A digital strategy is “working” when specific, observable things are happening. Most strategy reviews ask the wrong question.
The wrong question is “are we hitting our targets?”. Targets are useful but lagging. By the time you have missed a target you have spent the quarter on the wrong things.
The right questions are leading. They look like this.
Are the people who own the strategy talking about it on a normal Tuesday? Not at the quarterly review. Tuesday. If the strategy lives in a deck and not in conversations, it is not working.
Are decisions being made faster than they were six months ago? A working strategy is supposed to give you a frame for prioritisation. If new requests are still being argued from first principles, the strategy is not doing its job.
Are people saying no to things? Specifically things that would have been “yes” a year ago. If everything is still a yes, the strategy has not changed what gets prioritised, which means it has not changed anything.
Is the team doing fewer things? If the strategy was meant to focus the work and the work has not got smaller, it has not focused anything.
Are the metrics that are supposed to move, moving? Not just trending in the right direction. Actually moving. If you set a digital strategy in January with a “30% increase in qualified leads from organic search by Q4” goal and you are at 4% by end of Q2, the strategy is not working. Possibly the target was wrong. Possibly the work is wrong. Either way it is not working and the conversation needs to happen now.
The honest test of a digital strategy: would you write it the same way today, knowing what you know now? If yes, you are either right or you are not paying attention. If you would write it differently, you should rewrite it.
If your strategy was set six months ago and nothing has changed in your thinking, that is the problem. Get in touch.