organisational or programme level restructuring recommendations and to focus instead on the key value streams and how they could be enhanced.  Our data and document review and interviews retained a strong focus on delivery of value to customers.

Outcome/Result

We received feedback that the thoughtful and far-reaching consequences of the review's recommendations were both welcome and very helpful.  The engagement was completed within the time, cost and quality criteria agreed.  Most importantly, the strategic review raised issues that had not previously been considered and suggested actions which had not been anticipated but were nonetheless adopted and successfully contributed to desired outcomes.