Design your strategy with beneficiaries at the centre.
Impact-led strategy, by its very nature, means that the ultimate outcome is to make the world better for someone. Perhaps it’s for victims of domestic violence, for elderly people suffering loneliness, or for future generations to enjoy a planet not decimated by climate change. These are your beneficiaries, that is, those who will benefit from your work.
Private sector strategic planning: Shareholders first
Due to corporate law and the fact that Board Directors’ fiduciary responsibility is to make decisions that maximise shareholder benefit, private sector strategy favours profit over all else. While we are seeing some promising change in this space, such as the B Corp movement, which is trying to change this conversation from maximum shareholder benefit to maximum stakeholder benefit, traditional strategic planning has been built with this sole outcome ruling all else.
For-purpose strategic planning: Beneficiaries first
Yes, revenue generation and cost reduction are important to consider for all types of organisations, but when conducting strategy for social or environmental outcomes, it is our beneficiaries that we must prioritise over all else. And so it is their perspective that we need to consider at every point along the planning journey. It is crucial that you ‘nail’ what your beneficiaries need and how you are best placed to serve them.
Similar to the concept of customer-centricity in the private sector, this approach is all about developing a deep understanding of people’s problems, feelings and likely responses. The strategy of ‘build it and they will come’ rarely works, and long gone are the days of the likes of Henry Ford declaring, “any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it’s black”... how many Model T Fords have you seen on the road recently?
For social sector organisations, aside from ensuring that appropriate services are being delivered and the right things are being advocated for, understanding your beneficiary has also become increasingly important from a financial perspective. Recent funding trending towards consumer-directed care e.g. disability and aged care, makes placing beneficiaries at the centre even more vital. As new marketplaces are created, only those organisations who are providing solutions that respond directly to real needs will survive.
Designing not-for-profit strategies with beneficiaries at the centre relies on engagement, empathy and response. And the willingness to change.
Putting it into action:
To understand your beneficiary, you must first know who they are. Take an evidence-based approach and examine your recent data. Create segments based on characteristics such as demographics and service usage, so that you can build beneficiary profiles. There are a range of great tools such as empathy maps and the value proposition canvas that can then help turn your analysis into insights that can inform your strategies.
While desk-based analysis is useful, there is no replacement for genuine engagement when it comes to understanding your beneficiaries. In strategy design it is best to conduct this engagement both during the strategy formulation and testing phases. This can look like co-design workshops, focus groups, surveys or interviews. Ensure your sample is representative and facilitate so that all voices are heard and avoid ‘leading’ questions.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of placing beneficiaries at the centre of strategy design is that you may have to let go of what you have today. You may pride yourself on the venue that you conduct events in, but actually beneficiaries just want to engage online; you may have a great website which you invested a lot of capital into, but your beneficiaries just want to use apps; your well structured sport competition system may need to flex for people who just want to experience recreational exercise, etc. At the end of the day you need to keep your ultimate purpose in mind and remember who you are here to serve.
Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash
Further resources, tools and information
- Strategyzer's Value Proposition Canvas and Business Model Canvas are handy tools to think about your beneficiaries and their needs
- Design Thinking is a way to put beneficiaries at the centre - learn more here
- Hubspot outlines 9 tools and models for customer-focussed organisations here