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Strategic Plan Examples: Case Studies and Free Strategic Planning Template

By Anthony Taylor - May 29, 2023

As you prepare for your strategic planning process, it's important to explore relevant strategic plan examples for inspiration.

In today's competitive business landscape, a well-defined strategic plan holds immense significance. Whether you're a private company, municipal government, or nonprofit entity, strategic planning is essential for achieving goals and gaining a competitive edge. By understanding the strategic planning process, you can gain valuable insights to develop an effective growth roadmap for your organization.

In this blog, we will delve into real-life examples of strategic plans that have proven successful. These examples encompass a wide range of organizations, from Credit Unions that have implemented SME Strategy's Aligned Strategy process to the Largest Bank in Israel. By examining these cases, we can gain a deeper understanding of strategic planning and extract relevant insights that can be applied to your organization.

• Strategic Plan Example (Global Financial Services Firm)
• Strategic Plan Example (Joint Strategic Plan)
• Strategic Plan Example: (Government Agency)
• Strategic Plan Example (Multinational Corporation)
• Strategic Plan Example: (Public Company)
• Strategic Plan Example (Non Profit)
• Strategic Plan Example: (Small Nonprofit)
• Strategic Plan example: (Municipal Government)
• Strategic Plan Example: (Environmental Start-up)  

When analyzing strategic plan examples, it is crucial to recognize that a strategic plan goes beyond being a mere document. It should encapsulate your organization's mission and vision comprehensively while also being actionable. Your strategic plan needs to be tailored to your organization's specific circumstances, including factors such as size, industry, budget, and personnel. Simply replicating someone else's plan will not suffice.

Have you ever invested significant time and resources into creating a plan, only to witness its failure during execution? We believe that a successful strategic plan extends beyond being a static document. It necessitates meticulous follow-through, execution, documentation, and continuous learning. It serves as the foundation upon which your future plans are built.

It is important to note that a company's success is not solely determined by the plan itself, but rather by how effectively it is executed. Our intention is to highlight the diverse roles that a company's mission, vision, and values play across different organizations, whether they are large corporations or smaller nonprofits.

Strategic plans can vary in terms of their review cycles, which can range from annual evaluations to multi-year periods. There is no one-size-fits-all example of a strategic plan, as each organization possesses unique needs and circumstances that must be taken into account.

Strategic planning is an essential process for organizations of all sizes and types. It assists in setting a clear direction, defining goals, and effectively allocating resources. To gain an understanding of how strategic plans are crafted, we will explore a range of examples, including those from private companies, nonprofit organizations, and government entities.

Throughout this exploration, we will highlight various frameworks and systems employed by profit-driven and nonprofit organizations alike, providing valuable insights to help you determine the most suitable approach for your own organization.

Watch: Examples of Strategic Plans from Real-Life Organizations 

Strategic Plan Example  - The Bank Hapoalim Vision:  To be a leading global financial services firm, with its core in Israel, focused on its clients and working to enhance their financial freedom.

Bank Hapoalim, one of Israel's largest banks with 8,383 branches across 5 different countries as of 2022, has recently provided insights into its latest strategic plan. The plan highlights four distinct strategic priorities:

• Continued leadership in corporate banking and capital markets
• Adaptation of the retail banking operating model
• Resource optimization and greater productivity
• Differentiating and influential innovation

Check out their strategic plan here: Strategic Plan (2022-2026)

We talked to Tagil Green, the Chief Strategy Officer at Bank Hapoalim, where we delved into various aspects of their strategic planning process. We discussed the bank's strategic planning timeline, the collaborative work they engaged in with McKinsey, and the crucial steps taken to secure buy-in and ensure successful implementation of the strategy throughout the organization. In our conversation, Tagil Green emphasized the understanding that there is no universal template for strategic plans. While many companies typically allocate one, two, or three days for strategic planning meetings during an offsite, Bank Hapoalim recognized the significance of their size and complexity. As a result, their strategic plan took a comprehensive year-long effort to develop. How did a Large Global Organization like Bank Hapoalim decide on what strategic planning timeline to follow?

"How long do you want to plan? Some said, let's think a decade ahead. Some said it's irrelevant. Let's talk about two years ahead. And we kind of negotiated into the like, five years ahead for five years and said, Okay, that's good enough, because some of the complexity and the range depends on the field that you work for. So for banking in Israel, four or five years ahead, is good enough. "  Tagil Green, Chief Strategy Officer, Bank Hapoalim 

Another important aspect you need to consider when doing strategic planning is stakeholder engagement, We asked Tagil her thoughts and how they conducted stakeholder engagement with a large employee base.

Listen to the Full Conversation with Tagil:

Strategic Planning and Execution: Insights from the Chief Strategy Officer of Israel's Leading Bank

Strategic Plan Example: Region 16 and DEED (Joint Strategic Plan)

Mission Statement: We engage state, regional, tribal, school, and community partners to improve the quality and equity of education for each student by providing evidence-based services and supports.

In this strategic plan example, we'll explore how Region 16 and DEED, two government-operated Educational Centers with hundreds of employees, aligned their strategic plans using SME Strategy's approach . Despite facing the challenges brought on by the pandemic, these organizations sought to find common ground and ensure alignment on their mission, vision, and values, regardless of their circumstances.

Both teams adopted the Aligned Strategy method, which involved a three day onsite strategic planning session facilitated by a strategic planning facilitator . Together, they developed a comprehensive 29-page strategic plan outlining three distinct strategic priorities, each with its own objectives and strategic goals. Through critical conversations, they crafted a clear three year vision, defined their core customer group as part of their mission, refined their organizational values and behaviors, and prioritized their areas of focus.

After their offsite facilitation, they aligned around three key areas of focus:

• Effective Communication, both internally and externally.
• Streamlining Processes to enhance efficiency.
• Developing Effective Relationships and Partnerships for mutual success.

By accomplishing their goals within these strategic priorities, the teams from Region 16 and DEED aim to make progress towards their envisioned future.

To read the full review of the aligned strategy process click here

Download Now Starting your strategic planning process soon? Get our free Strategic Planning Template

Strategic Plan Example: (Government Agency) - The City of Duluth Workforce Development Board

What they do:

The Duluth Workforce Development Board identifies and aligns workforce development strategies to meet the needs of Duluth area employers and job seekers through comprehensive and coordinated systems.

An engaged and diverse workforce, where all individuals, regardless of background, have or are on a path to meaningful employment and a family sustaining wage, and all employers are able to fill jobs in demand.

The City of Duluth provides an insightful example of a strategic plan focused on regional coordination to address workforce needs in various industry sectors and occupations. With multiple stakeholders involved, engaging and aligning them becomes crucial. This comprehensive plan, spanning 82 pages, tackles strategic priorities and initiatives at both the state and local levels.

What sets this plan apart is its thorough outline of the implementation process. It covers everything from high-level strategies to specific meetings between different boards and organizations. Emphasizing communication, coordination, and connectivity, the plan ensures the complete execution of its objectives. It promotes regular monthly partner meetings, committee gatherings, and collaboration among diverse groups. The plan also emphasizes the importance of proper documentation and accountability throughout the entire process.

By providing a clear roadmap, the City of Duluth's strategic plan effectively addresses workforce needs while fostering effective stakeholder engagement . It serves as a valuable example of how a comprehensive plan can guide actions, facilitate communication, and ensure accountability for successful implementation.

Read this strategic plan example here: Strategic Plan (2021-2024)

Strategic Plan Example: McDonald's (Multinational Corporation)

McDonald's provides a great strategic plan example specifically designed for private companies. Their "Velocity Growth Plan" covers a span of three years from 2017 to 2020, offering a high-level strategic direction. While the plan doesn't delve into specific implementation details, it focuses on delivering an overview that appeals to investors and aligns the staff. The plan underscores McDonald's commitment to long-term growth and addressing important environmental and societal challenges. It also highlights the CEO's leadership in revitalizing the company and the active oversight provided by the Board of Directors.

The Board of Directors plays a crucial role in actively overseeing McDonald's strategy. They engage in discussions about the Velocity Growth Plan during board meetings, hold annual strategy sessions, and maintain continuous monitoring of the company's operations in response to the ever-changing business landscape.

The McDonald's strategic plan revolved around three core pillars:

• Retention: Strengthening and expanding areas of strength, such as breakfast and family occasions.
• Regain: Focusing on food quality, convenience, and value to win back lost customers.
• Convert: Emphasizing coffee and other snack offerings to attract casual customers.

These pillars guide McDonald's through three initiatives, driving growth and maximizing benefits for customers in the shortest time possible.

Read the strategic plan example of Mcdonlald's Velocity growth plan (2017-2020)

Strategic Plan Example: Nike (Public Company)

Nike's mission statement is “ to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world .”  

Nike, as a publicly traded company, has developed a robust global growth strategy outlined in its strategic plan. Spanning a five-year period from 2021 to 2025, this plan encompasses 29 strategic targets that reflect Nike's strong commitment to People, Planet, and Pay. Each priority is meticulously defined, accompanied by tangible actions and measurable metrics. This meticulous approach ensures transparency and alignment across the organization.

The strategic plan of Nike establishes clear objectives, including the promotion of pay equity, a focus on education and professional development, and the fostering of business diversity and inclusion. By prioritizing these areas, Nike aims to provide guidance and support to its diverse workforce, fostering an environment that values and empowers its employees.

Read Nike's strategic plan here

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Strategic Plan Example (Non Profit) - Alternatives Federal Credit Union

Mission: To help build and protect wealth for people with diverse identities who have been historically marginalized by the financial industry, especially those with low wealth or identifying as Black, Indigenous, or people of color.

AFCU partnered with SME Strategy in 2021 to develop a three year strategic plan. As a non-profit organization, AFCU recognized the importance of strategic planning to align its team and operational components. The focus was on key elements such as Vision, Mission, Values, Priorities, Goals, and Actions, as well as effective communication, clear responsibilities, and progress tracking.

In line with the Aligned Strategy approach, AFCU developed three strategic priorities to unite its team and drive progress towards their vision for 2024. Alongside strategic planning, AFCU has implemented a comprehensive strategy implementation plan to ensure the effective execution of their strategies.

Here's an overview of AFCU's 2024 Team Vision and strategic priorities: Aligned Team Vision 2024:

To fulfill our mission, enhance efficiency, and establish sustainable community development approaches, our efforts will revolve around the following priorities: Strategic Priorities:

Improving internal communication: Enhancing communication channels and practices within AFCU to foster collaboration and information sharing among team members.

Improving organizational performance: Implementing strategies to enhance AFCU's overall performance, including processes, systems, and resource utilization.

Creating standard operating procedures: Developing standardized procedures and protocols to streamline operations, increase efficiency, and ensure consistency across AFCU's activities.

By focusing on these strategic priorities, AFCU aims to strengthen its capacity to effectively achieve its mission and bring about lasting change in its community. Watch the AFCU case study below:

Watch the Full Strategic Plan Example Case Study with the VP and Chief Strategy Officer of AFCU

Strategic Plan Example: (Small Nonprofit) - The Hunger Project 

Mission: To end hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centered strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world.

The Hunger Project, a small nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, offers a prime example of a concise and effective three-year strategic plan. This plan encompasses the organization's vision, mission, theory of change, and strategic priorities. Emphasizing simplicity and clarity, The Hunger Project's plan outlines crucial actions and measurements required to achieve its goals. Spanning 16 pages, this comprehensive document enables stakeholders to grasp the organization's direction and intended impact. It centers around three overarching strategic goals, each accompanied by its own set of objectives and indicators: deepening impact, mainstreaming impact, and scaling up operations.

Read their strategic plan here  

Strategic Plan example: (Municipal Government)- New York City Economic Development Plan 

The New York City Economic Development Plan is a comprehensive 5-year strategic plan tailored for a municipal government. Spanning 68 pages, this plan underwent an extensive planning process with input from multiple stakeholders. 

This plan focuses on the unique challenges and opportunities present in the region. Through a SWOT analysis, this plan highlights the organization's problems, the city's strengths, and the opportunities and threats it has identified. These include New York's diverse population, significant wealth disparities, and high demand for public infrastructure and services.

The strategic plan was designed to provide a holistic overview that encompasses the interests of a diverse and large group of business, labor, and community leaders. It aimed to identify the shared values that united its five boroughs and define how local objectives align with the interests of greater New York State. The result was a unified vision for the future of New York City, accompanied by a clear set of actions required to achieve shared goals.

Because of its diverse stakeholder list including; council members, local government officials, and elected representatives, with significant input from the public, their strategic plan took 4 months to develop. 

