🖤 Open Works #016 Building A People Strategy From Scratch, Help!!

Welcome to Open Works. Every edition we solve a ‘people and culture’ problem crowd-sourced from the Open Org Community of 350+ Startup and Scale-up People Leaders.

💭 This Week’s People Problem

🖤 Our Take On How You Solve

🏃 TL;DR:

• Understand your company’s goals.

• Assess the gap between where you are today and where you need to be.

• Describe what you are going to focus on and what you are not going to focus on in order to bridge the gap.

• Explain why with extreme clarity.

⚡️ The Problem

Being asked to create a People Strategy for the first time can feel overwhelming. Imposter syndrome is real—especially if you’ve just been promoted or started a new role. If your inner voice is saying:

Don’t worry—you’re in good company. We’ve been there and we’ve been here too. 👇😂

Anyway, People Strategy from scratch? No problem let’s dive in.

💡 So, What is a Good People Strategy?

A solid People Strategy (or any strategy, really 🤓) boils down to these 4 elements:

1. Common Vision

2. Common Logic

3. Common Plan

4. Common Language

🔑 Breaking Down Those Key Elements:

1. Common Vision:

   • What is your company aiming to achieve?

   • How can your people and your people product drive this vision?

2. Common Logic:

   • What are the critical features of your ‘people product’ that need to be focused on (and what must be deprioritised)?

   • Think about: candidate experience, people experience, and culture.

3. Common Plan:

   • Break down priorities into 3-5 key initiatives.

   • Define actions and timelines to achieve those priorities.

4. Common Language:

   • Use clear, consistent messages to align the team around your people initiatives.

💡 Link to company objectives. Explain what you’re focusing on, what you’re not, and why. If you can do that, you’re ahead of the game.

🧠 Approach to Building a People Strategy:

1. Understand the Company’s Business Strategy:

Review the overall strategy, defined by the leadership team. Align your People Strategy with the company’s long-term goals and key results.

2. Align with Leadership:

Collaborate with the leadership team to define shared priorities and align People initiatives with business goals.

3. Conduct a Gap Analysis:

Assess the current state of your people function (candidate experience, onboarding, leadership development, etc.) and identify areas for improvement.

4. Prioritise Based on Business Impact:

Use an impact/effort matrix or cost of delay analysis to decide which initiatives should be prioritised.

5. Story-tell with data:

Create a strategy based on the gaps identified, and be clear on what to focus on, what not to, what to delay and why. The why is ideally mostly anchored in data.

Next Steps:

1. Review your company’s business plan.

2. Assess the current state of your people product and capability.

3. Prioritise initiatives that will have the greatest business impact.

📚️ Good reads relating to this problem…

 📔 How to create a people strategy - Johannes Sunlo 

🎵 Spotify’s People Strategy

📔 University of Cambridge People Strategy

✏️ How to make culture tangible [Open Org Blog]

📖 Culture Playbook: How to use data and story-telling to get heard

🤓 Wanna get your culture problem featured in next week’s edition?

Hit reply to this email and share your challenge with me! I promise it’ll stay completely confidential—no names, no details shared. Feel free to send in the messiest, gnarliest problem you’ve got. 😊

🖤 Join Us

Did you know the Open Org Community is pretty epic? 😉 

Be part of a network of 350+ startup and scale-up People Leaders on Slack and enjoy:

• 2x monthly live events (roundtables and guest firesides)

• Opportunities to contribute to our quarterly hackathons

• Plus, have Adam and me in your corner—for life. 💪

🚀 Ready to go? Let’s build an open world of work, together

With 🧊 & 🔥 

John & Adam

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