Nav, Section for employer services
Strategic direction
The leadership team in Nav's Section for employer services wanted a clearer strategic frame. What matters most, what comes first, and what do we choose not to do?
The answer had to build on the section's mandate, Nav's enterprise strategy, steering and allocation letters, and what we know from user insight and research.
I'm the process lead. I design and facilitate the process that gets us there.
- Role
- Process lead
- When
- 2026 –
- Work
- Strategy, Process design, Workshop facilitation, Problem framing, Interviews, Large group facilitation
Some details are under NDA. Ask me and I'll tell you what I can.
Backdrop
A section in a large organisation has a lot pulling at it. A mandate. An enterprise strategy. Steering and allocation letters. User insight and research.
All of it matters. None of it tells you, on its own, what to prioritise.
The leadership team wanted to turn all that into a clear frame: priorities and choices they could stand behind.
The lens I bring
I lean on Richard Rumelt's idea of the strategy kernel. It has three parts:
- Diagnosis. What's actually going on, and what's the critical challenge?
- Guiding policy. The overall approach to dealing with that challenge.
- Coherent actions. Concrete steps that support each other.
Diagnosis comes first. A lot of strategy work skips it and heads straight for goals. I wrote more about why that matters in Strategy is a diagnosis.
What I do
- Lead and facilitate a series of workshops with the leadership team
- Structure problems so they're possible to discuss, and decide on
- Build shared problem understanding before anyone jumps to solutions
- Interview product leads and domain leads to get perspectives from across the section
- Give leadership a better basis for prioritising
In May 2026 I planned and facilitated a gathering for about 70 people in the section. Going from a leadership table to a room of 70 is a different kind of facilitation. Same principles, bigger room.
Why it matters
Strategy work is design work. It's about framing the problem well enough that the choices get clearer. That's what I help a leadership team do: see the challenge, then choose.
The work is ongoing, so the rest of this story is still being written.