Read it's 5 year strategic plan example here

Strategic Plan Example: Silicon Valley Clean Energy

Silicon Valley Clean Energy provides a strategic plan that prioritizes visual appeal and simplicity. Despite being in its second year of operation, this strategic plan example effectively conveys the organization's mission and values to its Board of Directors. The company also conducts thorough analyses of the electric utility industry and anticipates major challenges in the coming years. Additionally, it highlights various social initiatives aimed at promoting community, environmental, and economic benefits that align with customer expectations.

"This plan recognizes the goals we intend to accomplish and highlights strategies and tactics we will employ to achieve these goals. The purpose of this plan is to ensure transparency in our operations and to provide a clear direction to staff about which strategies and tactics we will employ to achieve our goals. It is a living document that can guide our work with clarity and yet has the flexibility to respond to changing environments as we embark on this journey." Girish Balachandran CEO, Silicon Valley Clean Energy

This strategic plan example offers flexibility in terms of timeline. It lays out strategic initiatives for both a three-year and five-year period, extending all the way to 2030. The plan places emphasis on specific steps and targets to be accomplished between 2021 and 2025, followed by goals for the subsequent period of 2025 to 2030. While this plan doesn't go into exhaustive detail about implementation steps, meeting schedules, or monitoring mechanisms, it effectively communicates the organization's priorities and desired long term outcomes. Read its strategic plan example here

By studying these strategic plan examples, you can create a strategic plan that aligns with your organization's goals, communicates effectively, and guides decision-making and resource allocation. Strategic planning approaches differ among various types of organizations.

Private Companies: Private companies like McDonald's and Nike approach strategic planning differently from public companies due to competitive market dynamics. McDonald's provides a high-level overview of its strategic plan in its investor overview.

Nonprofit Organizations: Nonprofit organizations, like The Hunger Project, develop strategic plans tailored to their unique missions and stakeholders. The Hunger Project's plan presents a simple yet effective structure with a clear vision, mission, theory of change, strategic priorities, and action items with measurable outcomes.

Government Entities: Government entities, such as the New York City Development Board, often produce longer, comprehensive strategic plans to guide regional or state development. These plans include implementation plans, stakeholder engagement, performance measures, and priority projects.

When creating a strategic plan for your organization, consider the following key points:

Strategic Priorities: Define clear strategic priorities that are easy to communicate and understand.

Stakeholder Engagement: Ensure your plan addresses the needs and interests of your stakeholders.

Measurements: Include relevant measurements and KPIs, primarily for internal use, to track, monitor and report your progress effectively.

Conciseness vs. Thoroughness: Adapt the level of detail in your plan based on the size of your organization and the number of stakeholders involved.

By learning from these examples, you can see that developing a strategic plan should be a process that fits your organization, effectively communicates your goals, and provides guidance for decision-making and resource allocation. Remember that strategic planning is an ongoing process that requires regular review and adjustment to stay relevant and effective.

Need assistance in maximizing the impact of your strategic planning? Learn how our facilitators can lead you through a proven process, ensuring effectiveness, maintaining focus, and fostering team alignment.

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Strategic Planning: Case Studies

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Instructor: Mike Figliuolo

Have you ever wanted to see strategic planning frameworks applied to real situations? Would you find it helpful to see an integrated strategic case study for an organization like yours? Go more deeply into the strategic planning process by diving into three real-world cases studies. Join instructor Mike Figliuolo as he shares examples from a consumer goods business, a professional services company, and a nonprofit organization. For each case he shares five key aspects of the strategy planning process: defining the strategic environment, determining how to compete, evaluating and prioritizing opportunities, assessing the initiative portfolio, and organizing and allocating resources. Use these thorough examples to think through how you would apply strategic planning to your own organization.

Strategic planning as inter-unit coordination: An in depth case study in Thailand

• Published: 25 June 2020
• Volume 39 , pages 201–224, ( 2022 )

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• Paul Knott   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3142-6085 1 &
• Chatchai Thnarudee 2  

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We extend strategy-as-practice and strategy process studies of strategic planning by detailing empirically how its execution can take on an inter-unit coordination role in multi-business, multi-unit firms. In our case study of a firm in Bangkok, Thailand, we show how practitioners in diverse business and functional units coordinate their respective internal planning processes in a differentiated network of inter-unit strategic planning links. We specify four types of inter-unit planning link according to relative hierarchical level and function of the interacting units. Based on interviews covering 125 of these links, we analyse interactions between managers during the planning process, focusing on the practices they adopt including a newly identified practice we refer to as facilitating. We articulate patterns of interaction by link type, and ultimately show how managers combined these practices in four generic interaction patterns: bilateral, cohesive facilitation, ambassadorial coordination, and supervisory. These interaction patterns vary in the degree of horizontal and vertical inter-unit coordination they contribute to the business. We analyse how usage of the patterns varied across the firm, and hence set out more fully than prior literature how interactions driven by individual managers enable strategic planning to enrich inter-unit coordination through and across a business.

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Knott, P., Thnarudee, C. Strategic planning as inter-unit coordination: An in depth case study in Thailand. Asia Pac J Manag 39 , 201–224 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-020-09726-w

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Why Is Strategic Planning Important?

• 06 Oct 2020

Do you know what your organization’s strategy is? How much time do you dedicate to developing that strategy each month?

If your answers are on the low side, you’re not alone. According to research from Bridges Business Consultancy , 48 percent of leaders spend less than one day per month discussing strategy.

It’s no wonder, then, that 48 percent of all organizations fail to meet at least half of their strategic targets. Before an organization can reap the rewards of its business strategy, planning must take place to ensure its strategy remains agile and executable .

Here’s a look at what strategic planning is and how it can benefit your organization.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using available knowledge to document a business's intended direction. This process is used to prioritize efforts, effectively allocate resources, align shareholders and employees on the organization’s goals, and ensure those goals are backed by data and sound reasoning.

It’s important to highlight that strategic planning is an ongoing process—not a one-time meeting. In the online course Disruptive Strategy , Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen notes that in a study of HBS graduates who started businesses, 93 percent of those with successful strategies evolved and pivoted away from their original strategic plans.

“Most people think of strategy as an event, but that’s not the way the world works,” Christensen says. “When we run into unanticipated opportunities and threats, we have to respond. Sometimes we respond successfully; sometimes we don’t. But most strategies develop through this process. More often than not, the strategy that leads to success emerges through a process that’s at work 24/7 in almost every industry.”

Strategic planning requires time, effort, and continual reassessment. Given the proper attention, it can set your business on the right track. Here are three benefits of strategic planning.

Related: 4 Ways to Develop Your Strategic Thinking Skills

Benefits of Strategic Planning

1. create one, forward-focused vision.

Strategy touches every employee and serves as an actionable way to reach your company’s goals.

One significant benefit of strategic planning is that it creates a single, forward-focused vision that can align your company and its shareholders. By making everyone aware of your company’s goals, how and why those goals were chosen, and what they can do to help reach them, you can create an increased sense of responsibility throughout your organization.

This can also have trickle-down effects. For instance, if a manager isn’t clear on your organization’s strategy or the reasoning used to craft it, they could make decisions on a team level that counteract its efforts. With one vision to unite around, everyone at your organization can act with a broader strategy in mind.

2. Draw Attention to Biases and Flaws in Reasoning

The decisions you make come with inherent bias. Taking part in the strategic planning process forces you to examine and explain why you’re making each decision and back it up with data, projections, or case studies, thus combatting your cognitive biases.

A few examples of cognitive biases are:

• The recency effect: The tendency to select the option presented most recently because it’s fresh in your mind
• Occam’s razor bias: The tendency to assume the most obvious decision to be the best decision
• Inertia bias: The tendency to select options that allow you to think, feel, and act in familiar ways

One cognitive bias that may be more difficult to catch in the act is confirmation bias . When seeking to validate a particular viewpoint, it's the tendency to only pay attention to information that supports that viewpoint.

If you’re crafting a strategic plan for your organization and know which strategy you prefer, enlist others with differing views and opinions to help look for information that either proves or disproves the idea.

Combating biases in strategic decision-making requires effort and dedication from your entire team, and it can make your organization’s strategy that much stronger.

Related: 3 Group Decision-Making Techniques for Success

3. Track Progress Based on Strategic Goals

Having a strategic plan in place can enable you to track progress toward goals. When each department and team understands your company’s larger strategy, their progress can directly impact its success, creating a top-down approach to tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) .

By planning your company’s strategy and defining its goals, KPIs can be determined at the organizational level. These goals can then be extended to business units, departments, teams, and individuals. This ensures that every level of your organization is aligned and can positively impact your business’s KPIs and performance.

It’s important to remember that even though your strategy might be far-reaching and structured, it must remain agile. As Christensen asserts in Disruptive Strategy , a business’s strategy needs to evolve with the challenges and opportunities it encounters. Be prepared to pivot your KPIs as goals shift and communicate the reasons for change to your organization.

Improve Your Strategic Planning Skills

Strategic planning can benefit your organization’s vision, execution, and progress toward goals. If strategic planning is a skill you’d like to improve, online courses can provide the knowledge and techniques needed to lead your team and organization.

Strategy courses can range from primers on key concepts (such as Economics for Managers ), to deep-dives on strategy frameworks (such as Disruptive Strategy ), to coursework designed to help you strategize for a specific organizational goal (such as Sustainable Business Strategy ).

Learning how to craft an effective, compelling strategic plan can enable you to not only invest in your career but provide lasting value to your organization.

Do you want to formulate winning strategies for your organization? Explore our portfolio of online strategy courses and download the free flowchart to determine which is the best fit for you and your goals.

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• Published: 03 December 2019

Co-designed strategic planning and agile project management in academia: case study of an action research group

• Enric Senabre Hidalgo 1 &
• Mayo Fuster Morell 2  

Palgrave Communications volume  5 , Article number:  151 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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• Science, technology and society

Strategic planning, a standard activity for project management in different areas and types of organisations, can contribute to improving the dynamics of collaboration in academia, and specifically in research processes. This paper joins the still scarce studies on strategic planning within research groups, contributing to the field of both team science and organisational management from a social sciences perspective and “strategy-as-practice” paradigm. Through the case study of an action research group, after the experimental co-creation of its long-term strategy involving different participatory design methodologies, we quantitatively analyze how this process influenced communication and group relations, both internally and in relation to its participation in the ecosystem with other stakeholders. Thus, as a result of a detailed content analysis in the different communication channels and tools of the group, we address its impact on the team’s agile project management (APM), adopted in a novel way by its members. Data compared between periods, once the strategic plan was co-created, suggest that this type of approach to co-created strategic thinking can improve coordination, cohesion and joint vision among participants. In agreement with emerging academic literature in this field, pertaining to the need to understand strategic planning as a process of socialization and dialogue, other relevant results of the study point to the particular suitability of this type of planning in research environments interested not only in its academic, but also social and ecosystemic impact. The results obtained and discussed also provide elements of assessment when considering the applicability of this type of strategic co-creation process in other areas of knowledge and disciplines.

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Introduction.

Despite the current competition among academic institutions for resources and prestige in the adoption of evaluation systems, ranking mechanisms and performance indicators (Ordorika and Lloyd, 2015 ), regarding current challenges in the organisational dynamics of academic systems there’s little evidence of successful strategies and practices for research project management (Derrick and Nickson, 2014 ). This is especially the case when it comes to the additional need to adapt the production of scientific knowledge to collaborative and interdisciplinary teamwork (Wuchty et al., 2007 ), connecting networked academic organisations and researchers (Wang and Hicks, 2015 ), in a new context that Jasanoff ( 2003 ) defined as the “participatory turn of science”. From the fields of social studies of science and science of team science, authors like Jeffrey ( 2003 ) or Bozeman and Boardman ( 2014 ), describe how collaboration across teams and disciplines also requires progressive adaptation of a shared language and different types of tools. For these reasons, strategic planning seems to be one of the elements that could possibly contribute to better management practices in academia (Wilbon, 2012 ), which is usually a complex and ever-changing process (Eccles et al., 2009 ). On the other hand, when considering alternative modes of knowledge production in academia, as well as the paradigmatic transition of universities in the global context (Santos, 2012 ), strategic thinking usually emerges in research groups oriented to achieve impact beyond the academic domain, like in the cases of action research (Fuster Morell, 2009 ) or mission-driven research (Holm et al., 2013 ). This article provides an analysis of how far co-creation could have a role in the application of strategic planning in academic contexts, in this case through an action research group, and its impact at the levels of management and interrelationships.

