Divintara

A useful starting point is to define three to five directional bets for the next 12–18 months. These are not detailed initiatives but directional choices—e.g., “double down on direct-to-consumer”, or “move category X to premium pricing”. Each bet needs a concrete set of success indicators.

Next, translate those bets into the weekly rhythms of your organisation: which metric is reviewed each week, who is accountable, and what decisions are authorised at the team level. Too often we design strategy at the wrong cadence: annual offsites produce exciting ideas that never get operationalised because day-to-day teams weren’t given clear guardrails.

Practical example: choose one customer journey to optimise for the next quarter. Map it end-to-end, identify the top three slow points, and run a two-week improvement pilot. Measure changes in conversion or fulfilment lead time. Repeat once you see measurable improvement—this is how strategy becomes a habit.

Finally, treat the strategy as a hypothesis. Run experiments, track outcomes, and be willing to stop what isn’t working. This iterative mindset keeps the strategy alive without over-committing to untested assumptions.

Start simple: what drives your revenue and your biggest costs? Create a top-down and bottom-up view and reconcile them. Avoid over-fitting: models are most useful when they capture the small number of variables that actually move the business.

A robust model serves three purposes: (1) it helps you test scenarios (what happens if CAC increases by 25%?), (2) it creates guardrails for hiring and burn, and (3) it’s a communication tool for boards and investors. Keep assumptions transparent and labelled. Use scenario toggles for base / downside / upside cases so you can quickly show the financial implications of strategic choices.

We recommend revisiting the model monthly at first — then quarterly once the business stabilises. Make the model part of the operating rhythm rather than a one-off fundraising artifact.

Start by mapping a single end-to-end process—e.g., onboarding a new customer. Document every handoff and identify the top three frictions. Often these frictions are caused by missing data, ambiguous ownership, or unnecessary approvals.

Run a 6-week improvement project: map, hypothesise, pilot, measure. Keep experiments time-boxed and ensure documentation of what changed and why. Value accrues fast when small fixes compound across multiple processes. Small percentage improvements in cycle time or fulfilment accuracy can deliver outsized margin improvements.

Operational excellence also requires cultural shift: teams must value experimentation and measurement over heroics. Fixes should be documented and handed over as part of the team’s day-to-day rituals.

Preparation means having clear impact metrics, a logic model (inputs → activities → outputs → outcomes), and governance to execute the program. Donors evaluate capacity and risk; a strong implementation plan beats a long aspiration statement every time.

We help clients build a grant readiness checklist: evidence of previous impact, a realistic budget with line-item justifications, a timeline with milestones, and a short risk mitigation plan. This checklist reduces surprises during due diligence and shortens the time to funding.

Begin by segmenting customers by value rather than demographics. Which customers create the most margin and are least price sensitive? Test price increases on a small segment while adding a marginal service improvement and measure churn. Pricing experiments should be reversible — run them as pilots rather than permanent, organisation-wide changes without data.

Additionally, make sure your cost-to-serve is visible by channel. Sometimes a price increase is unnecessary if you optimise how you serve a given customer cohort.