Strategy activation: the missing piece

Hello, hello

I’ve just started working with a new organisation, and in our early conversations, I couldn’t stop thinking about Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model.

If you haven’t come across it before, Kotter is a widely used framework for leading organisational change. It moves from vision to action through urgency, alignment, and broad-based engagement.

When I work with teams navigating change, I often see the same pattern.
Leaders are comfortable with the early steps. Creating urgency. Building a guiding coalition. Defining the strategy. This is their comfort zone: closed-door sessions, deep alignment, polished slide decks.

But what happens next?

I still remember one moment vividly from my last in-house leadership role.

I was standing in a packed room. Senior leaders were unveiling a strategy they’d spent months crafting behind closed doors. There was a thirty-minute presentation. Then a Q&A. The same few hands went up.

I was Head of Communications, and I remember thinking:
What’s my role in this?
How am I supposed to move this forward?

Judging by the glazed expressions in the room, I wasn’t the only one wondering.

And here’s the unspoken feeling in rooms like that:
Don’t ask questions.
Because if you do, you might look like you don’t get it.
And no one wants to be that person.

That’s the problem.

Strategy is too often shared as a finished product. A glossy document. A presentation.
But there’s no real structure to bring people into the change. Not just to hear about it, but to shape it, own it, and deliver it.

That’s why this new client I’m working with is such a breath of fresh air.

They’re a UK-wide charity with over 1,000 employees and volunteers. And instead of rolling out a traditional strategy cascade, they’ve designed something much more powerful.

They’ve embedded a living strategy, and at the core of that strategy are missions. These missions invite people in.

Rather than relying on top-down communication or passive town halls, they’re running large-scale, participatory online gatherings where staff:

• Explore key elements of the strategic vision

• Reflect on how it applies to their everyday work

• Co-create actionable steps to move the strategy forward

And I get to help design and facilitate those moments. We’re bringing hundreds of people together to activate change, not just receive it.

This is where change becomes real. Not in the deck. Not in the broadcast.
But in the co-creation.

If you’re a leader, facilitator, or changemaker, this is where you can make the biggest difference. In the middle. In the activation. In the moment when the strategy becomes shared.


Curiously connecting,
Always,
Perle

P.S. I work with leaders and organisations who want to move beyond communication and into activation, where strategy becomes something people help build, not just receive. Curious how this could look for your team? Just reply with "interested", and I’ll be in touch.