Getting the Strategy Off the Shelf

Somewhere in almost every organisation there is a shelf, real or digital, where good strategy goes to wait. The thinking is done, the report is delivered, the recommendations are sound. And yet nothing quite moves, because a report, however comprehensive, cannot make decisions. Only leaders can do that, together.

Comic Relief, one of the UK's leading charities, raising and distributing funds to tackle poverty and social injustice in the UK and around the world, knew exactly where it stood on that shelf. It had invested significant time developing its future strategy and had received an extensive operating model report from a traditional consultancy. The recommendations were thorough. What the leadership team needed wasn't more analysis. It was practical support to translate strategic ambition into tangible organisational change, and to start shaping what the future organisation should actually look like.

This is the gap where a great deal of strategic investment quietly stalls: the space between knowing and doing. And it's a gap that more documentation rarely closes.

So Fluxion did something deliberately different. Instead of producing another deliverable, we designed and facilitated a collaborative leadership workshop built to move the conversation out of theory and into action. Working directly with the executive team, we explored what the strategy really implied for the organisation, challenged assumptions that had gone untested, and dug into the capabilities and ways of working the future would demand. Most importantly, we pushed towards the decisions themselves: the specific choices leaders needed to align on for the operating model to evolve.

The session ended the way working sessions should: with clear outputs, practical next steps, and a written summary designed to maintain momentum rather than sit in an inbox. Light enough to use, sharp enough to act on.

What Comic Relief left with was not another report to file alongside the first. It was a shared understanding, held collectively by its leadership, of how strategy translates into organisational design. Alignment where there had been individual interpretations. Clarity on the future operating model. And a practical foundation for turning strategic intent into meaningful change.

There's no shortage of thinking available to organisations like Comic Relief. The scarce thing is traction. Sometimes that takes a year-long programme. And sometimes it takes one well-designed day in a room, with the right people, the right questions, and someone unafraid to ask what happens next.

Fluxion came on board with us at Comic Relief at a critical point in our Strategy Review process. We were at a junction where we were finalising the key ambitions and direction of travel of the organisation, whilst also trying to understand what this meant for the shape, skills and structure needed. The Fluxion team were superb at very quickly grasping where we were at and what challenges we were trying to reconcile. They proved adept at being solution-focused and helping the Executive Leadership Team reach conclusions. These fed into the work and eventual strategy approval by our Board of Trustees.

Mihir Warty - Chief Strategy and Impact Officer