We have laid out our ambitions through to 2030. This is how we will deliver them
In the first instalment of a new blog series, our Chief Executive Gael Drummond shares our new strategic ambitions and the approach we’ll take to achieve them.
When an organisation launches a new strategy, you expect to see a sleek document outlining its vision, mission, values and ambitions. There may be a foreword, objectives and a few ‘high-profile’ announcements to kickstart their new direction.
But how do organisations arrive at a new strategy? What’s the process, who is involved, and what will the strategy mean in practice? And vitally, what, if anything, will change?
Time to take stock
We were established in 2007 as the first port of call for social entrepreneurs. And while that proposition still stands, our products, services, size and reach have changed significantly since then.
So, over the last two years, Firstport has gone through a process of reconnecting with our identity, finding our North Star and setting our future direction.
And now, two years on, as most of the puzzle pieces have clicked into place, we thought we’d share both the process and the outcome.
But what is the best way to share all of this in a meaningful way? A publication? An event? A video? And does it matter how we do it? Do our clients, partners or funders actually care? These are some of the questions we have been grappling with in the last wee while.
The thing is, launching a strategy is just a moment in time. Delivering a strategy and demonstrating the changes we are making? That’s what we feel counts. So, taking a leaf out of the ‘strategy is delivery’ book, we have decided to share our new strategic direction as we deliver it.
Over the next year, we’ll document how we are actioning the activities that will get us to the strategic ambitions we have laid out through 2030. We’ll be doing, iterating, reflecting and sharing.
Let’s rewind
To set the scene for how we got to our new strategic ambitions, we first need to go back in time a bit. Here is a timeline:
2022- We emerged from the COVID pandemic as a fully remote organisation. We learned a lot from delivering two COVID-related funds. We started to think about what the ‘Future of Work’ would look like for Firstport and how we could be a supportive and progressive employer with a dispersed team. We launched the Catalyst Fund, our first social investment product. Demand for our programmes continued to rise. We grew our team and expanded into new areas of work. But along the way, we lost a bit of our why.
Led by one of our colleagues, we started a process of introspection, exploring and examining who we are, what’s important to us and how we do things. Collaboratively, the team landed on a set of five values:
Ambition, Accountability, Commitment, Respect, Purpose
While these shorthand values are not, in many ways, unique to us, how we live up to them and how they shape our behaviours are. Having a values framework helped us set the tone for a culture shift. After all, an organisation’s culture is a combination of what matters and how things get done.
This exercise then got us thinking about the future, the type of organisation we wanted to be and how we might get there – otherwise known as a strategic review.
2023- We embarked on a rebranding exercise, which stemmed from that sense of disconnect. We knew that our visual brand no longer felt ‘right’, but it was more than just how we looked, it was really an exercise in identity. We were now the Firstport Group (encompassing Firstport, Firstimpact and Firstfund), and we were working beyond the ‘start-up’ stage. Working with the team at Korero Studio, we landed on a new group vision, a mission and a proposition for Firstport.
2024- With a fresh new identity and a clear vision, we now needed a plan. A visioning exercise by our board identified seven priorities for the future. The Leadership and staff team then sharpened them into six powerful strategic ambitions with well-defined objectives that we’ll deliver by 2030.
| Strategic ambition | By 2030 we will… |
| Ambitious | Deliver high quality and high impact support services informed by client needs. |
| Impactful | Demonstrate the difference we are making insightfully and transparently |
| Influential | Build trusting relationships and collaborative, high performing partnerships that propel our impact |
| Progressive | Challenge traditional ways of doing business |
| Sustainable | Be financially, socially and environmentally sustainable |
| Innovative | Inspire innovation in our own work and the pioneering work of others |
At our team meeting in October last year, we asked the team, ‘What would need to be true for these ambitions to be realised by 2030?’ We had insightful and sometimes lively discussions about direction, and it was encouraging to see team members from across the organisation putting forward their ideas and thinking. Some of the answers included developing a robust signposting process for clients and applicants, increasing the transparency of our data, and proactively designing new products and services, amongst many others.
A roadmap, not a plan
Our strategic ambitions are deliberately flexible, we know what we want to achieve – just not necessarily how. We are not driven by an artificial target or set of outputs that prescribe our decisions. If we learned anything from the COVID pandemic, even the best-laid plans can change at the drop of a hat. We can’t, and shouldn’t, try to predict the future.
Instead, we have intentionally designed them to be agile so we can respond to what’s happening around us whilst remaining laser-focused on what we want to achieve in the long term.
By taking a year-on-year approach to delivery using an OKR methodology (more on that later), we can acknowledge where we are, look for patterns, allow the next steps to emerge and implement these incrementally. This approach also lends itself to experimenting and trying new creative solutions. Not all experiments will work, but we can learn as much from success as we can from failure.
Each year, we will take time to understand what is working and what is not, what else we need to do and pivot in response. Essentially, reflection and learning will inform each next step.
A structure for the path ahead
In looking for a way of structuring our plans, we have decided to use an OKR methodology. OKRs stand for Objectives and Key Results. It is a collaborative goal-setting approach that helps teams set ambitious goals with measurable results. A key feature of OKRs that we felt was important is that they help create alignment amongst the team.
Each objective has three measurable key results, and each quarter, the teams decide the initiatives they will deliver that will get us closer to achieving that result.
This way of working is new for us, we have never used OKRs before or engaged our staff in driving the delivery of the strategy in such a practical (and we hope meaningful) way. As with anything new, we are learning as we go along.
What’s coming
Each month, we will be sharing how we are working towards each of our strategic objectives. We do not expect the journey or progress to be linear, and we will not only share the things that go well.
We hope that whether you are a recipient of our support or funding, a partner in the social enterprise ecosystem or a social investor, you find our journey valuable and insightful.
Gael Drummond is Chief Executive of Firstport. You can connect with Gael on LinkedIn. This is the first blog of our ‘Strategic Ambitions to 2030’ series. You can read the next blog in the series here.