Strategy asks: what moves do you, your team and your organization need to make to achieve their goals? That's it - no more, no less. 

Yet strategy is built on having those goals defined, driven by a mission and a vision, grounded in values. And strategy tees up tactics: the work that actually has to happen to get from here to there. 

I've worked on strategy throughout my career, in internal roles and as an external consultant. I also built strategies as a leader running departments or functions, and of course in my own business and life. 

How a strategy is developed is as important as what that strategy calls for, because the process is what brings out ideas, refines perspectives and builds alignment. In a rapidly-changing environment, having a robust strategic process also builds skills so leaders and teams can go back to the source and iterate as often as they need to.  

Strategic execution develops structure and clarity around strategic decisions and continually checks to make sure what needs to happen to reach goals actually happens.

My strategy-focused work has included: 

• Internal strategic planning for a national, farmer-led trade association and foundation   

• Internal and external strategic planning for an agriculture-focused export market development organization 

• Working with global offices and U.S.-based departments within a larger organization, including helping to stand up a new office in South Asia

• Working with a lean and mean coalition focused on achieving a very specific result with limited resources 

• Working with individuals and partners to build infrastructure as their businesses move to the next stages of size and development

• Acting as an external advisor to association leaders building their strategic planning processes with internal and external resources 

Leaders and managers are sometimes inspired by a vision - and sometimes mired in complex or seemingly intractable problems. My early career showed me that HOW groups work is as important as what they choose to work on - and that, as the famous Drucker quote goes, culture eats strategy for breakfast. 

Fueled by this experience and frank curiosity, I studied organization development - how human systems act and change - to learn how to help leaders, teams, organizations and systems do their work better. This approach looks at the dynamics underlying ordinary and extraordinary workplace challenges and helps to shift them through diagnosis, dialogue and finding the next right action.  

Now, some of my favorite work involves applying a multidisciplinary toolbox of human process methodologies to tackle issues that are important but don't have a clear definition or direction. These "how do we..." questions come up in any organization or work system; tackling them well helps work go more smoothly and produce better, faster results.

My organization effectiveness-focused work has included: 

• Defining "high performance" within a government affairs department at a MNC

• Reorganizing a national farmer foundation 

• Developing a crisis planning response process that fits to scale for a small staff representing a multi-billion-dollar industry

• Assessing membership engagement and developing a future strategy for a women's networking organization in Singapore 

• Evaluating staff satisfaction at two different points, four years apart, for a small service organization

• Helping a global non-profit wrestle with role clarity at a time of unforeseen budget constraints 

• Helping a national association define its goals for work with DEI and difference 

• Acting as a shadow consultant on organizational process issues for colleagues who discovered more complex issues when building team-based training