Case Study

Creating shared strategic clarity and leadership alignment

Engagement Focus: Strategy Blueprint & Alignment

Sector: Financial Services

Context

A long-established, member-owned financial services institution was beginning to experience execution strain despite continued financial stability and strong market presence. Over time, significant investment in digital channels and technology-enabled core services had led to a steadily expanding portfolio of initiatives across both business and technology functions.

The organization needed a clearer strategic foundation that leadership teams could genuinely align around and use to guide decisions.

The Challenge

Strategy existed in the form of presentations and initiatives, but it lacked a shared logic that leaders could consistently reference.

Leadership discussions revisited the same questions repeatedly. Strategic priorities were interpreted differently across functions, and trade-offs were rarely made explicit. As a result, alignment depended on individual relationships rather than a shared strategic frame.

  • Strategy was not explicit enough to support real trade-offs

  • Leadership conversations defaulted to lists of initiatives rather than directional choices

  • Cross-divisional disagreements persisted without a shared strategic reference point

The result was extended meetings, limited decision-making, and rising frustration. Progress slowed not due to a lack of commitment or effort, but because leadership lacked shared mindshare around a strategy that could be used to guide difficult choices.

Clarity is not simplification. It is disciplined choice.

The Strategic Shift

Vivid Strategies supported the leadership team in creating a Strategy Blueprint that made strategic intent explicit, coherent, and actionable.

Strategy was deliberately reframed from a collection of initiatives into a small number of explicit choices that required leadership to confront trade-offs.

The executive team was guided through a structured strategy formulation process that:

  • Centered on the organization’s most pressing strategic challenge

  • Brought difficult choices into the open and made them discussable

  • Surfaced underlying assumptions and tested their validity

  • Constrained the resulting strategy to a concise, near single-page articulation

A critical shift accompanied this work. Strategy decisions were no longer treated as irreversible commitments requiring perfect information. Instead, leaders learned to make choices, test assumptions through limited experimentation, and refine direction over time rather than deferring decisions altogether.

Only once strategic direction was explicit, shared, and understood did the organization begin translating strategy into priorities expressed and managed as OKRs.

What Changed

Several structural shifts followed.

  • Clear strategic priorities grounded in explicit choices

  • Stronger alignment across the leadership team

  • More focused and productive strategic discussions

  • A shared reference point for decision-making

  • Improved confidence in direction and trade-offs

The Strategy Blueprint became a living foundation for execution rather than a static artifact.

Strategy only creates value when it is understood, owned, and used by leaders.

Role and Approach

Vivid Strategies acted as strategic facilitator, challenger, trainer, and executive coach, with a deliberate emphasis on building internal capability rather than creating dependency.

The objective was not to own the strategy, but to help leadership teams develop the confidence and discipline required to make, test, and live with meaningful strategic choices.