How can we think years ahead when everything around us changes from moment to moment? Is this even responsible behavior? Well, as Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “Plans are useless, but planning is vital.”

It is precisely in a rapidly changing environment that it is important to identify the factors that we believe will remain constant over time. There are unlikely a lot of these, but that is an advantage: less is easier to remember, and easier to align with. But if our people are not clear about overall goals and priorities, stress and chaos inevitably increase.

Therefore, let’s consider our mission - why we are here; our values - what is fundamentally right or important; and our vision - what the organization will look like in a few years' time, and then let’s communicate this to our employees.

It starts with formulating these strategic principles: rolling them out in the organization to ensure that people, systems and processes align with them. This is a change management project that needs to be carefully designed.

We find that the best firms understand the meaning and importance of the above, but the devil is in the detail here too. To get tangible results, it is essential to tailor the methodology to the specific needs of the company, which is then fine-tuned throughout the project.

In such a process, we integrate many different methods. Typically, interviews and surveys, middle and senior management workshops, managing cross-functional teams, training and coaching services are part of the process. In this context, our main guiding principle is involvement, which helps to foster the acceptance of change at all levels.

The time and resource requirements of the project will depend to a large extent on the size and initial state of the organization.