Our Services
From strategy formulation to change management, we offer a comprehensive suite of services designed for public institutions and mission-driven organisations.
Strategic planning in the public sector differs fundamentally from the private sector. Rather than building competitive advantage, the goal is developing specialist capacities to achieve policy mandates and deliver on public responsibilities.
Development@Work has refined a Strategic Planning and Performance Monitoring Framework over more than a decade, designed specifically for public sector and institutional contexts. Built in line with National Treasury requirements, it uses a Theory of Change approach that connects inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes in a coherent, adaptable structure.
The framework imposes a logic of collaboration and long-term planning on the organisation — recognising that public outcomes are often achieved over the medium to long term, and require coordinated action across multiple stakeholders.
Key Principles
Areas of Support
Development of 3, 5, and 10-year institutional strategies aligned to mandate and policy context.
Annual performance plans, indicator development, and target setting aligned to strategy.
Facilitation of senior leadership and board-level strategic planning retreats and workshops.
Technical assistance for translating strategy into implementation plans, processes, and monitoring systems.
Areas of Support
Stakeholder-focused structural design and micro-structure development aligned to mandate.
Process mapping, quality management, and efficiency improvements across operational functions.
Information architecture, data management, and technology integration to support strategy.
Communication strategies, skills development, and cultural change to sustain transformation.
We help organisations strengthen the structures, systems, and processes needed to deliver on strategy. Our organisational development work is built on the understanding that institutional form must follow institutional purpose — the way an organisation is designed should reflect what it is trying to achieve.
We support public institutions across their organisational life cycle: from strategic design and restructuring through to systems integration, process improvement, and the cultural changes needed to sustain performance over time.
Our work in this area has included micro-structure design for national organisations, corporate university design, business model development for public entities, and matching and placement support during reorganisation processes.
We support organisations across the full scope of a programme — from the first idea to the last review — combining careful thinking with practical, real-world application.
We design monitoring and evaluation frameworks that strengthen accountability, evidence use, and organisational learning. Rather than treating M&E as a compliance requirement, we integrate it into strategy and programme design from the outset — making it a practical tool for decision-making and institutional improvement.
Our outcomes-focused approach ensures that organisations can track progress against meaningful results, understand what is working and why, and use evidence to improve implementation and inform future planning.
Our M&E frameworks have been developed for government departments, development agencies, university programmes, and regulatory bodies, and can be calibrated to National Treasury and development funder requirements.
Customised monitoring and evaluation systems aligned to strategy and programme design.
Development of output and outcome indicators that are meaningful, measurable, and practical to track.
Programme reviews, impact assessments, and evaluations for public and development sector clients.
Embedding a culture of evidence use and continuous improvement within the organisation.
We approach digital transformation as a strategic and institutional challenge — not simply a technical one. Successful digital change requires aligned strategy, capable governance, appropriate systems design, and people who understand what they are building and why.
Our experience includes research to inform South Africa's national digital research infrastructure, M&E frameworks for Information Society and e-Government initiatives, knowledge management system design for public sector agencies, and institutional readiness assessments for digital transition.
We help institutions answer the strategic questions that technology alone cannot: What digital capabilities does this organisation need? How should they be governed? What are the institutional implications of this change?
Complex institutional challenges rarely resolve themselves through analysis alone. They require structured facilitation, careful attention to stakeholder dynamics, and sustained support for change. Development@Work facilitates complex multi-stakeholder processes, planning events, and institutional transitions that move organisations toward shared direction and stronger ownership.
Our facilitation draws on deep experience of how public institutions think, deliberate, and make decisions. We understand power dynamics, competing mandates, and the political realities that shape institutional life — and we design processes that work within these realities, not around them.
Our capacity building work focuses on the practical skills and cultural capabilities needed to sustain change: strategic leadership, planning competence, programme management, and the ability to learn and adapt over time.
What We Facilitate
Leadership-level conversations on priorities, direction, and institutional futures.
Multi-stakeholder engagement processes for strategy development or major institutional change.
Structured learning programmes for strategic, operational, and governance capabilities.
Facilitation and support for restructuring, repositioning, and institutional renewal.
Tell us about your institution, your challenge, and what you need. We'll respond quickly to explore how we can help.