Strategic planning in the field of project management

With its foundations in the principles of action research and organisational development (Argyris and Schön, 1997 ), project management is generally considered as the practice of planning and executing the work of a team, based on specific control models and theories, to achieve specific goals and success criteria (Kerzner and Kerzner, 2017 ). From a social science perspective, however, project management has also been studied and applied in understanding projects as social processes, focusing on human behavior and actions within groups and organisations (Blomquist et al., 2010 ). Strategic planning, on the other hand, as applied in project management, can be defined as “deliberative, disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organisation (or other entity) is, what it does, and why” (Bryson, 2011 , pp. 4–5). Strategic planning, in this sense, is one of the most widely used strategy tools in business, but is also used in public and non-profit organisations (Ferlie and Ongaro, 2015 ).

Besides the fact that empirical evidence of a positive relationship between strategic planning and organisational performance remains inconclusive (Wolf and Floyd, 2017 ), after Mintzberg’s ( 1994 ) critique of the fallacies of rational and centralized strategic planning as a top-down process, from the field of organisational studies it has also been analysed as a key mechanism for team integration and coordination, and as a basis for both centralizing and decentralizing organisational decision making (Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2011 ). In this regard, influenced by the mentioned social science perspectives, in recent years there has been a shift in the field of project management research on strategic planning (Wolf and Floyd, 2017 ), pointing to its benefits from the perspective of participative and socialized process models (Andersen, 2004 ). From this second perspective, strategic planning can be studied more as a “process” than a “product”, and strategy development, therefore, as an evolutionary and integrative activity (Jarzabkowski and Spee, 2009 ), within a strategy-as-practice paradigm (Whittington, 1996 ). However, even considering how strategic planning has evolved towards these more integrated and process-oriented approaches, there has been little focus in management literature on addressing to what extent and, specifically, how it could be co-created using participatory methodologies.

State of the art on strategic planning applied to research

Again, with regard to the current challenges of academic systems and research activity from an organisational perspective, although there is scarce academic literature about strategic planning for research organisations, studies in this area show how it has gained some popularity in the general operation of universities (Srinivasa et al., 2015 ; Dooris et al., 2004 ), and also with open and participative approaches (Amrollahi and Rowlands, 2017 ). More specific studies about the application of strategic thinking in research examine its implementation in R&D processes in firms (Bemelmans, 1979 ), in industry-academic collaboration (Burke et al., 1985 ), in research teams in the health sector (Leischow et al., 2008 ), in global initiatives of medical research (Berkley et al., 2010 ), in strategic collaboration within scientific centers (Boardman and Gray, 2010 ), or for the administrative management of research (Drummond, 2003 ).

In this respect, focusing on scholarly activity and academic organisations, relevant case studies on achieving collaborative and participative consensus for strategically planned research agendas address how to combine online tools and offline sessions during the process (Wilbon, 2012 ), or how to engage iteratively different academic communities of practice around research strategic planning (Best et al., 2015 ). Sá and Tamtik ( 2012 ), on the other hand, highlight the diversity of the approaches and perceptions of academics about the research mission, usually constrained by broader social and organisational structures of universities, and by the complex nature of the research enterprise itself. In all cases, however, there is still scarce literature on how to collaboratively develop strategic plans in academic research organisations, and its effect on group dynamics.

The co-creation approach: participatory design and agile project management

Co-creation (or co-production), which refers to processes of collective creativity, is a very broad term, with its applications ranging from the added value of customer participation in the definition of a product or service (Ranjan and Read, 2016 ), to public participation, collaborative governance or community involvement in civic-oriented projects (Voorberg et al., 2015 ). Within this broad concept, participatory design (or co-design) refers to a specific instance of co-creation that occurs when designers and people not trained in design work together in a design development process, with participants as “domain experts” of their own needs and experience (Visser et al., 2005 ). Some key principles of co-design, in this sense, connect with the perspective of iterative and participative strategic planning, as defined above, especially when it comes to the involvement of diverse stakeholders (Flood and Jackson, 1991 ). This points to the opportunity for adopting visualization techniques derived from co-design (Sanders and Stappers, 2008 ) in order to integrate different perspectives, mutual understanding, inspiration and engagement between participants in the research strategic thinking process (Eppler and Platts, 2009 ), thereby enhancing visual and textual representations of contexts and strategies (Giraudeau, 2008 ).

On the other hand, some approaches analyse strategic planning from the perspective of how it can be improved by adapting agile project management (APM) (Cervone, 2014 ; Rand and Eckfeldt, 2004 ). APM, which can also be considered as a co-creation practice (Spinuzzi, 2015 ), consists of a set of methods and principles originally conceived for flexible and participative software development, but currently adopted in many other different domains (Ciric et al., 2018 ). This wider adoption of APM is due to its attributes of adaptive teamwork, transparency, continuous improvement and small and frequent releases for early delivery (Cao et al., 2009 ). APM, more so than other project management frameworks, emphasizes teamwork by focusing on the social aspects of project development, channelling co-creation between participants in self-organized, cross-functional teams (Hoda et al., 2013 ), with collective ownership and collective responsibility as key attributes (Robinson and Sharp, 2003 ). Among the different practices within APM, some typical ones are the regularity of short feedback meetings (“standups”) and the use of kanban boards for visualizing the workflow and team tasks from conception to completion (Polk, 2011 ).

Research questions

The arguments exposed above justify the interest in an analysis connecting such diverse bodies of literature, in order to fill the gap and contribute to the questions about how strategic planning could be based on co-creation methodologies. And also, from a meta-research perspective (Ioannidis et al., 2015 ), how such an approach could be applied to research processes. More concretely, to what extent participatory design could be used for articulating the research planning phase, and afterwards integrated with the APM for the research development phase. This leads to the following two research questions, which form the basis of this study:

How can co-creation methods be used to lead the strategic planning process of a research group?

What would be the impact of co-created strategic planning on the agile project management of research?

Answering these two questions requires, in the first case, to describe in some detail how participatory design can be combined with strategic planning principles, explaining the integration of both approaches. In relation to the second question, a quantitative approach is needed considering the general lack of empirical evidence, especially in the fields of social studies of science and team science, on how strategic planning can impact research management. In this regard, our analysis of the co-creation approach to research strategic planning is applied to the participants, sequence and methods used in the entire process.

Methodology

In order to address the two research questions, a distinctive methodological design has been applied to each one of them. Articulated around a specific case study on the Dimmons research group, this methodological approach is twofold. The first part is based on participatory design, utilised to conceptualize and prototype the Dimmons strategic planning according to co-creation principles. The second part analyses the impact of co-created strategic planning on the group’s day-to-day APM, through content analysis of the online tools used for coordinating teamwork. On this basis, the results allow us to discuss which insights of the study could be generalized to current challenges in research project management.

Background of the Dimmons case study

Created in 2016, Dimmons ( http://dimmons.net/ ) is one of the eleven research groups of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), the research center of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) based in Barcelona. Following the development of strategic planning of the IN3 Footnote 1 , which took place after the main strategic planning exercise of the UOC Footnote 2 in 2016, the Dimmons group developed its own strategic planning with the aim of establishing its strategic objectives for the period 2018 to 2023. On the one hand, the selection of the Dimmons research group as a case study is due to how it is immersed in a strategic planning context that crosses several levels of the academic institution to which it belongs, reflecting an increasingly recurring but still little studied trend. On the other hand, Dimmons also represents a paradigmatic example due to its diversity, since it is composed of members with a consolidated scientific career, but also of PhD students, external collaborators and management-oriented profiles. Since the beginning of its activity, in that sense, Dimmons operates in a framework of competitive evolution between universities and research centers, and at the same time in new collaboration dynamics to achieve not only academic impact but also social impact, as we will see. In that sense, therefore, the case study reflects a way of addressing a series of current challenges and complexities that research groups experience between long-term strategic vision and day-to-day project management.

The Dimmons research group is focused on transdisciplinarity and action research for the study of socioeconomic innovation and the collaborative economy, from the perspectives of economic and public policy analysis. The group’s composition since its beginning has evolved into a networked structure (Spinuzzi, 2015 ) which consists of different “layers” of participation (all of them involved with its strategic planning, as we will see in the results section). The action-oriented character of the research group, and its specialization in collaboration dynamics, makes it a case study particularly adapted to develop a novel approach, concretely in terms of opening up its strategic planning process by applying co-creation methods. This was seen early on as an opportunity to engage with its core team members and network of close collaborators, as well as with other representative stakeholders from the Dimmons community and ecosystem. In sum, the coincidence that the research group had to develop its own strategic planning, has an experimental and action-oriented approach, which added to its expertise on collaborative dynamics, made the Dimmons group a good case for the study. Regarding the first research question on how co-creation methods could be adapted for strategic planning, Dimmons was a good choice due to the group’s regular adoption of participatory design techniques. On the other hand, Dimmons’ novel adoption of APM (Senabre Hidalgo, 2018a ) also favours addressing the second question, regarding the impact of the co-created strategic planning on the group’s day-to-day management.

As a general result of the co-creation of the strategic plan, in which more than 40 people participated, there were a total of 38 actions defined in accordance with 6 strategic goals for the period 2018–2023, each one with an average of three key performance indicators (KPI) associated (97 in total). Its final version was published online on the Dimmons research group webpage. Footnote 3 After one year of implementation, by the end of 2018, 24 of the 97 KPIs were accomplished satisfactorily. This result represents an accomplishment of 24%, and considering that a 5-year period is envisaged for full implementation of the plan, suggests satisfactory performance in terms of achieving the co-defined goals during the first year.

Participatory design for how to apply co-creation in strategic planning

Regarding the first research question (“How can co-creation methods to be used in leading strategic planning process of a research group?”) the methodological approach was qualitative, based on participatory design. Departing from the key consideration that participatory design is indeed a methodology of action research (Spinuzzi, 2005 ), and benefiting from co-creation derived from design thinking methodologies (Kimbell, 2012 ), which have proven to improve participant engagement in research (Senabre Hidalgo et al., 2018 ), we established different visual and discussion techniques at each stage of the process for the effective participation in a transdisciplinary context. The participatory design was developed and data collected from the fall of 2016 through 2018. The methodology applied is consistent with the participatory design notions of user-centered co-creation, in detailed stages and techniques such as those described by Naranjo-Bock (2012) for (1) self-reflection of research methods (focusing on research goals and questions, who the participants are and what tools they can use, the stage of the project, etc.); (2) running co-design activities onsite, with techniques and “placements” like context mapping, storyboards, inspiration cards, diagrams or paper prototyping; (3) pilot testing and results, where the data obtained is generally visual and tangible, accompanied by the important debrief of the results of each participatory design session or process.

Following that approach, and adopting the framework of Spinuzzi ( 2005 ), through different qualitative techniques the co-creation process was structured around the three key phases of: (1) Initial exploration of work, where participants meet each other and commonalities are identified, as well as for preliminary discussions; (2) Discovery processes, when design facilitators employ various techniques to understand and prioritize work organisation, clarifying the participant’s goals and values; and (3) Prototyping, a final stage for iteratively shaping outputs and assessing results. The data came from a range of sources, including offline co-creation sessions and team meetings, meetings and interviews with some researchers and collaborators, as well as documentation resulting from the different phases and sessions of the strategic planning. Outputs of each participatory design stage were recorded in detail as they took place, through documents shared online.

Content analysis for the impact of a co-created strategic planning on APM of research

Regarding the second question (“What would be the impact of co-created strategic planning on the agile project management of research?”), the approach was based on quantitative data collection and text analysis, in order to address how far the co-creation methodologies had an impact on the group’s project management, focusing on the researchers’ discussions and behavior through digital channels. The analysis was based on extensive content analysis of two of the main online coordination tools for the AMP of the group: a chat group for daily communication and an online kanban board platform for task management.

Telegram chat content analysis

The “Dimmons al dia” Telegram chat group was adopted from February 2016 until the end of 2018 as a first approach to daily standup meetings, inspired by the Scrum method derived from APM for software development (Cervone, 2011 ). Scrum, which is one of the most adopted agile frameworks for managing knowledge work, facilitates the coordinated activity of participants who break their work into small tasks that can be completed within fixed duration cycles or “sprints”, tracking progress and re-planning in regular meetings in order to develop projects incrementally (Senabre Hidalgo, 2019 ). Via Telegram, on a daily basis from Monday to Friday each Dimmons team member (a total of 15 users, through different periods over time), via a short message during the morning period, informed others about the planned tasks for the day (Fig. 1 ), among other coordination discussions that took place regularly on that chat tool between team members.

