Business Case Club Blog #1: Strategic Vision, Establishing the Need.
- gbp group
- Sep 2, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 19, 2024
WELCOME TO THE CLUB!
Welcome to gbp’s new Business Case Club, a 10-week programme designed to demystify and deep dive into key elements of the Business Case process.
Our first blog in the series focuses on creating a Strategic Vision and establishing the need for your programme or project.
Developing a comprehensive Strategic Vision is an essential early step in any project lifecycle, laying the groundwork for long-term success. The Strategic Vision serves as a blueprint, guiding decision-making, aligning stakeholders and organisations, and ensuring that every action taken contributes to the overarching goals.
But how do you create a Strategic Vision that truly drives success? Let's explore the key steps involved.
Before diving into the process of creating a Strategic Vision, it's crucial to ask some fundamental questions:
Does the scheme align with local and national strategies?
Does it meet the needs of the local population?
By following the typical steps set out below, you will develop a Strategic Vision that not only inspires and guides but also provides a practical roadmap for achieving long-term success. This vision can then become a living document, that evolves with the project, continuously driving progress and ensuring alignment with overarching goals.
1. Define the Purpose and Scope
Purpose: Start by clearly articulating the core objectives of the project or programme. Why is change required? What are the fundamental needs or problems it aims to address? Understanding the purpose provides clarity and direction from the outset.
Scope: Next, determine the remit of the project or programme. What areas will it cover? Is it part of a wider programme? What are the limitations? Clearly defining the scope helps in setting realistic and achievable goals, ensuring that the project stays on track.
2. Conduct a Situational Analysis
Strategic Analysis: Begin by evaluating the internal strengths and weaknesses of the project/programme or organisation(s) and identify external opportunities and risks that could impact success.
Stakeholder Analysis: Identify key stakeholders and organisations, their priorities, influence, and expectations. Aligning the vision with stakeholder needs is crucial for securing support and ensuring the project's success.
External Analysis: Assess the external environment, looking at similar projects and programmes that have been delivered, and understand what worked and what didn’t work, consider any guidance changes or political development, best practice, and technological advancements. This analysis will inform the strategic direction by highlighting opportunities and challenges as well as support a compelling business case.
3. Outline the Future Vision
Set Long-Term Goals: Define the desired outcomes and long-term goals for the project or program. What does success look like? These goals should be ambitious yet achievable and aligned with the overall purpose.
Articulate the Vision Statement: Craft a clear, compelling and inspirational Vision Statement that encapsulates the future state of the project or program. This statement should paint a picture of what you aim to achieve in the long term.
✏️ Top Tip: Keeping this close to hand at all times, and regularly referring back to this should help to keep minds focused – eyes on the prize!!
4. Align with Local and National Strategies
To ensure the Strategic Vision is effective, it must align with broader local and national strategies. The project or program should contribute to the organisations or systems overall objectives, values, and priorities.
If the project spans multiple organisations or programmes, ensure alignment across these areas to avoid conflicts and maximise systems benefits.
5. Develop Strategic Objectives
Break down the long-term vision into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives. These objectives provide a clear roadmap for achieving the vision and allow for monitoring progress along the way. NB: This is a key stage of the actual Business Case process, but work done earlier, at the outset, can save time and support the process later.
6. Identify Key Success Factors
Determine the critical factors that will drive the success of the project or program. These could include resources, capabilities, partnerships, technology, and other essential elements.
Understanding these factors helps in focusing efforts on what truly matters and mitigating potential risks along the way. Again, doing this early in the process will be really helpful as the business case develops and these can be used to assess the various options. See week # 6 in our series which focuses on Options Appraisal.
7. Create an Action Plan
Develop a high-level plan that outlines the steps, tasks, timelines, key milestones and resources required to achieve the strategic objectives.
This action plan serves as a practical guide, keeping the project on track and ensuring that all elements of the Strategic Vision are realised.
It is also helpful to try to allocate these to a person or team to make sure someone takes responsibility for driving these forward and getting things done!
8. Communicate the Vision
Clearly communicate the Strategic Vision to all stakeholders, including team members, partners, sponsors, and other relevant parties.
Create a narrative that connects the vision to the stakeholder values and interests, making it relatable and compelling.
It can be useful to employ some specific help for visuals and communication plans – to solidify the messages and help communicate the vision in as many methods as possible – as we know, not everyone absorbs information in the same way!
9. Foster a Culture of Alignment and Ownership
Encourage a culture where all team members understand and are committed to the Strategic Vision.
Ensure there is ‘buy-in’ from senior management and empower organisations and teams to take ownership of the vision. When everyone is aligned and invested, the likelihood of success increases significantly.
10. Long-term Sustainability
Finally, consider the long-term sustainability of the project or programme. How will it continue to deliver value beyond its initial implementation? This includes planning for ongoing funding, resource allocation, and stakeholder engagement.
A Strategic Vision that incorporates sustainability is more likely to achieve enduring success. Early consideration of your benefits (another bitesize blog topic for later!) and benefit realisation plan can help – and also focus on the metrics you want to track for the project – over the short, medium and long term – once developed.
✏️ Top Tip: Through articulating a clear strategic vision, you can inspire and guide your organisation, stakeholders and system partners to prioritise the project or programme - which is a great segway to the next in our series of Business Case blogs, Priority Project, landing in your inbox next week!
⭐Success Story: Establishing the need for a new healthy Living Centre in Chatham
Chatham town centre is one of the most deprived wards in Medway, with
significant health needs and wider inequalities, projected housing growth
and poor access to services. The Healthy Living Centre project has been in
development over several years, with initial funding allocated via ETTF wave 4.
gbp consult were commissioned by NHS Kent and Medway ICB to deliver a comprehensive OBC to demonstrate the viability of a new Healthy Living Centre and consider the various options. The fully developed OBC was approved by the various ICB boards and governance forums. This was also supported by Medway Council, as well as other stakeholders to enable the progression to SFBC stage. The gbp team were further commissioned to develop the SFBC, which, together with the Value for Money template and supporting checklist, enabled the ICB to request formal approval from NHS England and obtain funding for the project.
Need help now?
Arrange a conversation with our expert Business Case Team. Contact Ian Sabini, gbp consult, Managing Consultant on: ian@gbpconsult.co.uk
Coming up next in our series of Business Case Club Blogs:
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