A significant portion of my strategic facilitation work is with internal functions, a click or two below corporate and business-unit strategy, which includes marketing, human resources, purchasing, and even internal strategy groups.

There’s good news and bad news in this. The good news is that those engaged in internal functions have recognized the need to be strategic, even if it’s because higher-level strategies demand supporting strategies. The bad news is the number of those who think strategy doesn’t apply to them.

When I ask internal functions people to show me what guides their department’s work, I’m more often than not handed a plan, which is a budget in disguise. It’s rarely explicit in laying out a winning aspiration of clear where-to-play and how-to-win choices.

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