Screenshot of the Telegram chat group for daily updates about tasks.

A combination of computer-assisted massive text analysis and comparative visualizations Footnote 4 for these chat discussions on the Dimmons Telegram group was used, after dumping and extracting to plain text the full history of the “Dimmons al dia” chat group since its creation (a text corpus mainly in Catalan, which is the normal language of team members). The data gathered consisted of the complete history of messages from 2 September 2016 to 27 December 2018 (28 months of activity). This represented a corpus of 6520 messages, with a size of 794,464 characters in 6941 lines of text.

Afterwards, in order to compare the different flows of communication in relation to the co-designed strategic plan of the research group, it was decided that the date on which the first strategic planning team workshop took place (20 December 2017) would be used as the key date for dividing the chat history in two plain text documents: “Xat Telegram Dimmons al dia 2017” (pre-strategic plan period, until 20 December 2017, with 78,644 total words) and “Xat Telegram Dimmons al dia 2018” (post-strategic plan period, after 20 December 2017, with 83,200 total words).

As a first step in the analysis, prior to coding, the plain text obtained from each document was processed as a tabular view of terms frequently used in the entire corpus. That is, a list of the most used terms for the period 2017 and a list of the most used terms for the period 2018. This facilitated an initial overview of recurrent terms, which could then be filtered and coded, identifying multiple stop words to exclude (non-relevant meaning, numbers, ambiguous terms, etc.) and on the other hand selecting specific words related to categories to include in the analysis. The coding of data obtained in this way consisted of the clustering of words relevant to the following two categories:

Coordination-related terms : data about terms related to time periods or days (today, tomorrow, now, etc.), general work-related keywords (meeting, call, document, task, pending, etc.), as well as specific verbs (preparing, sending, finishing, etc.).

Strategy-related terms : data about terms related to the six main goals of the Dimmons strategic plan (as described in the results section), for (1) academic impact (paper, data, review, survey, specific projects, etc.); (2) open tools (platform or toolkit-related); (3) ecosystem (specific partners mentioned, dissemination or projects); (4) team care and empowerment (words related to good climate among members, greetings, gender topics, etc.); (5) sustainability (new proposals, specific projects for new funding); and (6) university shift (references to the university or research center).

Kanban board content analysis

In January 2017 (when the strategic planning was co-designed) the Dimmons team adopted an open source project management software ( https://kanboard.org/ ) for additional APM practice, such as the use of an online kanban board for visualizing the flow of tasks accomplished by core team members (Fig. 2 ).

Kanban board reflecting the workflow of tasks of team members, related to strategic goals and specific projects.

For this, in connection with the six strategic goals defined in the co-design phase, each planned task could be properly tagged (selecting “academic impact”, “open tools”, etc.) according to the researchers criteria. In addition, tasks could be classified by selecting from a dropdown menu the corresponding project or category (specific projects, management tasks, dissemination, publications, events or initiatives related to networking, etc.). An analysis of this workflow-related data on the Dimmons online kanban board during the mentioned period (with different levels of participation among the nine core team members, depending on their familiarity with digital tools and perception of utility) allows for an understanding of the evolution of planned and achieved tasks in relation to the Dimmons strategic plan, as well as among team members.

Data obtained from the Kanboard log comprised details about a total of 166 user-defined tasks, in relation to tags selected (for the six strategic goals), category of project selected (among the 11 existing projects and initiatives during 2018), user activity, level of accomplishment, due dates and task description, among others. In this case, the coding related to the strategic goals was self-generated by each user at the moment of naming and defining the task, by selecting the most appropriate tag in relation to the strategic goals.

This results section is divided into two parts, which address the research questions with the methodologies described above. First, we outline how the co-design process of the Dimmons research group planning unfolded, describing the methods used, as well as its internal and management implications, based on the participatory design process itself. Secondly, we summarise the main results of the impact of the process on the group’s project management and regular communication in relation to its experimental co-creation approach, derived from the content analysis of the main coordination channels used during the regular activity of Dimmons.

How can co-creation techniques and principles be used in leading the strategic planning process of a research group? Insights from the participatory design of the Dimmons strategic planning

In relation to the first research question, about how can the strategic planning process of a research group can adopt co-creation methods, the participatory design practices and principles adopted resulted in an iterative, dialogic and eminently visual approach to strategic planning. Questions related to participants (“who”), sequence (“when”) and methods (“how”) were of critical importance since the beginning of the process (Table 1 ).

“Who”: Participation as ecosystem

In contrast to the traditional strategic planning process, developed by the group’s core team only (i.e., those with strong ties to it), Dimmons adopted a broader perspective in which the basic principle for co-creation that emerged was the concept of “participation as ecosystem” (Fuster Morell, 2010a ). That is, the Dimmons research group could be considered a research ecosystem with diverse forms and degrees of involvement, following the structure of a “power law dynamic” (or “1/9/90”) in online collaborative production (Fuster Morell, 2010b ). This reflects the composition of the participation that took place when articulating the strategic planning process, according to the three layers of the Dimmons research ecosystem:

Core Team: Director, postdocs and PhDs with grants, and research assistants (9 people).

Dimmons “Community”: University professors, former visitors, external researchers, experts and practitioners on Dimmons areas (12 people).

Dimmons “Ecosystem”: Representatives of a network of institutions with further collaborative relations, target impact or audience (10 participants from a total of 32 private and public organisations).

In relation to this, a first observation regarding how to apply co-creation in strategic planning has to do with the suitability of adopting a broad, open and participative approach, as well as decentralised approaches for higher engagement and performance in dynamic environments (Andersen, 2004 ). For this reason, who to involve in the process became a critical aspect, considering that ecosystemic participation is also meant to engage the research group community and stakeholders in the process (not only highly involved team members). In this case, the open invitation to all members of each layer of the ecosystem, as defined above, resulted in the “power law” distribution, of which only a small representation were engaged in the process but with a high level of involvement through the different co-creation sessions. Defined as a modular sequence, with the possibility of joining the process at different times, also allowed for a wider participation than if following a rigid and traditional strategic planning approach.

“When”: Iterative sequences of convergence and divergence

The iterative unfolding of the co-creation process was another main characteristic. That is, rather than a predefined sequence of steps, the guiding principles were based on the participatory design notions of “convergence” and “divergence” (Sanders et al., 2010 ). This allowed for several divergence instances (during which a considerable number of possibilities regarding goals, ideas, SWOT factors Footnote 5 , etc. were generated by participants), followed by intense convergence stages of synthesis (where the main options were presented, discussed and finally selected via different mechanisms).

Departing from that key consideration in co-creation, and its adaptation of a sequence guided by participatory design methods (Spinuzzi, 2005 ; Sanders and Stappers, 2008 ), the overall approach of the participatory design integrated key notions in literature for effective strategic planning (Wilson, 1994 ). In this respect, the organic and iterative development of the process as a co-creation sequence was consistent with the four stages of a strategic plan, as defined by Eppler and Platts ( 2009 ): analysis, development, planning and implementation (Fig. 3 ).

Stages followed in the co-creation of the strategic plan of the research group, connecting co-creation approaches (Spinuzzi, 2005 ; Sanders et al., 2010 ; Spinuzzi, 2015 ) with visual strategic planning (Eppler et al., 2006 ; Eppler and Platts, 2009 ).

As reflected above, a key consideration derived from the case study in relation to its temporal sequence is that it was possible to establish a clear coherence between the literature of co-creation and participatory design (Spinuzzi, 2005 ; Sanders et al., 2010 ; Spinuzzi, 2015 ) and of visualization techniques for strategic planning (Eppler and Platts, 2009 ; Eppler et al., 2006 ).

“How”: Integrating°co-creation methods in strategic planning

The co-creation process unfolded by connecting the different participatory design stages to specific phases of strategic planning, via a combination of five sessions in total and the adoption of nine co-creation methods (in offline but also online formats), and with the regular participation of diverse participants from the Dimmons research ecosystem (Table 2 ).

In this way, the first co-creation workshop (Fig. 4 ) focused on mapping personal attitudes and strengths, experience in methods and research approaches, which contributed to visualizing methodological affinities within the group.

Different moments and materials used for the workshop sessions with the research team.

Following the mentioned co-creation principles of “convergence” and “divergence” (Sanders et al., 2010 ), the second co-creation workshop departed from the first survey results to engage in a broader discussion about the mission and guiding principles of the group, which were discussed and re-edited offline during the debate. That second session also adopted a card-sorting technique for clustering the survey results of the SWOT. During the second co-creation workshop, a first version of the map of the Dimmons ecosystem was also drafted and discussed. An important part of this participative analysis stage of the planning was the collective identification of the “ecosystem” or external environment in which the group operates. For this, a key activity was the collective mapping of the different institutions and agents with which Dimmons collaborates or has a relevant relationship, bringing the concept of ecosystemic research closer to the perspective of the Quadruple Helix for innovation systems (Carayannis and Campbell, 2012 ). In contributing to the generation of an internal environment of transparency and openness, it is important to consider that all the dynamics took place in a context of action research where the majority of participants were familiar beforehand with similar methodologies and processes to integrate diversity and explicit points of view. Also noteworthy is the general absence of conflict situations during the whole process, and that initial discussions about methodologies and specific theoretical perspectives were activated early on. This was probably due to the fact that it was based on a small core of participants who were already cohesive around the Dimmons team, joined by other actors with diverse theoretical backgrounds and experience, and for that reason each session was oriented towards the search for synergies and learnings, making explicit the knowledge, expectations and opinions of the majority of the group. However, it should also be pointed out that sometimes during the discussion, the opinion of those with a consolidated academic profile tended to weigh more and took more preeminence, in contrast to predoctoral researchers or participants with a profile not linked to academic research.

As another important element of the group’s strategic thinking in this case, the final stages of the process not only had as benchmark reference the IN3 research center’s strategic goals, but also the potential connection with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) principles. The SDGs are a collection of 17 global goals set by the United Nations for addressing urgent issues like poverty, education, gender equality, energy, environment or social justice, among others (Griggs et al., 2013 ). RRI is a multidisciplinary approach promoting the involvement of stakeholders and civil society in scientific activities for developing more inclusive innovation processes (Owen et al., 2012 ). This element of strategic planning around external indicators represented for all participants a first approach to new principles and a series of values, leveraging perspectives and discussions around the key aspect of social impact of research beyond the academic context.

As a final result, among the different key elements that are usually integrated into a strategic plan (Eppler and Platts, 2009 ), the definition of six strategic goals were incorporated into the first draft of the document (considered as a “prototype”) of six strategic goals: (1) Academic impact (“generate a high-quality research corpus of theoretical framework on socio-economic innovation”); (2) Open tools (“contribute to processes in action for the resolution of social challenges by developing research-based resources”); (3) Ecosystem building (“consolidate a ‘glocal’ network of partner organisations for quadruple helix collaboration to favour social impact and resilience”); (4) Empowered team (“consolidate the team with complementary backgrounds, healthy environment and gender-balanced talent”); (5) Catalytic sustainability (“obtain funding for action research from competitive calls with high impact and visibility”); and (6) University shift (“engage with open access, “commonification” processes, transdisciplinarity, agile principles and other changing paradigms in the academic culture”).

What would be the influence of co-created strategic planning on the agile project management of research? Insights from the analysis of impact in Dimmons coordination

Once the strategic plan was finished and shared online as a definitive version, it was incorporated into the day-to-day activities of the research group, both explicitly (by incorporating the strategic goals as categories in the group’s agile kanban board for task management) and implicitly (by guiding topics of conversation, and being in the background when regularly communicating online and offline). In order to analyse it and answer the second research question of this study, on what would be the influence of a co-created strategic planning on the APM of research, a series of content analysis on the main coordination digital channels provides different elements for discussion, especially from an action research perspective.

Dimmons Telegram chat content analysis

The evolution of user’s daily participation on the Telegram chat during 2017 and 2018 suggests that once the strategic planning was co-designed and adopted (at the end of 2017), the communication dynamics evolved from being relatively asymmetric (with just a few very active users) to a much more balanced distribution where all members contributed, following the “standup” meetings and derived conversations (Fig. 5 ).

Evolution of user participation in “Dimmons al dia” Telegram group chat during 2017 and 2018.

