The organization came to us with a narrow request: rewrite a list of goals as Objectives and Key Results. Interviews across the executive and senior leadership teams surfaced a bigger problem underneath it. The sixteen items on that list had been built through consensus, not direction, and didn't add up to a strategy at all. The presenting issue was a documentation exercise, but the real issue was that a business built on operating well had never stopped to define what doing the right things actually meant.
Case Study
Turning sixteen disconnected goals into one enterprise strategy.
The financial services organization had spent years running their business without ever agreeing on where exactly it was headed. We helped them build a single enterprise strategy, then extended that direction into five business unit strategies, giving leaders across the organization a shared answer to where they were going and why.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Financial Services and Insurance
Organization size:
~ 500-1,000 employees
Services:
Strategy Creation
Leadership & Organizational Alignment
Leadership & Organizational Alignment
The Challenge
A goal list with no strategy holding it together.
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A goal list mistaken for a strategy
"We need to turn our goals into OKRs." That was the full scope of what the organization's leadership team believed needed to happen. Interviews revealed the list behind that request had never been tested against a shared direction. It was a set of ideas people had agreed felt roughly important, not a strategy anyone could explain.
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Operating well without a strategic point of view
Leadership believed that if the organization executed its operations correctly, it must be doing the right things. But no one could clearly answer where the organization was going, how it would get there, or why that direction was the right one. There was no systems-based approach to strategy and no one accountable for owning it.
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Reorganizing while still finding direction
At the same time, the organization was shifting from a product-centric structure to a business unit structure, adding a second layer of change on top of the first. Its leadership team had little prior experience building or managing strategy at any level, enterprise or otherwise.
Our Approach
We backed up from the organization's original request to build the strategy that request actually depended on.
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1
Diagnosed before drafting
Structured interviews across the executive and senior leadership teams showed that the organization's list of goals had no strategy underneath it. That diagnosis reset the scope of the engagement before we touched a single goal.
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2
Built the first enterprise strategy
Using a balance scorecard model spanning financial, business, process, customer, and organizational capacity, we gathered data and facilitated leadership through the questions it raised. Over four months, that work landed on a growth-focused strategy organized around four enterprise themes.
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3
Extended strategy to the business units
The following year, workshops helped leadership understand what a business unit strategy could look like. That work expanded into five separate business unit strategies, each connected back to the enterprise direction rather than built in isolation.
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4
Returned to strengthen the "why"
The first enterprise strategy had moved quickly by design, and it hadn't probed as deeply into why certain choices were made. We returned to refresh the enterprise strategy and build in the reasoning that had been traded off for speed the first time.
Value Delivered
A strategy the organization built, owns, and keeps returning to.
Created one strategy where 16 goals used to sit
Leadership replaced a list of unconnected goals built on consensus with a single enterprise strategy organized around four themes, giving the organization a shared answer to where it was going and why.
Built five business unit strategies tied to one enterprise direction
Business unit strategies were built for all five of the organization's business units, each one connected back to the enterprise strategy rather than developed independently.
Positioned a strategy leader to carry it forward
The organization's Chief of Staff was elevated internally to lead strategy work going forward, giving the organization ownership of strategy activity that didn't depend on our continued presence.
Established a process the organization chose to return to
When the original enterprise strategy needed more depth behind its choices, the organization came back to refresh it rather than treating the first version as finished. Strategy had become an ongoing practice, not a one-time deliverable.
Results that reflect the work behind them.
16 4
Unconnected goals consolidated into four cohesive enterprise strategy themes.
5
Business unit strategies built and connected to one enterprise strategy.
2.5+ years
Span of the engagement, from the initial enterprise strategy work through the 2025–2026 refresh.
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Work With Us
The firms that move fastest don’t wait for clarity. They create it.
We help leadership teams cut their ambiguity, align around what matters, and build the momentum to transform their business.