Strategic Initiative Review Template

A strategic initiative review keeps the projects that fund your strategy honest. In the balanced scorecard model, initiatives are the action programs that move the measures; if they drift, the whole strategy stalls. This review tracks the initiative portfolio and forces clear decisions about what to accelerate, hold, or stop.

When to use it

Run it monthly between the deeper scorecard reviews, so initiatives get attention while there is still time to correct course. It complements the strategy review: the strategy review asks whether the measures are moving, and the initiative review asks whether the work meant to move them is actually on track.

Who attends

Bring the initiative owners and the leadership members who can reallocate resources, five to twelve people. Owners must be present to speak to status and risk honestly, and decision-makers must be present so accelerate-or-stop calls actually get made.

How to run it

Open with a portfolio snapshot so everyone sees status at a glance, then move past the healthy initiatives quickly. Spend the bulk of the meeting on the at-risk and off-track ones, digging into root cause and the specific help each needs. Check resourcing and dependencies, since the most common killer is two initiatives quietly fighting for the same people. Close with explicit accelerate, hold, or stop decisions and a short list of owned actions. Choosing to stop a failing initiative is a win, not a failure.

Facilitator tips

• Spend time on at-risk initiatives, not the ones already healthy.
• Push for root cause rather than a status color and a shrug.
• Make stopping an initiative a respectable, explicit decision.
• Surface resource conflicts before they silently stall delivery.

Common mistakes

• Giving equal airtime to every initiative regardless of risk.
• Letting zombie initiatives drift on without a kill decision.
• Reviewing status without checking resources and dependencies.
• Ending with updates but no owned corrective actions.

Keep your initiative portfolio moving. Run it in OrgTP and link initiatives, owners, and decisions to the strategic measures they serve.