More specifically, from a medium used by nine participants over a timeframe of approximately two years, the co-design and implementation of the Dimmons strategic plan between December 2017 and January 2018 seems to set a landmark between a relatively unequal distribution of messages among team members (where only a few of them contributed, at very different levels) to a regular pace and volume of interventions by the majority of participants. This probably derived from applying the strategic planning as a co-creation sequence, thereby as an integrative and socialization process. In this sense, it should be noted that among the observations about the daily communication of the group through the Telegram channel, most messages and discussions focused on the planning and execution of tasks, both academic (writing articles, organisation of workshops, data collection, etc.) as administrative (agenda management, budgeting, event logistics, etc.). In contrast, during the day-to-day of the group and outside of the co-creation process itself, theoretical or conceptual discussions normally took place in other spaces and moments, normally during the development of face-to-face meetings between two or more members of the group (before and after the strategic planning process).

On the other hand, if we look at data from the content analysis of the daily update “standup” messages in 2017 (again, prior to the strategic plan) compared to the corpus of terms used in 2018 (once the strategic planning was in place) patterns also demonstrate a coincidence with a significative increase of terms related to the different strategic goals, and therefore a probable influence of the strategic planning on the daily communication of the group (Fig. 6 ).

Comparison of mentions to Dimmons strategic plan related terms in Telegram between 2017–2018.

This reflects a relative imbalance in how the different goals were addressed during both periods. While, according to these results, the attention to the group’s ecosystem and to academic impact where at the center of activity, there was much less activity, in terms of percentage, related to others such as the generation of open tools or team care. This imbalance simply demonstrates that after year one, of the five goals covered by the strategic plan, the group gave priority to tasks and processes related to its ecosystem (specific partners, collaborators or events), as well as pertaining to academic impact (publications, data, surveys, specific projects under development). What seems significant from this data, apart from how it can serve as a parallel indicator to the group’s agreed KPIs, is the increment and diversity of terms related to the strategic plan in the regular conversations and update messages on the Telegram chat for the 2018 period (and to what extent they were more relevant than in the previous year, before the co-design of the strategic plan took place).

In relation to the adoption of APM methods (in this case, establishing additional regular weekly meetings and the use of a digital kanban board, beyond the daily updates via Telegram), the increment there between 2017 and 2018 in vocabulary related to coordination tasks, timing and other key terms is also significative. Specially the preeminence of messages containing words like “today”, “pending”, “version”, “tasks” or “meeting”, which doubled in general compared to 2017.

Again, patterns show a wider use of vocabulary in coordination-related communications, with reference to tasks informed on a daily basis, once the co-creation process around the strategic planning of the research group took place. This suggests not only that team communication incorporated more perspectives related to the Dimmons strategic goals, as observed above, but also more references to general coordination and therefore the operative awareness of the group.

Finally, if we focus on 2018 (the period of the co-designed strategic plan), another relevant analysis of the content data gathered via the daily updates and conversations on the Telegram group chat, is the extent to which it reflects a very similar proportion of conversations about specific areas of the strategic goals (Fig. 7 ) for the tasks defined on the kanban board. In both cases, the majority of references during 2018, coincidentally, focus on academic impact and ecosystem building, followed by a corpus of team-related and university shift terms.

Percentage of terms related to Dimmons strategic goals on Telegram chat during 2018.

Dimmons kanban board content analysis

“As mentioned above, the results of the tags used most on the kanban board related to the strategic goals, when informing the regular tasks of team members, point to a very similar distribution as in the previous analysis of the Dimmons main Telegram chat, where academic impact and ecosystem creation are the most selected ones, followed by a smaller proportion of the other four categories”.

This suggests that both patterns coincide as an indicator of the most influencing priorities for the team derived from the strategic plan, but more importantly points to a coherence on a shared vision as an action research group derived from the co-design process. Also, this result when comparing content on the coordination channels, suggests a consistent integration of the strategic goals with the APM methods, ensuring an interconnection between the strategic plan goals and the daily activities.

Another result from the task-related data gathered via the kanban board is to what extent there’s a good balance of members contributions to the projects and initiatives connected to the strategic goals. Instead of a specialization pattern or “monolithic” distribution of projects to researchers, despite the different levels of participation informing planned tasks between users, results show a relevant quality of teamwork in terms of shared projects and cross-functionality.

In addition, the extent to which specific projects not only comprehended tasks related to different researchers but also to the various strategic goals, suggests a coherent and transversal categorization when researchers classified their regular activity in relation to the strategic plan. Data obtained from activity on the kanban board, when compared with activity on the Telegram chat informing about planned tasks for each day, also shows a clear correlation between the content generated in both channels and terms related to the different strategic goals. As already indicated, however, not all the core team members used the kanban board with the same level of regularity (as opposed to the Telegram daily updates, where participation followed the same volume and pace for all team members), with the main reason probably related to the difference in the levels of familiarity with digital tools for management.

With this study a prototype and analysis of a co-creation methodology for the strategic planning process of an action research group was developed. Regarding participation, guided by a ‘strategy-as-practice’ approach in project management and the concept of ecosystemic research, the case study integrated the diversity of perspectives and voices of more than 20 participants in total. This way of proceeding generated a key mechanism for team integration and coordination within the group, and also with its external layers of collaborators and stakeholders, which were also represented through the process. As data indicate, this required a combined approach of co-creation methods and iterations, which followed principles of participatory design and online participation. As a consequence, besides a fully defined document for the strategic roadmap of the group activity, the different actions co-defined by the core team and its ecosystem of collaborators achieved a satisfactory level of accomplishment after the first year of implementation.

In relation to the first research question, on how co-creation methods can lead the strategic planning of a research group, our study points to the possibility of developing strategic planning processes with such methods. In this respect, our contribution reflects the key methodological aspect of integrating participatory design techniques for structuring the process. This aligns with theories connecting principles of action research in social sciences, and especially co-design in the context of organisational learning, in terms of tacit and explicit knowledge transfer processes, as well as constructivist approaches to addressing complexity and uncertainty in teamwork (Argyris and Schön, 1989 ). The analysed case study of Dimmons, in this sense, seems coherent with a wider consideration of design thinking as a practical approach for enabling transdisciplinary collaboration and as a process for “shaping processes” (Lindberg et al., 2010 ). In our opinion, as addressed in this case, this connects to the need to adapt strategic planning to co-creation practices as a decentralized, integrative and iterative dialogue (Wolf and Floyd, 2017 ). Our analysis also suggests the opportunity for the utilization of academic strategic planning as a means of integrating the values of the social impact of research, such as those derived ones from SGD and RRI, which can be adopted as a landmark when addressing academic and scientific activity from a collaborative and ecosystemic perspective. Observations and outputs from this process reflect that it allowed for deeper insight into discussions and comparisons about research methods, in many cases for the first time among team members. By “voting” for preferences and visualizing expertise in such explicit ways, and selecting a wide range of possible methods, the iteration and parallel discussion allowed for the identification (later on the strategic planning process) of several areas of improvement and implications for the group composition in the mid and long term. All the data generated and shared as open documentation during this first initial exploration stage of the strategic planning, concerning the group’s composition, allowed on the one hand, the identification and mapping of opinions, basic assumptions and implicit understandings around research that needed to be surfaced, and on the other one the initiation of the co-creation of the strategic planning with the needed openness and implication of all participants.

Regarding the applicability of the model to managing research projects in other scientific research contexts, the type of participatory co-design described and the degree of involvement of the different layers of stakeholders probably require departing from reduced, cohesive teams and familiarity with principles of action research or community-based research, frequent in the social sciences. In this sense, it is important to highlight that, as detailed in the first part of the study, the concept of impact of research was regularly taken into account beyond the academic context, as a requisite to integrating in the strategic planning other perspectives that do not come from the scholarly context. As another relevant element derived from the results of the study, when prototyping the co-design process in connection with previous research on visual strategic planning (Eppler et al., 2006 ; Eppler and Platts, 2009 ), it should be noted that the iterative sequences of convergence and divergence of each phase allowed the described levels of participation and integration of perspectives. Again, considering it a strategic thinking process that is likely to be generalizable in research contexts in which, beyond academic and administrative tasks, there are conditions for the consideration of different types of research impact for initiatives in the medium and long term.

Regarding the second research question, the results pertaining to the impact of the co-created strategic planning on the group’s APM coordination and communication routines (and specifically data about terms related to the strategic plan) suggest that it contributed significantly to a shared vision and helped to deal with the inherent complexity of research activity (Fuster Morell, 2012 ). In this sense, with respect to the positive influence of a co-created strategic planning on the APM of research, our method provided results complementing previous studies (Rand and Eckfeldt, 2004 ). Specifically, we described how the integration of strategic goals with the agile management of daily tasks can serve as a parallel indicator to KPI used in strategic planning, and how such integration can provide immediate user-generated information for assessing the implementation of the plan (as compared to the usual retrospective checking of KPI over longer periods of time). Taking into account the need to connect strategic plans with managerial practices during the implementation phase (Poister, 2010 ), this combination of co-design techniques and AMP practices for the strategic planning of the Dimmons research group reflected the importance of design features and social mechanisms for successful strategic planning (Barzelay and Jacobsen, 2009 ). The data compared between the period prior to the strategic plan and its co-creation process suggest, on the one hand, an increase in the group’s cohesion through its daily communication and coordination channels, and on the other, an alignment in terms of discourse and follow-up of the objectives set. Again, in relation to being able to extrapolate the results of this process to other contexts, it is probably key to start with some previous experience with basic principles and practices of project management, and especially those based on AMP. However, as we reflect in the first part of the study, on the state of the art in social studies of science and team science with respect to the management of research projects, as well as the progressive need for mechanisms of efficiency and collaboration in academia, it is likely that this type of approach could be useful and produce similar results in other types of scientific and research initiatives.

Despite the above, the results also show a relevant imbalance between the accomplishment of some of the strategic goals after the first year of implementation of the strategic planning, with a significant dedication of efforts to “ecosystemic activity”. This suggests that, from an action research perspective, after the participative design process there was a greater priority given to the perceived need for addressing tasks related to community events, meetings with stakeholders, institutional agreements or online dissemination. In contrast, according to the data derived from the combination of KPI compared with the volume of specific tasks defined in the APM coordination channels, critical aspects of research management related to team building or open tools did not receive as much attention and effort in comparison. In our view, besides the experimental character of the case study (and the novelty of its research group focus), this result also relates to the current context of pressure and complexity within “accelerated” academic organisations (Vostal, 2016 ), which represents a challenge in front of competition for excellence (Sørensen et al., 2016 ) and the “projectification” of university research (Fowler et al., 2015 ). In this sense, in relation to the day-to-day activity of the group connecting strategic planning with co-creation principles of APM in research, it was observed that the experience also increased the need for the project management role or main facilitator of the entire co-creation process. In this regard, it was usually complicated to separate that function, as the guide of the participatory design of the strategic plan, from the wider role of APM coordinator.

This study’s limitations and potential mainly have to do with two areas. On the one hand, the content analysis of the kanban board covered an early stage of its adoption, but in comparison to the Telegram chat activity not all participants used the system with the same level of intensity and engagement. As explained in the results section, however, the relative coincidence with percentages of strategic-related terms between both channels suggests it worked as a relevant source of data for assessing the implementation of the strategic plan. In relation to the co-creation process, this limitation (related to an unequal adoption of APM coordination by the majority of the group), represented a challenge for some participants, and probably affected its impact during the implementation stage of some of the strategic goals. As mentioned, the degree of familiarity with digital tools for project coordination, as well as with internal discussion processes and personal positioning in research projects, seems a key factor that also requires future analysis in other academic contexts, to determine to what extent similar processes of co-creation and strategic thinking can be applied in the field of social sciences and in other disciplines. On the other hand, following this type of exploratory analysis, the need to observe and compare data generated by other research groups that apply similar (or different) methods for project management and strategic planning creates in our opinion a potential for future research, and would allow for further understanding of such an important area of meta-research. In this line, another analysis based on the case study of the Dimmons research group for a different period in the near future, in order to compare the evolution of KPI in parallel to communication and coordination related to tasks until 2023, would be needed to confirm some of our initial results.

Through this study we have described how strategic planning could be applied to research in order to confront current challenges in academic collaboration, and how to do so through the opportunities offered by co-creation methodologies applied to project management. Our analysis has identified potential benefits and challenges in this respect, suggesting further development of this field in the social sciences and action research, and proposing it as a possible area of research and development in parallel to other documented and studied efforts to deal with innovative and agile management of scholarly work. Besides an analysis of its impact at the communication and relational levels, our study also offers a detailed description about how co-creation for strategic planning in research could be applied, which could be of practical interest for scientific institutions in relation to their project management practices.

