The Digital Strategy Accelerator – a tech and teams approach to digital resilience
Dot Project partnered with Okta and Charity Digital to co-design and deliver a 9-month Digital Strategy Accelerator programme supporting UK charities.
The programme was designed to support charities with their digital strategy, giving them the time and focus to build their digital resilience.
Dot Project then delivered practical mentorship, tools, reviews and peer support to help grantees develop a strategy which is understood and approved by all key stakeholders, including their team, board and trustees. The teams on this programme all built the necessary foundations to execute a thoughtful and sustainable approach to digital.
Summary
A team approach to digital strategy
At Dot Project, supporting charities with their organisational infrastructure through the lens of tech and teams is an integral aspect of our work. We believe that, in order to support communities, technology transformation should be rooted in people
A unique feature of this programme is our insistence that participant organisations work as a team to deliver the activities required to develop a digital strategy. This is an approach we have tested through other programmes and it is often, as was the case with this programme, met with initial resistance. Teams feel they don’t have the time or permission to spend significant blocks of time working together on strategy, particularly when organisations are stretched with service delivery responsibilities. Quickly however the benefits of working as a team become visible.
Participant organisations told us it was important to work as a team on this programme, it enabled them to:
Develop alignment and focus - the programme provided the space to come together, discuss and make decisions on a topic which previously felt overwhelming and difficult to progress for organisations
Share ideas and innovate - organisations welcomed the opportunity to hear fresh perspectives and ideas which may otherwise have been missed if the team did not have the chance to come together to work on the digital strategy
Create shared ownership - through working as a team organisations were encouraged to define their roles and responsibilities and gradually a sense of shared ownership developed, people felt excited and responsible for the digital strategy as it emerged
Develop practices - the programme introduced and modelled examples of how teams could work together proactively and maintain momentum and focus, organisations then built their own practices to continue coming together outside of the programme structure.
What we learned
There is a critical need for expertise to support organisations to develop a digital strategy. 3 years on from the start of the pandemic organisations are now grappling with a technology estate which mushroomed to support online working and service delivery.
There is a pressing need for charities to become more digitally resilient to be better prepared to cope with future shocks, however core funding to support digital strategy development remains desperately lacking. This programme provided easy access to the appropriate expertise organisations require to develop their digital strategy.
The ability of the programme to support organisational teams to learn together created a unique opportunity for organisations to test, in a low risk environment, working together differently. Through this experimentation they learned what works for them and embed this for the longer term within their ways of working.
From strategy to action
Based on the impact of this programme, Okta has enabled us to offer another 12 month programme that is focussing on practical mentorship to support charities during the critical time between strategy development and implementation.
We will share our insights at the end of the year.