I had the opportunity to work in government for many years, and later to work closely with governments and donors across countries. Many tools are useful in theory. Few stay useful across contexts.
The Strategic Triangle is one that does.
I learned it at the Kennedy School and have used it in different sectors and countries. I keep coming back to it because it helps make sense of why some reforms move and others stall.
You’ve probably heard me mention it in previous blogs (or here). In this blog, I want to show it with a concrete example from a case study we developed at the IDB on Buenos Aires’ digital reform.
Case Study: How Buenos Aires Made Digital Reform Work
Buenos Aires launched a digitalization program that worked. When we spoke with the team behind it, the interesting part was not the idea itself, but how they approached implementation.
The Strategic Triangle helps explain that.
For a reform to work, three things need to come together:
- technically sound
- administratively feasible
- politically supportable
You can usually see which one is missing when things start getting stuck. Most teams usually know where they are weak. They postpone dealing with it.
1. Technically sound
This means having a clear understanding of the problem and a credible path from what you do to what you want to achieve.
In Buenos Aires, they did not start from a predefined solution. They spent time understanding how the system worked, where users struggled, and what was already in place.
They also looked at experiences in Canada, Spain, and the U.S., but adapted them to their context.
This step sounds obvious, but it is often rushed. When that happens, teams move quickly—but in the wrong direction—and only realize it once implementation becomes difficult to sustain.
2. Administratively feasible
This is where many reforms start to slow down.
A lot of effort goes into design, with the expectation that implementation will follow. In practice, capacity, coordination, and incentives shape what actually happens.
In Buenos Aires, implementation was built into the strategy from the beginning.
They introduced the reform gradually:
- starting with a non-threatening module (official communications)
- piloting and adjusting along the way
- building internal capacity as they expanded
They also made deliberate choices to encourage adoption. For example, making a key process only available through the new system helped bring institutions in.
None of this was accidental. It required deciding where to start, how fast to move, and where to accept resistance.
3. Politically supportable
Even well-designed and well-planned reforms can stall without political backing.
In this case, political support was not treated as a given. It was managed.
They had support from top leadership, but they also worked to build trust with civil servants, understood where resistance would come from, and chose carefully when to escalate issues.
Political capital was used at specific moments, not all at once.
Use the strategic triangle as a doer
Doers in government think differently.
They pay attention to where things get stuck. Doers test, adjust, and learn. They understand how decisions are made and what moves them forward.
They know the rules—and also where there is room to work within them.
Tools like the Strategic Triangle help, but what matters is how you use them.
They help you see:
- where a reform is likely to face friction
- what needs to happen first
- what cannot be solved at the same time
That clarity is often what makes the difference between a reform that moves and one that stays on paper. Most reforms don’t fail all at once. They stall where one of these conditions was assumed instead of secured.
If you don’t know which one that is in your current work, that’s the place to start.