Data availability

Due to privacy reasons, the datasets analysed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Senabre Hidalgo, E., Fuster Morell, M. Co-designed strategic planning and agile project management in academia: case study of an action research group. Palgrave Commun 5 , 151 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0364-0

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Strategic Planning and Management in Transit Agencies (2005)

Chapter: chapter four - case studies.

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20 OVERVIEW Five transit agencies were selected for case studies. Selection criteria included whether the agency has a comprehensive process or one that is noteworthy in some way, whether it is believed to be a beneficial process for the agency, and whether the agency has been relatively effective at implementing the plan. In addition, the size of the agency was considered so that small, medium, and large agencies would all be represented. The five agencies selected were: 1. Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) (small) (www.theride.org). 2. Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) (large) (www. dart.org). 3. LACMTA (large) (www.mta.net). 4. MTA New York City Transit (large) (www.mta.nyc. ny.us/nyct/index.html). 5. Transit Authority of River City (Louisville, KY) (medium) (www.ridetarc.org). The case study agencies share a number of common fea- tures that serve to make their strategic planning process effec- tive. For example, all of them use a very collaborative and par- ticipative process, often involving teams of employees. Team building is therefore an important ingredient in their strategic planning efforts. Most of the agencies involve not just internal management and staff but key external stakeholders as well. Most of the agencies also regularly use management and/or board retreats as part of the process. All of them in some way link their strategic plan to their budgeting and capital pro- gramming processes. In addition, all of the agencies incorpo- rate performance measures and regular progress reporting. There were also a number of particularly noteworthy or distinctive features used by some agencies. • Two agencies, DART (Dallas) and LACMTA (Los Angeles), use a “balanced scorecard” approach. This is an approach used by many private-sector companies (described earlier in the literature review) (4). • Dallas has adopted a very global strategic plan that has been reduced to 1 page. The heart of its strategic planning process is instead its annual business plan, which is based on the strategic plan. Dallas has also developed a com- prehensive “Leadership System and Strategic Alignment Process” that involves board policy and direction, man- agement action plans and performance measurements, and individual performance plans for management and employees. • As with Dallas, Los Angeles has developed a very com- prehensive process for driving its strategic plan down- ward from its vision and mission through management and into individual performance appraisals. It also uses a sophisticated “Leadership Model,” which is used to “cascade and communicate” the strategic plan agency- wide. This has included use of a video presentation by the CEO that was made available for use at all-hands meetings used to discuss the plan. • In New York, strategic planning is required by state law. The regional transit agency for the New York City region, the MTA, then prescribes certain overall goals and performance indicators to be used by each of its subsidiary agencies. The subsidiary agencies (e.g., MTA/ NYC Transit) then annually develop their own strate- gies and targets for each indicator. ANN ARBOR TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY Agency Description AATA serves the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti urbanized areas and portions of Ypsilanti, Pittsfield, and Superior townships in Michigan. Fixed routes in Ann Arbor are within one-quarter mile of 95% of all residences, and paratransit services are provided within three-quarters of a mile of all AATA routes. AATA also operates an interurban express bus service between Ann Arbor, Chelsea, and Dexter. The population of the service area is approximately 190,000 (1990 census). The agency operates approximately 60 regular buses on 25 routes. It also operates 5 paratransit vehicles, and an addi- tional 30 are operated by contractors. Riders make 4.4 mil- lion unlinked passenger trips on the system each year, with a total operating expense of $19.4 million. Strategic Plan Document AATA’s strategic plan, Destination 2010, was adopted in 1999 and contains the following key elements: CHAPTER FOUR CASE STUDIES

21 helping employees balance the various elements of the model and understanding their interrelationships. The strategic plan was adopted in October 1999 after approximately a 1-year effort. It covers a 10-year period and is updated annually. Retreats are used to flesh out annual goals and objectives that are based on the plan. Quarterly reports are then used to track the progress of the annual goals and objectives. The CEO believes that the strategic plan has been “extremely useful” (a rating of 5 on a scale of 1 to 5) in terms of making it easier to get the board to agree to the annual goals and objectives, and in giving the entire agency a sense of direction. Plan Implementation The chief executive officer also believes that AATA has been “extremely effective” (a rating of 5) at implementing strate- gic plan recommendations. Annual goals and objectives with quarterly reviews and presentations to the board are used to ensure that the plan moves from paper to implementation. Also, the planning process is linked to other key organiza- tional processes such as budgeting, capital programming, ser- vice planning, and performance measurement. As with sev- eral other transit agencies, the board’s evaluation of the CEO is based on the progress of the strategic plan. Significant Benefits Among the important benefits cited from the strategic plan- ning process were better budgeting, workforce unity, and community buy-in. • Mission, vision, and values; • A description of the planning process, who was involved, and the Strategic Issues Model that was used in its development; • A description and analysis of the agency’s internal and external environments; • A discussion of future challenges; and • A plan for the future—“where, who, and what” (where service will be provided, who will be served, and what products or services will be offered). Plan Development The AATA Board initiated the strategic plan in 1998 in response to the challenges that were anticipated over the next 10 years. What ensued was a collaborative effort involving the board, management, staff, outside consultants, and exter- nal stakeholders. A core team of representatives from all lev- els of the agency was used to oversee the process. In addition to the core team, a number of other teams were formed to assist with the effort as described here: • Leadership alignment—to initiate dialogue and build consensus throughout the organization so that everyone would be working toward the same goals. • Research—to identify and analyze key demographic, development, traffic, legal, political and fiscal trends and issues. • Strategic issues and opportunities—to design and coor- dinate strategies for involving the workforce in the plan- ning effort. • Communications—to keep everyone informed about the strategic planning process. • Internal culture—to ensure that organizational values were expressed in the AATA mission and in its internal activities. More than 40 individuals were involved in the internal process including board members, senior management, and union and nonunion staff. In addition, a special Stakeholder Council Design Team was created to identify and involve important external stakeholders with an interest in public transit. Four facilitated sessions were held, with a total of 45 stakeholders participating. Integral to AATA’s strategic plan was the development of a Strategic Issues Model. This conceptual planning frame- work is shown in Figure 1. The purpose of the model was to illustrate how AATA’s core issues (who, what, and where) are surrounded by its core values, and how these in turn are affected by the agency’s various constraints and opportunities. All employees were trained in the use of this model, which was used both in the development of the plan and in subsequent implementation efforts. The CEO believes that the model was very useful in FIGURE 1 AATA strategic issues model [Source: AATA Strategic Plan—Destination 2010 (October 1999)].

Keys to Success and Lessons Learned Good communication and wide involvement are believed to have been crucial to the success of the strategic planning process. In addition to involving agency personnel, the CEO believes that it was important to involve the whole community. DALLAS AREA RAPID TRANSIT Agency Description DART is a regional transportation authority that was created in 1983 to serve the Dallas metropolitan area. It operates more than 700 buses and 95 light-rail vehicles, and serves an area of 700 square miles and 2.1 million people. It also oper- ates commuter rail service between Dallas and Ft. Worth in conjunction with the Ft. Worth Transportation Authority. Strategic Plan Document DART’s strategic plan is a 1-page document that provides a framework for annual business planning, budgeting, and cap- ital programming (see Figure 2). It is considered to be a 5-year plan that is reviewed annually and updated as necessary. 22 The plan is organized around three target groups identi- fied in the board goals: Customers, Employees, and Stake- holders. Under each target group, there are “outcomes to be achieved,” “management objectives,” and “strategies.” For example, under the Customer target group, there are two pri- mary outcomes to be achieved: • Increase Effectiveness (optimize ridership) and • Increase Efficiency (improve subsidy per passenger). Under Increase Effectiveness, there are two management objectives: • Improve Customer Satisfaction and • Manage System Growth. Under Improve Customer Satisfaction, there are four strategies: • Improve service reliability, • Provide a customer friendly environment, • Provide a safe/secure service, and • Provide effective customer communication. FIGURE 2 DART’s strategic plan (Source: DART FY 2004 business plan).

23 DART’s strategic plan identifies what needs to be accom- plished and is the basis for what is at the heart of DART’s annual business planning process. The business plan defines how management intends to achieve the initiatives outlined in the strategic plan and provides DART’s performance projec- tions and commitments for the organization as a whole and for each of its strategic business units (bus, light-rail, com- muter rail, and paratransit modes). The plan includes 2-year scorecards of key operating, financial, and quality measures, and identifies the work program initiatives that are needed to achieve them. In addition, the plan includes the annual bud- get and a 20-year financial plan. Other examples of the scorecard concept are presented in Tables 17 and 18. Each scorecard includes 2 years of actual data, an estimate for the current fiscal year, and a projection for the subsequent 3 fiscal years. Plan Development Initially, management retreats were used in the strategic plan development process. The agency’s mission, vision, and board goals drove the development process. More recently, the plan is reviewed in a team format with representation from each department. It is then reviewed by management each Janu- ary, at the beginning of the annual business planning process. Factors considered in the review include • An analysis of business results; • The results of employee, customer, and climate surveys; • External events (such as issues being considered by the state legislature); and • Benchmark comparisons with other transit agencies and private-sector companies. KPI Measure Goals FY01A FY02A FY03B FY03 Q3 FY04B FY05B Ridership Total ridership (millions) 95.7 93.8 96.2 94.8 95.3 96.5 Fixed route (millions) 60.7 58.7 61.2 60.2 60.2 61.4 Efficiency Subsidy per passenger $2.34 $2.76 $2.65 $2.81 $2.50 $2.55 Fixed-route subsidy per passenger $3.24 $3.93 $3.73 $3.74 $3.43 $3.48 Administrative ratio 11.5% 11.2% 11.7% 10.6% 9.1% 10.0% Service Quality On-time performance—bus 92.8% 92.8% 91.0% 92.4% 91.0% 91.0% On-time performance—LRT 95.2% 97.0% 97.0% 97.4% 97.0% 97.0% On-time performance—TRE 97.9% 97.2% 96.0% 97.5% 96.0% 96.0% Customer Satisfaction Complaints per 100,000 passengers 24.7 34.8 31.0 42.6 32.5 32.1 Managed Growth Sales tax for operations 59.6% 77.5% 75.4% 84.4% 76.1% 72.9% Notes: KPI = key performance indicators; LRT = light-rail transit; TRE = Trinity Railway Express. Source: DART FY 2004 business plan. Indicators FY01A FY02A FY03B FY03 Q3 FY04B FY05B Customer/Quality Indicators Fixed-route bus ridership (millions) 47.5 42.4 41.4 40.4 39.8 40.7 Charter ridership (millions) 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.3 Revenue miles (millions) 30.3 31.2 30.9 30.9 27.9 27.9 Passengers per mile 1.58 1.37 1.35 1.32 1.43 1.46 On-time performance 92.8% 92.8% 91.0% 92.4% 91.0% 91.0% Mean distance between roadcalls 3,783 3,827 4,200 4,124 4,200 4,200 Vehicle accidents per 100,000 miles (all service) 2.87 2.40 2.80 2.20 2.80 2.80 Avg. no. of operator unscheduled absences (days) 25.1 22.5 20.0 16.3 23.0 22.0 Financial/Efficiency Indicators Revenues (millions) $29.2 $27.2 $28.0 $25.6 $28.8 $29.1 Expenses—fully allocated (millions) $183.3 $205.1 $192.0 $191.3 $174.5 $178.3 Net subsidy (millions) $154.1 $177.9 $164.0 $165.7 $145.7 $149.1 Subsidy per passenger $3.22 $4.12 $3.92 $4.06 $3.63 $3.64 Cost per revenue mile $6.05 $6.57 $6.22 $6.20 $6.25 $6.39 Pay-to-platform ratio (hours) N/A N/A 1.29 1.29 1.28 1.28 Note: N/A = not available. Source: DART FY 2004 business plan. TABLE 17 DART SCORECARD OF KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS TABLE 18 BUS SCORECARD—KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

