"...some of my own country teams are for some reason deliberately side-stepping our own organisational Goal and Objectives..."

I am vexed: What is an NGO's country strategy? I want to devolve decision making to our country teams; I have ensured that my regional strategy does not step on their toes, but supports what they think is necessary. But preview drafts suggest I may have made a basic mistake.

NB: some of our country programmes are independently registered local NGOs with their own governing boards. Others are implementing arms of our global organisation. Up till now, I expected that independent NGOs would exhibit some gaps in their strategy, i.e. my expectations would not exactly overlap their aspirations. But naively I had not expected the same for our own managed country programme teams (apart, perhaps, from programmes which had somehow 'missed the plot' and needed some management 'support').

Back at the main question: some country strategy drafts from some of our own managed teams not only have apparent strategy gaps, but have clearly been well thought through and participatory. In other words, some of my own country teams are for some reason side-stepping our own organisational Goal and Objectives, to some degree. What should I do?

At the moment, it looks like I will have to recognise that devolved decision making can lead to significant autonomy: if I wish to encourage this, I may need to recognise that whether we govern them or not, any country team with sufficient autonomy is liable to gaps in their country strategy. (This perhaps represents their self-referential thinking related to self-assessed measures of capacity and their balance of hope/despair.)

In my regional strategy, I am beginning to think that I must do three things: Firstly, the regional strategy should state how many gaps a particular country team strategy has (in other words I may have to add to a particular country strategy with reference to the country needs assessment and to other potential additional partners who could help fulfil 'my' country strategy). Secondly, I must consider whether my own country team leaders can represent me in designing country strategy, i.e. can they both facilitate their own team's autonomous 'country strategy', and consider the remaining gaps and how to fill them? Thirdly, a country manager (or myself) may have a broader 'shadow strategy' yet with gaps in the visible one. For example local stakeholders may unreasonably resist elements of the shadow strategy if they were made public; I may need to recognise that a sufficient strategy may actually have to have hidden elements.

But are these reasonable conclusions, I am asking myself? They make me slightly uncomfortable!