Transforming an Organization: Using Models to Foster a Strategic Conversation

To lead the reinvention of government, many federal agencies are searching for understandable, practical, and effective models to frame strategic change. Executives hope to find strategic models that offer simple, direct solutions to their problems. However, existing models of strategy must be transformed to fit an organization just as the organization must be transformed in light of the model. The model and the organization co-evolve. This is illustrated through a longitudinal case study of the National Reconnaissance Office, which adopted the Balanced Scorecard as a strategic management and performance measurement system. This article develops and presents a framework of mutual adaptation to clarify the variety of inter-related changes required in the strategy formulation and implementation.