24 Changes to the plan’s strategies and targets that are identified are brought to executive management for approval. Plan Implementation For implementation, DART uses a “Leadership System” based on the concept of strategic alignment; a process designed to ensure that employee jobs and performance are aligned with the agency’s mission, direction and board goals, and policies. This system is illustrated in Figure 3. The annual budget and capital program are directly linked to the strategic plan. The agency rates itself as “fairly effective” in terms of implementation (a rating of 3 on a scale of 1 to 5). Significant Benefits The strategic planning process is considered to be “very use- ful” (a rating of 4 out of 5) as a management tool for holding departments accountable for results based on performance metrics that are linked to strategies. One specific benefit cited was its use during a major cost-cutting effort, when staff was able to show the board the impacts on the plan if cost-cutting measures the board was recommending were to be adopted. More generally, the plan has provided a tool for prioritizing projects and making management decisions based on their impact on the plan. Keys to Success and Lessons Learned The agency’s mission, vision, and strategic plan are clearly understood by all levels of management and employees. The budget and the long-range business plan are linked to the strate- gic plan. Strategies are viewed from a cross-functional team basis and are measurable and driven through the organization. DART’s initial effort in developing the strategic plan was much more detailed—more of an action plan. It had to be changed more often than desired as projects were completed. DART therefore created a more “global,” usable plan that would serve the agency for a longer term. Originally DART’s major challenge was in being able to obtain all the necessary information on a timely basis from the numerous individuals involved. Currently, deadlines are set and individuals are designated with oversight responsibility to provide the required information within the time frame. LOS ANGELES COUNTY METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY Agency Description LACMTA is one of the biggest transit systems in the coun- try. It serves one of the largest and most populous metropol- itan counties—9.6 million people and 1,433 square miles. It operates more than 1,900 buses and 60 miles of rail service, and employs more than 9,000 individuals. * Performance Management Plan ** Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Board Policy and Direction Management Action Plans and Performance Measurements Employee Performance Mission Statement DART's Purpose Board Goals Broad Agency-wide Objectives System Plan Commitments on Future System Build-out Financial Standards Expected Business Results and Debt Limits Board Policies Broad Direction on Certain Issues Vision Statement and Values Vision of Success and How We Treat Each Other Strategic Plan Management's Strategies to Achieve Board Direction Other Strategic Input Ext. Climate Review Surveys Texas Quality Feedback Business Results Benchmark Studies FY Business Plan Projected Operational and Financial Performance FY Budget Revenues & Expenses Variance Explanations Financial Plan 20-year Projections Sources/Uses of Cash Affordability of Plans Sr. Mgt's PMP* Agency/Modal Scorecards Departmental Scorecoards Work Program Initiatives Competencies/KSAs** Organizational Values Employee PMP* Regular Assignments (Section Scorecards) Work Program Initiatives Competencies/KSAs Organizational Values FIGURE 3 DART’s leadership system and strategic alignment process (Source: DART FY 2004 business plan).

25 In addition to operating an extensive transit system, LACMTA also funds 16 municipal bus operators and a wide array of transportation projects that include bicycle and pedes- trian facilities, local road and highway improvements, goods movement, and the Freeway Service Patrol and call boxes. The agency is unusual in that it also serves as the federally required MPO for the region. Strategic Plan Document LACMTA developed its first strategic plan (called a Strate- gic Business Plan) for the FY 01–03 period. It included a mission, vision, and goals. The goals were organized in a bal- anced scorecard framework with each supported by more detailed goals and objectives. The strategic plan (now called a Strategic Performance Program) was redone for FY 03–07. It retained much of the structure of the previous strategic plan; that is, a mission, vision, and goals; detailed objectives; and KPIs. However, a new element was the inclusion of agency “core values.” In addition, it began to move the organizational goals and objectives down to the departmental and individual levels. LACMTA regards its strategic plan as a “living docu- ment” and “evolving plan,” not as a rigid or fixed document. The plan is updated on an annual basis. Plan Development Development of the most recent plan began in January 2002 when the CEO initiated an internal process that involved a cross section of 70 team leaders. This group met on six dif- ferent occasions to discuss the agency’s services, programs, possible strategic approaches, and how the success of the agency’s efforts could be measured. The following seven organization-wide strategic goals were developed: 1. Create a “safety” conscious culture throughout the MTA and its customers and business partners. 2. Improve transit systems. 3. Attract, develop, and retain employees. 4. Create a positive image of the MTA. 5. Deliver quality capital projects on time and within budget. 6. Provide leadership for the region’s mobility agenda through responsive planning and resource allocation. 7. Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency. Specific objectives were identified for each goal, and implementation strategies, action plans, and KPIs were then developed that assigned responsibility to key “management owners” and “team support partners.” A consultant was used during the planning process to help facilitate the strategic plan- ning meetings. The process is shown graphically in Figure 4. Plan Implementation To help move from planning into implementation, the agency used several noteworthy strategies: • The CEO held an all-hands meeting of key management and staff to communicate the details and importance of the strategic plan. Television monitors were used for staff who could not physically attend. • Each business unit was also asked to hold an all-hands meeting to communicate the strategic plan. Each unit was given a video presentation in which the CEO empha- sized the importance of achieving the strategic business goals of the agency. • The strategic goal teams met monthly or bi-monthly with facilitators from the Organizational Development and Training Department, who coached them in regard to goal attainment. • Executive management held quarterly review sessions where goal team members were recognized for their accomplishments and for meeting their milestones. Developed by Management, Approved by CEO Developed by Management, Approved by CEO Implementation & Accountability Vision Mission Core Values Goals Objectives Strategies Actions Key Performance Indicators Service Delivery and Evaluation Managers and Supervisors Individual Performance FIGURE 4 LACMTA strategic planning process (Source: MTA Strategic Performance Program, FY 2003–2007).

26 • Provision of a foundation for how the agency will meet Los Angeles County’s transportation needs. • Identification of the goals, objectives, strategies, and action steps required for the agency to be successful. • A description of where the agency wishes to be, what it does, and how it will conduct day-to-day business. More specific benefits described were: • Introduction of “Safety First” as a new program initia- tive to reduce accidents and injuries by 51% (an out- growth of Strategic Goal 1). • Development of a Return-to-Work Program for former LACMTA employees (an outgrowth of Strategic Goal 3). • Creation of a more positive image for the agency, includ- ing a Metro logo and a new brand marketing approach to improve the public’s perception of the agency (an outgrowth of Strategic Goal 4). • Improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency including streamlining of the top internal processes (e.g., payment of bills, procurement, and employee recruitment and selection) (an outgrowth of Strategic Goal 7). Keys to Success and Lessons Learned Part of the success of the agency’s strategic planning process is attributed to its collaborative and cross-functional nature. • The KPIs are reported to the chief financial officer on a quarterly basis as part of the operating management and budget process. This process is depicted by the Leadership Model that LACMTA uses to “cascade and communicate” the strategic plan agency-wide (see Figure 5). Its purpose is to help ensure that the strategic plan is understood at every level and across all transit modes, and to encourage the commitment, energy, and hard work of all agency employees. It shows how the agency-wide vision, mission, and values are used to provide a framework for strategic goals and objectives, and these are in turn integrated with the budget and performance manage- ment processes. This includes a linkage to each employee’s role and responsibilities and to his or her compensation. The agency has recently developed performance appraisal forms that are directly tied to the strategic plan goals. Each year the agency reassesses its performance, goals, and objec- tives in view of its budget appropriations. The respondent rated the agency as “very effective” in terms of implement- ing the strategic plan (a rating of 4 on a scale of 1 to 5). Significant Benefits The survey respondent believes that strategic planning has been “extremely useful” at the agency (a rating of 5 on a scale of 1 to 5). Key benefits cited included: Employees—First Point of Contact with Clients and Customers Communication and Reinforcement Teamwork and Accountability Teamwork Teamwork Responsibilities Goal Achievements Identification of Every Employee's Individual Roles & Responsibilities Responsible for Implementing Goals Performance-based Compensation Assessment of Individual Contributions and Attainment towards Supporting Agency Goals and Objectives Planning Oversight and Monitoring Communicate Agency-wide Vision, Mission & Values Cascade to Middle Management & Frontline Supervisors Integrate Strategic Goals and Objectives into Budget and Performance Management Process Produce an Integrated Strategic Plan for Agency Linkage to Performance-based Compensation Oversight & Monitoring—Develop and Coordinate Action Plans to Support Goals & Objectives FIGURE 5 LACMTA leadership model (Source: MTA Strategic Performance Program, FY 2003–2007).

27 This included the involvement of various levels of manage- ment, individuals from a variety of functional areas, and the use of retreats where everyone could be heard. The Leadership Communication Model was cited as important in both com- municating the plan and in getting buy-in from participants. Finally, the importance of presenting the strategic plan to the board of directors was emphasized. This helps the board to articulate the goals of the agency externally and to work in support of the agency’s vision and mission. MTA NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT Agency Description MTA/NYC Transit is one of several subsidiaries under the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). (Other subsidiaries include Metro–North Railroad, Long Island Rail Road, and Long Island Bus.) The agency operates the largest subway car fleet in the world (more than 6,000 cars), and more buses than any other transit provider in North America (more than 4,400). Its annual operating budget is approximately $4 billion and its 5-year capital program exceeds $10 billion. It employs more than 48,000 people. Strategic Plan Document The framework for the agency’s strategic plan is established both by state law and by the MTA. The plan is developed annually and covers a period of 5 years. In its 2004–2008 Strategic Business Plan, the MTA set out three broad goals for the regional public transportation system: 1. Improve safety for employees and customers. 2. Improve customer satisfaction. 3. Improve cost-effectiveness. Under each goal, the MTA developed more detailed inter- agency strategies and tactics. Under each tactic, more specific targets are described, a status report is provided, the responsi- ble department is identified, and a cost (revenue or savings) impact is estimated. Each of its subsidiary agencies developed its own Strategic Business Plan based on this structure. Spe- cific performance indicators are chosen by the MTA; each agency then sets its own targets related to each indicator. As an example of this structure, the following was pro- vided in NYC Transit’s Strategic Business Plan under the goal of Improve Customer Satisfaction: • Current view—This section provided a short discussion of historical and current efforts to improve customer satisfaction. • Anticipated results—This section provided quantified information on performance, as shown in Table 19. Similar targets were provided for the bus system. The fol- lowing seven strategies that will help lead to attainment of the overall goal were included: 1. Improve subway service reliability. 2. Improve bus service reliability. 3. Implement new services and improve service man- agement. 4. Provide a cleaner and more attractive station envi- ronment. 5. Improve air quality and environmental management. 6. Enhance access to service information and Metro- Card sales. 7. Provide transportation service for persons with dis- abilities. All of these strategies has several more detailed tactics, each with its own specific targets, status, responsible depart- ment(s), and associated cost, revenue, or savings. As required by state law, the plan also included an appendix that focuses on operating and financial statistics. Indicator Actual 2002 Goal 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Wait assessment* 88.8% 89.0% 89.2% 89.4% 89.6% 89.8% 90.0% Enroute schedule adherence 77.5% 81.0% 81.2% 81.4% 81.6% 81.8% 82.0% Mean distance between failures 114,619 132,000 133,000 134,000 135,000 136,000 136,000 Overall customer rating (0–10) 6.4 6.2** 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 *A measure of the evenness of service from the customers’ perspective. It is defined as the percentage of service intervals that are no more than the scheduled interval plus a specified number of minutes (depending on whether it is bus or rail service and whether it is peak or off-peak). **Actual results from 2003. Decrease attributed to a fare increase in 2003. TABLE 19 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION INDICATORS—SUBWAY SYSTEM

