Business planning re-imagined: An iterative approach for Amnesty UK
This is the story of how Rosie Leatherland is using agile principles to build a whole-organisational approach to business planning, monitoring and delivery.
It’s an approach that puts learning at the heart of decision making and that ensures Amnesty International UK is able to focus on the areas in which it can achieve the most strategic impact in a dynamic and ever-changing context for human rights.
The organisation has transformed their approach to planning, measuring impact and bringing learning into decision-making so that:
- All staff members are involved in regular reflection conversations.
- Money and time is distributed based on impact against strategic outcomes.
- All work is structured so it is clear how it directly contributes to achieving one of the outcomes in their strategy.
- Decision makers are taking ownership and ensuring learning and evidence are at the centre of their decision-making.
The journey towards agile business planning
Rosie Leatherland has been with Amnesty International for six years, initially starting as a campaigner before moving into her current role as Head of Strategic Planning. When Rosie began this role in 2021, Amnesty International UK had a new CEO and a refreshed leadership team, but their strategy was not being treated as a living document which was actively referenced in the organisation.
Rosie explained it like this: “People saw planning as a burden… something they had to do alongside this really hard work that they were doing for human rights, or for fundraising, or whatever their focus was. Crucially, there was nothing that linked any of the work we were doing with any part of the strategy, so there was nothing that sat between ‘We want to achieve human rights victories in the world.’ And ‘This is what I do at my desk every day.’ It was very hard to understand the link between individual work and the overarching strategy.”
Creating transparency and clarity
One of Rosie’s first tasks was to overcome this disconnect by helping colleagues see – and understand – what was happening within the organisation. There were three broad goals in the strategy, aligned to Amnesty’s mission, as well as a series of identified enablers, like fundraising. Rosie needed everyone to be able to see how the work being done on the ground mapped to these goals and enablers, to inform decisions about “What we would keep doing, what we would stop doing and what we needed to start doing in order to reach those goals.”
The first step Rosie took was to gather information from all teams about the work they were already doing and how their time and resources were being used. To facilitate this process, Rosie and her team developed standardised templates and guidelines, ensuring consistency and completeness of the data collected across the organisation. She then led the CEO and other key staff to assess which activities aligned with the strategic goals and which did not.
Next, Rosie set up a simple way to visualise the organisation’s planning. She told us “We now use a trello board for each of our goals and enablers. For example, we have the Trello board for “Winning human rights victories” with all the outcomes as the columns, so winning human rights victories in racial justice, winning human rights victories in economic social rights, etc. And that became something that anyone in the organisation can refer to.”
These Trello boards are visible to everyone in the organisation at all times; it is the one source of truth for the most up to date information on how the organisation is progressing towards its strategic goals.
Now that outcomes and the progress toward them is more visible across the organisation, there is better shared understanding and alignment among staff.
Outcomes based planning
Rosie then worked with each senior leader to define clear, measurable outcomes for each of the strategic goals and enablers, moving beyond broad statements to specific, actionable targets.
A key aspect of this was really breaking goals down. For example, Rosie shared that “The goal around changing attitudes to human rights was very broad. We could say that any of our work that we do in the external world fits into that. So, instead we needed to think about what sits underneath changing attitudes to human rights that we specifically want to achieve. Then, helping that senior leadership team member to come up with a clear outcome that they could measure, that they could then apply work to.”
The next task was to align the work that was happening across the organisation with specific strategic goals and enablers. Rosie guided leaders to assess their current projects and decide which to continue, stop, or start based on their impact on the defined outcomes. This did involve some tough conversations about whether certain activities were the right ones to pursue if they weren’t aligned with strategic goals or where there was duplication of effort. The projects or areas of work that were dropped were not necessarily ineffective, but didn’t have the desired reach or impact we needed to be having year on year in the strategy. But it has meant that the organisation is now able to shift their efforts from projects with low strategic alignment to those that directly contributed to key outcomes.
All of this is driving towards a shift from team/project-based planning to goal-based planning.
Transformative results and ongoing challenges
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Navigating the emotional and professional challenges of questioning the value of existing work has been tough. However, through these efforts, Amnesty International UK have taken some big steps towards their day-to-day work and their strategy being more closely aligned. This includes:
- Involving all staff members in regular reflection sessions about how business planning is going and how it can continue to improve.
- Ensuring time and resources are allocated according to where they can have the most impact.
- Structuring teams’ and individuals’ work to show clear links to the organisation’s desired outcomes.
- Decision-makers owning the need for learning and evidence to be central to all their strategies and tactics.
By creating an environment where learning, experimentation and adaptation are encouraged, Amnesty UK is now better positioned to achieve its mission through more focused and strategic efforts.
Building a process that adapts
Of course, this journey is ongoing. To increase Amnesty’s ability to adapt Rosie has now built in multiple points throughout the year when data and team feedback is used to improve the process:
- Iteration is built into the planning cycles through ongoing reviews of how well activities were contributing to defined outcomes.
- Rosie has built integrated monthly reflection conversations into the organisation’s planning process, involving every staff member every month. These conversations provide an opportunity for teams to assess their progress, discuss what was working, and identify areas needing adjustment. Teams are encouraged to iterate on their plans based on what they learned from reflection sessions, ensuring that strategies remain relevant and impactful.
- Project leads and leadership also have dedicated time each quarter to reflect on their work, ensuring that decisions were based on current insights rather than fixed plans. So that they are using evidence and feedback to guide decision-making.
- This iterative approach ensured that the organisation could respond swiftly to new information, refine strategies, and continuously improve.
By embedding these practices, Rosie ensured that iteration and reflection became integral parts of how Amnesty International UK planned, monitored, and executed its work, driving continuous improvement and strategic alignment. All this is to ensure that planning is treated as an ongoing, dynamic process rather than a one-time event.
Join the Conversation
We hope Rosie’s insights provide you with inspiration and practical ideas on applying agile principles to your own organisation’s business planning. If you have any questions or would like to know more about how we can help your organisation embed agile ways of working, feel free to reach out!
