Setting up a strategic program is no easy feat. It requires buy-in from all levels in the organization. Over-complication and a rush to set up a program office can lead to failure and confusion. By thinking through the process and being properly prepared, however, you can create a strategic program that will reach its goals and deliver measurable value to the business.
How do you set up a strategic program? We’ve got the answers below—plus some common pitfalls to avoid. At Shibumi, we’ve worked with hundreds of enterprises as they set up strategic programs that deliver real ROI. These are the tried-and-true strategies that accelerate success.
What Is a Strategic Program and Why Is It Important?
A strategic program is a focused, long-term initiative that is intentionally designed to achieve major organizational goals. These programs bridge the gap between day-to-day operations and bigger-picture goals.
Strategic programs are important because they provide clear organizational direction, align all employees toward common goals, optimize resource use, and enhance decision-making. All of which manage risk and support long-term growth. With a strategic program as a roadmap, organizations are more focused, adaptable, and gain a competitive edge.
How to Set Up a Strategic Program
Setting up a strategic program involves defining mission and vision, analyzing the current state of the program, and creating a program lifecycle that guides progress.
Involve an Extended Team
The success of a strategic program is dependent upon ownership from the top-down. Without executive buy-in, it can be hard to enforce deadlines and get updates from the employees who are leading strategic initiatives. Executives must make it clear that the ongoing updates and monitoring of these programs is essential to making decisions and moving towards their goals.
It is also important to keep in mind who will be making these updates and invite them to provide ongoing feedback as to how critical information should be captured. This improves buy-in among stakeholders by creating a sense of ownership over their piece of the program. In the end, the goal is to increase data flow that allows key decision makers to take a pulse on the program and identify areas of success and weakness.
Set Goals, Collect Artifacts, and Lay Out the Program Lifecycle
With so many ideas out there and whitepapers describing how a strategic program should be set up, keep in mind that these are general guidelines. Your program is unique, and so it should be customized to fit the needs of your organization.
- Set Goals: What do you want to accomplish and what do you want to deliver? Determining the output of the program will help guide the design to make sure core requirements are present.
- Collect Artifacts: Use your current state of operations as a starting point, identifying what works and what doesn’t. By leveraging existing artifacts, you gain a better grasp on the terminology and structure already present in your organization.
- Lay Out the Program Lifecycle: Take a step back and imagine how these initiatives will flow through your program and how they will evolve from start to finish. Will your program require formalized stage-gating? Will there be different requirements at the various stages of an initiative’s lifecycle? How is an item deemed complete, or better yet, what makes it successful?
Continue to Monitor and Improve
Commit to meeting with key contributors on a fixed basis to see how everything is going. Weekly meetings at first could be useful, later moving to monthly or quarterly check-ins. Each reporting cycle is an opportunity to review and enhance by addressing questions like: Do you need more training? Are things missing? What isn’t useful and can be removed? Use your newfound knowledge to guide you as you fine-tune your program.
Pitfalls to Setting Up a Strategic Program and How to Avoid Them
There are lots of reasons why a strategic program might fail, but most often, we observe businesses making their programs overly complex, or else treating strategy as static, instead of a living system.
Don’t Overcomplicate It
By thinking through what the process looks like and your program’s deliverables, you should be able to identify what information is essential to an initiative’s success versus what is nice to have. Overcomplicating the process will confuse contributors and impact your overall data quality. Often, the people providing these updates are managing a much bigger process, so keep what you need from them as clear and straightforward as possible.
Lay out a clear timeline of tasks and requirements at each stage in the process and provide clear training and feedback. Sure, a new strategic program might be an opportunity to capture all kinds of data—but do you really need all kinds of data?
Inflexibility
Strategy isn’t a one-time event. It happens continuously. Sticking rigidly to the plan as it was laid out despite changing circumstances and new information can seriously impede progress. Instead, teams should incorporate feedback and new data into the strategic program, updating its aims and strategies along the way.
Failing to Scale Success
Setting up a strategic program is no easy feat, so why not use the structure you’ve created as the blueprint for any future strategic program at your organization? Knowledge sharing is an invaluable part of this process—and it sets future programs up for success.
Build a Strategic Program That Works
Creating a strategic program is a commitment—but it also catalyzes new development. When an organization takes the time to clearly define goals, involve stakeholders, and design a lifecycle that reflects how work is actually done, they create a foundation that drives meaningful (and measurable) outcomes.
At Shibumi, we’ve seen that the most successful enterprises are those that view their strategic program as a living system: one that evolves with new insights, scales across teams, and consistently reinforces accountability and alignment. With the right structure, tools, and mindset, your strategic program can become more than a framework—it can become a repeatable engine for transformation and growth.
Shibumi was purpose built to support strategic programs—want to find out how we can help with yours? Let’s talk.