Red Bridge Strategy

Client: A major UN agency with an active presence in 140 countries

Situation: Global strategy of the agency was increasingly derailed by changes in local political and legal environments. While country managers were aware of these changes, the organization did not have a standardized process for leveraging local intelligence, resulting in unpleasant surprises at the local, regional, and even global levels.

Project: Our objective was to develop a methodology and tools for the organization to enhance strategic intelligence globally and locally.

Our solution focused on three areas:

• Designing the architecture for analysis and exchange of local-global intelligence
• Facilitating workshops in key regions to develop strategies based on predictive analysis
• Obtaining buy-in from top management on the architecture and processes, and phased implementation with local input

All three aspects were geared toward developing the organization's internal capabililty to gather, share, communicate, and act on insights across global-local levels.

Results: The work, done is close collaboration with the Strategic Planning office of the organization, resulted in

• Enhanced collaboration between HQ and regions on organizational goals and strategies
• Better intelligence, and lower risk to overall strategic plan
• Improved alignment between global strategy and local activities, including the formation of alliances with local actors