Circle Strategies might easily fall into oblivion, in particular inside organisations such as Liip which were previously structured as a flat-organisation and in which strategy-setting might not have been a strong practice. Evenmore, for just about any organisation that adopted Holacracy exists the risk of a "strategy gap": Holacracy distributes strategy setting onto every circle throughout the holarchy (technically onto the Lead Link unless specified otherwise by the circle yet prior to the adoption, chances are strategy setting was on the shoulders of a few executives or partners).

HolacracyOne has defined and refined a pretty darn good meeting format known as the Strategy Meeting, to help circles define and update their Circle Strategies.

The meeting, in which all circle members participate, displays a very interesting sequence:

holacracy strategy meeting process
  1. Hold a retrospective outlook at concrete happenings in the recent months
  2. Take a bird-eye view on it, and extract learnings, principles, guidelines
  3. Decide the ones that will serve as Strategies for the coming months
  4. Unpack the new Strategies into concrete projects, next-actions or tensions for each role

Here’s a handy Strategy Meeting Cheatsheet to help you facilitate strategy meetings for your circle.

I can only strongly invite you as Lead Link to take good care of your circle strategies – it is one of the most powerful lever in your hands to steward the circle towards its purpose. Do schedule such strategy meetings every 3 to 6 months.

Artwork: Jansson Wind Rose, 1650, Wikimedia