top of page
CPRK.GROUP
🏛 Org Dev
July 15, 2026
· 6 minutes of reading
Does the organization need a strategy?
An honest answer and a practical minimum
Half of the organizations write a 40-page strategic plan that no one opens after the presentation to the board. The other half have nothing written at all and operate exclusively reactively. Both extremes are a problem. We are figuring out who really needs what strategy.
HONEST ANSWER
No, not every organization needs a formal strategic plan. But every organization, without exception, needs answers to three questions: why we exist, what we don't do, and how we will know when we have achieved results. The difference between "strategy" and "strategy document" is here, and it is here that it is most often misunderstood.
Consultants are interested in selling a full cycle of strategic planning — workshops, SWOT, PESTLE, a long document. This is not always a mistake, but it is not always a client's need. A small organization with a team of 5 people and one area of activity often needs one clear page than a two-day strategy session.
When a formal strategy is really needed
✓ A strategy is needed if
-
The team has more than 10–15 people and decisions no longer fit in the head of one person
-
The organization is expanding into a new geography, topic, or target group.
-
Donors explicitly require a strategic document as a condition of partnership
-
The board of directors exists separately from the executive team and needs a common language
-
The organization has been taking on everything in the last year and has begun to lose focus.
✕ Strategy is overweight if
-
The team is up to 5 people, and the founder already keeps the whole context in his head.
-
The organization operates in one narrow niche and has no plans to change.
-
The document is written "because it has to be done," not because there are unanswered questions.
-
There are no resources for someone to actually monitor the implementation of the plan.
The main test: if a strategy document is in Google Drive and the team has never opened it in a quarter, it is not a strategy, it is an artifact. Strategy lives in the decisions made every week, not in a presentation for a donor.
A practical minimum for any organization
Regardless of size, there are five elements without which a team inevitably wastes time negotiating the obvious instead of working. It’s not 40 pages—it’s typically 1–2 pages that can be written in a single workday.
01
One sentence about why the organization exists
Not a three-paragraph mission statement about "contributing to sustainable development of society," but a specific sentence that distinguishes you from a neighboring organization in the same topic.
02
A list of things the organization deliberately does NOT do
The most useful point in any strategy document. Without it, every new grant opportunity feels like "ours" and the focus fades over the year.
03
3–5 priorities for the next 12 months
Not 20 areas "for the sake of completeness." Five priorities is the limit of what a team can realistically focus on at the same time.
04
Who makes which decisions?
One table: which decisions are made by the CEO alone, which require the board, which by teams. Without this, every decision is discussed anew from scratch.
05
One success indicator per year
Not a system with 30 KPIs — one number or fact that the team and the board check once a quarter to see if we are moving in the right direction.
At least scales with the organization
A practical minimum is not a replacement for full-fledged strategic planning forever, but a starting point that grows with the organization.
Organization stage
What is really needed?
Up to 5 people, one way
Practical minimum of 1 page, updated once a year for 2 hours of team conversation
5–15 people, multiple destinations
Minimum + simple theory of change for each direction + quarterly review of priorities
15+ people, separate board
Full strategic plan for 2–3 years, strategic session with the board, separate implementation monitoring process
Donor requirement / entering a new geography
A formal document for a specific request — but built on the same practical minimum, not from scratch
The most common mistake is to jump straight to the last line of this table without going through the first two. Then the strategy document comes out theoretically correct and practically dead: a team that has never gone through a quarterly review of priorities will not start doing so just because a 40-page file appears.
bottom of page