The plan document and planning process were streamlined in 1996 to focus on the key strategic issues within the MTA and its agencies. Some of the information that was previously included in the strategic plan (e.g., ridership trends and financial results) is now documented in the agencies’ operat- ing budget. Other information that was previously included (major studies and their implications, changing technology, and emerging issues) is discussed in separate, more specific reports on an as-needed basis. Plan Development Each year, at the beginning of the strategic planning process, the MTA distributes a schedule for the plan’s development and approval. Soon after, NYC Transit’s president distrib- utes a “guidance” memo that identifies the specific areas in which he wants to see more programmatic emphasis. The president also reviews the draft plan before it is submitted to the MTA board to ensure that it includes appropriate pro- grams and performance targets. A similar review function is performed at a lower staff level by strategic planning staff. Issues that cannot be resolved at this level are then raised to the president. Plan Implementation NYC Transit’s Manager of Strategic Transportation Plan- ning has described strategic planning at the agency as “the confluence of customers, operations, and budgets.” He rates the agency as “very effective” (a rating of 4 on a scale of 1 to 5) in implementing its strategic plan. The reason for this is that the programs included in the plan must be included in either the operating or capital budgets. In ad- dition, the capital planning process uses the goals of the strategic plan in establishing priorities among competing project proposals. Another reason is that when the plan is updated each year, departments report on their progress. Progress reports are also made through other mechanisms outside the strategic planning framework. Significant Benefits NYC Transit’s experience with strategic planning was rated as being “very useful” (a rating of 4 out of 5), and the establish- ment of goals and objectives for programs and performance indicators as an important means of measuring progress. Three specific benefits were cited: 1. The focus on safety for employees and customers begun in the 1997–2001 strategic plan has led to a substantial 28 reduction in customer injuries and employee lost-time accidents. 2. It has led to a reordering of priorities within the cus- tomer satisfaction goal. The late 1990s saw a stronger emphasis on programs to increase service levels to meet growing demand. This has now shifted to pro- grams to increase service reliability. 3. Even though the agency had a relatively flush period in the late 1990s, it was able to stay focused on initiatives to increase efficiency and effectiveness. Keys to Success and Lessons Learned A critical review of strategies and programs to ensure that they are the best means of achieving the agency’s goals was cited as one key to success. Another is a review of perfor- mance targets to ensure that they reflect the continuous, incremental improvement that takes recent and planned activ- ities into account. NYC Transit has found that departments are sometimes reluctant to include programmatic activities in the strategic plan or to set ambitious targets for their performance indica- tors, in case these activities are not achieved. In part, the involvement of the president mentioned previously under Plan Implementation has helped to overcome this problem. The respondent noted that to be effective, buy-in by the agency president and throughout the organization is required. Staff at all levels need to recognize the importance of meet- ing the program and performance targets that are established in the plan. TRANSIT AUTHORITY OF RIVER CITY Agency Description TARC serves the greater Louisville, Kentucky region, which includes service in Jefferson and Bullitt counties in Kentucky and Clark and Floyd counties in Indiana. The population of the service area is estimated to be approximately one million. The system also serves the University of Louisville. The agency operates approximately 285 regular buses and an additional 8 buses are operated by contractors. It also operates 9 paratransit vehicles, with an additional 74 oper- ated by contractors. Riders make 16.5 million unlinked pas- senger trips on the system each year, with a total operating expense of $41 million. A proposed light-rail service is cur- rently in the preliminary engineering stage. Strategic Plan Document TARC’s strategic plan, TARC Strategic Plan FY2003–2004, was adopted at the end of FY 2002. It is interesting to note that

29 the TARC strategic plan uses a more informal and conversa- tional style than most strategic plans, making it more engag- ing to readers. For example, the strategic plan is described as “our ‘owner’s manual’ reminding us to regularly check the pulse of our customers and team members alike and to peri- odically fine-tune our performance.” The plan contains the following key elements: • Mission, vision, and critical success factors (an exten- sion of the vision statement). • Departmental objectives and strategies. • A description and analysis of the agency’s internal and external environments, including a list of factors, then a discussion of them using “a better Louisville would look like . . .” type of model. • A Long-Range Advanced Transit Plan, which is a detailed 5-year plan with a 15–20-year horizon. • A capital improvement program. • A Performance Plan that details the current year’s departmental performance objectives. • A customer service analysis, a comprehensive study that includes input from riders, the general public, TARC board and staff, etc., and designed to identify the most “cost-effective, operationally sound, and customer- friendly” system of transit services possible. Plan Development The TARC board initiated the current long-range strategic plan in 1994, with the creation of a new mission statement, critical success factors, goals, and strategies. Management quickly supported the idea. TARC has embraced strategic planning by implementing multiple outside stakeholder meet- ings and involvement regarding its future. The executive director believes that strategic planning has been “very use- ful” at the agency (a rating of 4 on a scale of 1 to 5). TARC is currently placing special emphasis on customer focus, regionalism (by expanding service borders), new part- nerships with the community, and new technology (e.g., by providing instantly available trip planning and scheduling information on their website). In 2004, TARC initiated a Comprehensive Customer Service Analysis called Project Gobility, which is a broad survey and public involvement ini- tiative that will help identify TARC’s future direction. This project will update the last customer service analysis com- pleted in 1996 and will involve union and nonunion employees in its implementation strategies. TARC’s strategic planning and implementation process is overseen by the director of strategic management. The plan, which is updated annually, covers 5 years in detail with a broader 15- to 20-year horizon. Each year, the board and man- agement have a 1-day retreat where they focus on a SWOT analysis and environmental assessment. This lays the ground- work for development of the year’s specific performance plan. From there, TARC involves several community mem- bers—from grass roots organizations and average citizens to elected officials and local businessmen. During the major 5-year planning effort, all the current processes are called into question, including taking all the routes off the board and deciding where they should be redrawn. Plan Implementation The agency reports that it has been “fairly effective” at imple- menting the strategic plan (a rating of 3 on a scale of 1 to 5), and that it provides a good framework for the staff to work within. There is recognition that a plan is only effective if it is actually used by the organization. Therefore, in various ways, the agency focuses on it throughout the year. The annual goals and objectives for each department are worked into employee performance appraisals and budget components to make sure the plan is implemented and con- tinuously used. In addition, the board’s evaluation of the executive director is based on achievement of strategic plan objectives. The planning process is linked with all key orga- nizational processes such as budgeting, capital programming, service planning, and performance measurement. Performance objectives and milestones are jointly devel- oped by department heads, the director of strategic manage- ment, and the executive director, and are monitored monthly. TARC compiles a monthly report highlighting progress in key performance areas (e.g., customer service, transporta- tion, and maintenance). The performance report provides year-to-date performance data and comparison data for the previous calendar year. TARC’s management team reports progress toward overall performance objectives on a quar- terly basis. Significant Benefits TARC has experienced several significant benefits from its strategic planning efforts. First, in 2003, the agency won the Kentucky Psychology Association’s Psychological Healthy Workplace award for the second consecutive year, and the 2004 Labor–Management Award recognizing out- standing joint achievements of labor and management in the commonwealth of Kentucky. They are currently viewed as the “go-to solution leaders on public transportation issues in their region,” and according to the executive direc- tor, they are “clearly identified as part of the solution, not the problem.”

Keys to Success and Lessons Learned The keys to success for TARC have been engagement and involvement—the executive director’s goal is to “get every- one’s thumb on the blade.” Another key was to make sure to “carve out time for strategic planning and then make it sacred,” a sentiment that is often echoed by other organiza- tions. The executive director also provided the following observations: 30 • Look at the future with and without monetary con- straints—“you have to be able to dream, but you also have to be real.” • Keep checking and rechecking who is engaging and who is not engaging in the process. • Celebrate accomplishments.

TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 59: Strategic Planning and Management in Transit Agencies examines the value and benefits of strategic planning and management in transit agencies. The report also provides case studies from five transit agencies based on the comprehensiveness of process or presence of innovative or noteworthy practices.

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, strategic planning, strategy map and management control: a case study.

Nankai Business Review International

ISSN : 2040-8749

Article publication date: 11 April 2021

Issue publication date: 9 September 2021

This paper aims to explore the relationship between the components of the management control system (MCS) based on the reform process of the management system of China Resources Group and the influence of these components on the implementation effect of MCS.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses an exploratory research method and an open-ended grounded theory approach to conduct six formal investigations and several in-depth interviews with employees and senior management in China Resources Group. This paper supplements these data by performing a documentary analysis of the internal documents of China Resources Group such as the statistical yearbook, business plan and meeting records.

This study puts forward four propositions. The formal strategic planning process creates an application environment for the strategy map and balanced scorecard (BSC), making it easier for an enterprise to adopt these tools. The combination of the strategy map and formal strategic planning helps to build the logical relationship between strategic goals and budget goals and strengthens the correlation between budget and strategy. In diversified organizations applying MCS, the strategy map and BSC facilitate the implementation of the strategy for specialized business units, while the financial measure system facilitates the implementation of the strategy for diversified business units. Strategic boundaries based on financial measures in the MCS help organizations determine the scope of strategic choices before implementing strategies.

Research limitations/implications

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability and the influence of the strategic planning process on budget participation, budget slack and other budget behaviors has not been fully discussed. Therefore, future studies are expected to provide more evidence regarding strategic planning and budget behaviors.

Practical implications

Before establishing a strategy map and BSC, the enterprise should consider the application environment to ensure their feasibility and legitimacy and construct the BSC system under appropriate conditions. A formal strategic planning process should be formed within the enterprise; that is, a set of detailed management methods should be adopted and clear rules should be used to support the enterprise management control process. The enterprise should add strategic boundaries to the MCS to determine the scope of strategic choices and the budgeting bottom line.

Originality/value

This paper sheds light on the impact of the formal strategic planning process on the organization and contributes new evidence on the key success factors for implementing the strategy map and BSC, enriching the researchers’ understanding of the applicability of the BSC.

• Balanced scorecard
• Strategy map
• Management control system
• Formal strategic planning process

Acknowledgements

Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

The national natural science fund of China.

The national social science fund of China.

Li, H. , An, N. and Liu, J. (2021), "Strategic planning, strategy map and management control: a case study", Nankai Business Review International , Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 386-408. https://doi.org/10.1108/NBRI-10-2020-0054

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Fani Setiawan Budiman , Wahyudhi Sutrisno; Marketing strategy analysis using SWOT analysis method and quantitative strategic planning matrix (QSPM): Case study of cosmetic SMEs. AIP Conf. Proc. 24 May 2024; 2891 (1): 070027. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0201533

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Multiple micronutrient supplements in humanitarian emergencies: pakistan case study, may 2024, attachments.

Author: Kate Sadler, Philip James, Amir Samnani and Emily Mates

Executive summary

Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous country, has shown progress in recent years on reducing poverty and mortality rates, and increasing primary school enrolment and immunisation coverage. However, persistent challenges, such as population growth and underdevelopment, are being intensified by recurring emergencies related to food insecurity, climate change and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, severe monsoons affected over 33 million people, leaving 20.6 million (including 9.6 million children) in need of humanitarian assistance. Also in 2022, heavy rainfall in the southwest of the country led to flash floods, fatalities, and infrastructure damage, compounding vulnerabilities. Gender inequality, exceptionally high fertility rates (particularly in the poorest wealth quintiles) and limited access to essential services further impact child and maternal nutrition and mortality outcomes.

While Pakistan is in the early stages of programming for multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS), a strong enabling environment is now shaping political, institutional and policy processes for improving maternal nutrition. Pakistan’s Maternal Nutrition Strategy 2022-2027 aims to protect and promote diets, practices and services that support the optimal nutrition, health and well-being of all women. The provision of MMS is a core intervention outlined in this strategy, which includes the target of reaching 50% of all women with MMS programming by the end of 2027.

As part of health and nutrition services in Pakistan, all MMS programming is overseen by the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations, and Coordination (MoNHSR&C). To date, several organisations have supported MoNHSR&C to deliver MMS as part of wider maternal nutrition programming: these include UNICEF, Nutritional International, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and many implementing partners. MMS programming in districts experiencing humanitarian emergencies have thus far been delivered through routine antenatal care (ANC) services and as a separate emergency response.

Routine ANC programming delivered through the country’s health service and supported by UNICEF, Nutrition International and other implementing partners has delivered MMS across some of the flood-affected districts and in Union Councils at high risk of polio (scattered across several districts). Sufficient MMS to cover 500,000 pregnant women has been procured and distributed. Ongoing support for routine ANC programming has spanned the nexus between humanitarian and longer-term maternal and child nutrition programming.

Distribution of MMS as part of the emergency floods response across two provinces (Sindh and Balochistan) started at the beginning of 2023. Kirk Humanitarian donated sufficient MMS to cover 2.2 million pregnant women. Over half of this donation was distributed initially through small pilot studies across seven districts, and then through the National Disaster Management Association (NDMA) of Pakistan as part of the emergency response. The delivery of this MMS was initially organised by the provincial-level health directorate to all pregnant women, without being integrated into ANC platforms. However, subsequently it has been agreed that the remaining supply (sufficient MMS to cover 1 million pregnant women) will be delivered through MoNHSR&C to ensure standard protocols for MMS programming within ANC services can be followed.

Important learning for MMS programming across all settings in Pakistan is emerging from the emergency distribution of MMS and an implementation research study. The challenge now is translating the momentum on MMS programming into policy and strategy, ensuring that any learning is embedded in updated programme guidance, along with effective delivery within ANC programming across a complex, devolved health system. This is a real opportunity to improve the quality and coverage of, and demand for, ANC services, and stakeholders in Pakistan have identified key priorities to support this. Resource mobilisation is critically important, and will require the leveraging of mechanisms such as nutrition match funds and emergency donor support. Integrating MMS programming into the existing health system will require the development of clear guidance for, and capacity building of, health workers (both facility- and community-based) to support the switch from iron-folic acid to MMS. The inclusion of MMS on the national essential medicines list, which was achieved in December 2023, should support procurement, financing and supply management, and key informants are hopeful that initial explorations of local MMS production could potentially start to bring the costs of the product down.

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