How I crafted my personal strategy for 2021

It was a sunny morning in late December. One of those days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve when I tend to lose count of the days.

I took a couple of hours to make sense of what’s happening around me, of the lessons learned from 2020, of what’s on my radar going forward, and how I might approach things in 2021. After deciding what my focus will be, I took some notes about the changes I need to do — in terms of new initiatives, adjusting current projects or how I approach day to day things in my life.

In a nutshell, I’ve crafted my personal strategy for 2021 — my guide for navigating the uncertainties going forward.

Here is my personal story of creating this personal strategy by applying the Sense & Change model.

First of all, I explored the Environment area by asking myself:

What’s happening around me?

We’re all part of multiple wider contexts like our family, our teams, our friend circles, our organizations, our communities, our cities, the market(s) in which we provide value, our countries, our planet.

I took some time to “walk through” these contexts from the widest to the closest, looking both at what’s happening in the present and what might happen in the near future.

Some of the key, raw ideas:

• the pandemic will continue to have a huge impact on our lives
• the economic crisis will continue
• different countries will address both the health and the economic crisis differently
• most companies will probably decrease budgets in 2021
• many people will continue to work from home
• most people are craving for connection and belonging
• many communities will continue meeting online
• the organizations around me are looking for increased autonomy of their teams, more self-sufficiency and less reliance on external help
• my city shows low signs of a possible social unrest
• most of my friends are cautious of making big changes professionally, given the wider context
• my family is facing lots of uncertainty and tries to make sense of what’s happening through discussing about these things more often

Having this big picture, I continued with the Radar area, by asking myself:

What are the main things that I’m paying attention to?

I found from experience that one way of answering this question is related to being aware of what’s the value that I’m offering to others. I found that many time the main things that I pay attention to might have an impact on how I create this value for others now and in the future.

Something that helps for this is using my professional mission to guide me:

• I want to create and share sustainable knowledge to help people deal with the complex challenges they (will) face.

Another useful thing was to look at my recent and current projects and how my usual week looks like.

This helped me become aware of the 6 main types of activities through which I create value for others and for myself, as a Strategy & Organization professional:

• Practice — work in Strategy & Organization projects
• Study — gain knowledge that might be useful to others and to myself
• Curate — select specific resources and highlight specific insights that might be useful to others, in my case through the newsletter
• Create — transform insights, knowledge and passion into something tangible like a knowledge product (a guide, an article, a course, a book)
• Monetize — earn financial value through offering the things that I create
• Network — connect with global peers and be active in communities of practice and professional associations

I found that I’m mainly paying attention to things that could have an impact on these 6 types of activities:

• Practice — how organizations evolve, how they make sense of their wider environment and their way forward through developing strategies, how people address complex challenges together
• Study — how different disciplines bring their own lenses when looking at complex challenges, how knowledge can become sustainable, learning how to learn
• Curate — how people use newsletters and video clips, what makes sense for them in terms of curated resources
• Create — how people put knowledge into practice by using guides and other knowledge products
• Monetize — what are the different ways through which someone can monetize knowledge products
• Network — what are the communities and professional associations that are relevant, how communities evolve, how to connect with people from different backgrounds and with different experiences, exchange ideas and create value together

For me, the Radar is a refined look at the wider Environment, through the lens of the personal mission (or other things that are important to someone, like a personal vision, personal values and so on).

Next, I reflected a bit on the Capabilities area:

What am I able to do?

A few of the key new capabilities that I recently developed:

• Connecting with a global audience, understanding the needs of the readers, curating quality resources and being able to consistently publish new editions weekly. Gained through launching and growing the OrgDev newsletter (curated Strategy & Organization resources) to close to 3000 readers worldwide.
• Facilitating large group events remotely. Gained through practicing in projects (especially the Managers Forums and the strategy workshops with 30+ participants) and in the communities of practice that I’m part of.
• Creating knowledge products (like the Guide to Dynamic Stakeholder Mapping). Gained by validating the products’ usefulness with the readers of the OrgDev newsletter or with the extended LinkedIn network.
• Following my curiosity and grow through learning loops.
• Speed in using visual mapping tools (like Miro) for making sense of lots of information at once.

Ok, so how would all these insights translate in figuring out my way forward, in 2021?

