Developing Strategy: How Organizations Build Direction That Actually Works

In today’s fast-moving business environment, strategy can no longer live in a slide deck or annual retreat notes. Strong organizational strategy is living, adaptive, and deeply connected to the people who execute it every day. When strategy is disconnected from culture, leadership behaviors, and real capabilities, even the best ideas struggle to gain traction.

At Developing People Group (DPG), we view strategy not as a static plan, but as a disciplined process that aligns clarity, culture, and capability. Below are several best-practice principles for developing and optimizing organizational strategy, each paired with practical ways DPG supports leaders without turning strategy into a sales pitch.

1. Anchor Strategy in Organizational Culture

Strategy succeeds or fails at the cultural level. You can define priorities, goals, and initiatives, but if the culture doesn’t support how work gets done, execution breaks down. Culture influences decision-making, accountability, collaboration, and trust, making it a strategic variable, not a “soft” side issue.

Best Practice:
Before refining or launching strategy, leaders must understand how employees experience the organization today. This includes clarity, alignment, engagement, and readiness for change.

How DPG Supports This:
The DPG Pulse Survey provides leaders with a clear, data-driven view of organizational culture. It captures real-time insights into how people experience leadership, communication, trust, and alignment, giving decision-makers a practical starting point for strategy grounded in reality, not assumptions. Culture becomes an input to strategy, not an afterthought.

2. Clarify Strategic Priorities and Trade-Offs

Many organizations confuse strategy with having many goals. True strategy requires focus. It answers not only what the organization will pursue, but also what it will not. Without clarity, teams pull in different directions, creating friction and wasted energy.

Best Practice:
Limit strategic priorities to what truly matters most. Ensure leaders can clearly articulate the organization’s direction and how daily decisions align with it.

How DPG Supports This:
DPG works with leadership teams to facilitate strategic clarity through structured conversations and alignment sessions. Using clear frameworks, leaders identify priorities, define success, and translate strategy into language that teams can actually understand and apply.

3. Align Leadership Behavior with Strategy

Strategy does not execute itself, leaders do. If leadership behaviors are inconsistent with strategic intent, employees receive mixed messages. For example, a strategy that emphasizes collaboration will fail if leaders reward individual heroics over teamwork.

Best Practice:
Assess and develop leadership behaviors that directly support the organization’s strategic goals. Leaders must model the strategy, not just endorse it.

How DPG Supports This:
Through leadership assessments and feedback tools like REACH 360, DPG helps leaders see how their behaviors impact others. This creates self-awareness and targeted development plans that align leadership behavior with organizational direction.

4. Build Capability to Execute the Strategy

Even the clearest strategy will stall if the organization lacks the skills, systems, or processes to carry it out. Strategic planning must be paired with intentional capability development.

Best Practice:
Identify the competencies required for successful execution and invest in developing them across the organization.

How DPG Supports This:
DPG partners with organizations to design development pathways that build real capability, not just knowledge. From leadership development to team effectiveness, these solutions help organizations close the gap between strategy and execution.

5. Treat Strategy as an Ongoing Process

Markets change, people change, and organizations change. Strategy must be reviewed, refined, and reinforced over time. Organizations that treat strategy as a one-time event quickly lose alignment.

Best Practice:
Create feedback loops that allow leaders to monitor alignment, adjust priorities, and respond proactively to change.

How DPG Supports This:
By combining tools like the DPG Pulse Survey with leadership coaching and follow-up sessions, DPG helps organizations maintain strategic momentum. Leaders gain ongoing insight into how strategy is landing and where course correction may be needed.

Strategy That Serves People—and Performance

Effective organizational strategy balances direction with humanity. It aligns vision with culture, leadership with behavior, and goals with capability. Rather than simply telling organizations what to do, Developing People Group focuses on helping leaders understand why strategy works, and how to sustain it through people. When strategy is grounded in culture, clarified through leadership, and reinforced through development, it becomes something teams can believe in, and execute with confidence.

If you’d like support strengthening your organization’s strategy, DPG offers tools, insight, and partnership designed to meet you where you are and help you move forward with clarity and purpose.