Worksheet · Strategy Health Check
Map the initiatives against the choices
It prints on A4 with room to write.
Initiatives pile up. Each one made sense when it started, and together they can pull the business apart. This sheet maps every live initiative to a choice and finds the ones that serve none. It builds the Competent step of the check:
Initiatives visibly follow from the choices and mostly reinforce one another.
Step 1. List every live initiative
Count anything with a budget, a project code or a named team. Number your strategic choices 1, 2, 3.
Step 2. Map them
| Initiative | Owner | Serves which choice (or none) | Helps which other initiative | Competes with which for people or money | Keep, fix or stop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| e.g. New customer portal | Head of digital | 2 | Online ordering | ERP upgrade (same four developers) | Keep, start after ERP |
Step 3. Decide
- An initiative that serves no choice is stopped, or rewritten so it serves one.
- Two initiatives that need the same scarce people are put in sequence.
- Two initiatives that work against each other: one of them stops.
Step 4. Record the result
| Stopped or changed | Decision | Date | People and money released |
|---|---|---|---|
Done when: every live initiative traces to a choice, and no two live initiatives work against each other.
Adapted from our own strategy checklist (PSP, 2010).
From the Strategy Health Check. Your report links the sheet for each of its moves.