Next, I looked into the Strategy area of the Sense & Change model.

When developing a strategy, it’s useful to consider multiple strategic options before committing to an approach and set of priorities going forward.

Because I focused on crafting a personal strategy for my professional life, I used the 6 value-generating activities mentioned earlier to generate some strategic options. Arrow emojis indicate relative investments compared to 2020:

Strategic option 1: Study more, start monetizing knowledge products

Strategic option 2: Focus on work, many clients, keep curating

Strategic option 3: Monetize new knowledge products, less client work

Strategic option 4: Network focus, aided by study

After laying out these options, I invited Raluca, my wife, to a conversation to explore them in detail, along with their implications. I’m in the fortunate situation of being able to work with her for the most complex challenges of our client organizations and also to publish together the OrgDev newsletter.

She had done a similar reflection about the Environment, Radar and her own Capabilities plus brainstormed some strategic options as well. This was a point when we helped each other think things through better, before each of us chose a personal strategy for 2021.

The main things that we explored for each of the options are:

• What’s the value added to others by pursuing that specific option? Would I serve the same beneficiaries or not?
• What are the financial assumptions behind each option? Would pursuing that option be viable from a financial standpoint?
• What are the risks associated with pursuing each option? How big is the impact & probability of the risks becoming reality?
• How ready am I to invest in these new things? How much of my current capabilities support this option?
• Who would I become If I prioritize those specific things for my working life?

Thanks to this conversation, I decided with more confidence that I’ll pursue this strategic option, which will become my personal strategy for 2021:

My personal strategy for 2021 is to monetize new knowledge products that I create, and the main trade-off is pursuing less client work.

In terms of priorities and investments, this means that:

• I will invest significantly more in creating knowledge that is easy to understand and to put into practice
• I will invest significantly more in bringing the knowledge products that I create (practical guides)
• I will invest more in study and discovering new knowledge that’s valuable to others and to myself
• I will invest more in extending my network
• I will continue the current investment in curating useful resources
• I will invest less in Strategy & Organization projects, which translates in finding each time the highest leverage contributions I can support my client organizations with

After gaining this clarity, the final thing that I did was to look at the Projects and Day to Day areas:

Given this strategy, what do I need to work on? — Projects

How do I need to adjust my habits? How would my days look like? — Day to Day

This is about bringing the strategy into practice and transforming the investment decisions into concrete things.

In chronological order, here is the series of concrete decisions that I made.

In terms of practice and client work, I decided to:

• Focus on my main service of providing strategic advisory to leadership teams in the select few tech companies that I work with
• Pilot a new offering: Reviews-as-a-Service, offering async Strategy & Organization advice as a monthly subscription

In terms of study, I decided to:

• Focus on a core topic and how it’s relevant and might improve the lives of people. A few days later, on Jan 1st 2021, this topic crystallized as Personal Strategy

In terms of communities and professional network, I decided to:

• Invest more in the Intersection Group, by leading the Business Strategy & Investment in Change workstream
• Invest more in the EODF, decided to apply for a board position
• Keep having 6–10 conversations with global peers weekly
• Invest less in other communities and professional associations

In terms of creating new knowledge and monetizing it, I decided to:

• Focus on creating and growing this Personal Strategy publication on Medium and the associated newsletter on Substack
• Based on how this project will evolve, create knowledge products (e.g. guides, e-learning) to help people navigate better through the uncertainties that the life brings

In terms of curating, I decided to:

• Keep publishing the OrgDev newsletter weekly

When considering how an average week in 2021 might look like, I’m thinking that a mix of:

• 1 day per week — client work
• 2.5 days per week — study, writing & creating
• 0.5 days per week — curating
• 1 day per week — networking

…might be in line with my personal strategy for 2021. This is my guideline when planning my weekly activities going forward.

Here’s a visual recap of how I crafted my personal strategy for 2021. Hope my personal experience inspires you to consider creating a personal strategy for yourself 🧭💡

The green path follows the steps described in this article

Next time I’ll write about the idea of running a “Personal Strategy Sprint”, through which you could get to create your own personal strategy in one week, by investing only 30–45 minutes daily. Update — here it is:

The Personal Strategy Sprint: a simple way of creating a personal strategy for yourself

Thanks for joining this exploration!
Bülent

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