August is a time when a board or organization should start to look at their strategic plan and decide whether they need to update it or create a new one.
I won’t get too much into the merits of a strategic plan. Strategic plans are not dead and through a proper process (do you have one?) and execution (have you executed it effectively?) are extremely valuable to leaders and workers alike to better understand where your organization is going. Even with the volatility and ambiguity of this past year and the ongoing argument that strategic plans are boring, ill-equipped or not useful, I have often argued the opposite. With so much uncertainty, now is the time to develop the pillars in which your organization needs to stand on and find their vision for the future.
The Challenge:
One such organization did reach out, having not a lot of other options, and began to work with me on their strategic plan. At the height of a global pandemic and without an executive director, this nonprofit Board of Trustees knew something had to change. Our journey to change involved finding areas of current dissatistifaction with where the nonprofit was, creating a compelling and comprehensive vision for the future and finally, identifying first steps to make that happen.
The Process:
Trying to create a baseline of knowledge for myself, as well as new board members, we worked with the executive committee of the nonprofit to create 5 incredibly insightful “executive memos.” These included “bringing us up to speed” on: leadership turnover, past strategic plan efforts, financial situation and forecast, their recent capital campaign and the current mission and vision. Once written, these memos were shared with the full board to get everyone on the same page and not waste a lot of meeting time with a history lesson.
Additionally, I provided 5 “white papers” to help move knowledge, insight and advanced thinking along quickly as time was of the essence. These included understanding the difference between Strategic, Operational and Tactical planning, a summary of Jim Collins’ Good To Great for the Social Sector, a piece on understanding how to write Values for an organization, a piece on change for an organization, and finally a white paper on building up strategic resilience.
In order to better understand where the trustees were in terms of their dissastifaction and their desire to change, we conducted a 106-question Organizational Assessment with the Trustees. The organizational assessment tool was designed to provide us with numerical data to form a baseline measure of the structure, processes, and systems within the organization for our upcoming strategic planning sessions. Sections of this assessment included: the organization as a whole, culture, leadership, governance, decision making, human resources, communication, technology, customer knowledge, best practices, financial, risk management, and market knowledge. My favorite part of this report was the dashboard up front which gave a quick letter grade to each section based on the aggregated data from 15 trustees.
A SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats) analysis was conducted with staff at the nonprofit. These findings were shared afterwards with the board to gain greater clarity around where the staff felt the organization was and should be going.
With qualitative and quantitative data in hand and a base level knowledge of strategic planning, we conducted and facilitated three digitally-based, two-and-a-half-hour strategic planning meetings with the full board.
In these sessions the board looked again at its mission which had been recently adopted. They also began the work of developing value statements for the organization. Not too surprising, the bulk of our time together was focused on vision or what the Trustees later crafted as their “Aspiration.” We used multiple tools and processes to unearth knowledge and insight including the Change Formula: DxVxF>R and Collins’ Hedgehog Concept (Passion, Best at, Resource Engine) to explore and discover feelings about a future vision or aspiration. We developed and approved Strategies which are the building blocks to get us to the Aspiration; these strategies included: Governance, Operational Excellence, Financial Stability and Acceleration, Infrastructure, Outreach and Growth. These areas need equal focus, goals and initiatives to drive the organization to accomplish their mission and reach their Aspiration (or vision).
Along with process and task, what tends to be more important and often forgotten is the relationship part of the board and how they work together. Without trust and vulnerability to share a new idea or challenge old assumptions, we may never get to innovation. We focused as much, if not more time, on relationships so that we could reach new heights of thinking for the nonprofit.
The Result:
The organization and Trustees through this fast-paced, month-long process grew to better understand each other, listen to diverse perspective and begin to chart a path forward. To better pull all the various components of the strategic plan together we developed what we call a One Page Strategy (OPS). This tool helps to quickly illustrate the systematic approach we took and the elements (Purpose, Aspiration, Values, Strategies, Goals & Initiatives) throughout this full plan. The One Page Strategy is an effective document in the communication of the full strategic plan. On a single piece of paper, the OPS records the elements for the strategic plan. We often recommend disseminating the OPS not only to board members, but to staff and various stakeholders as a daily reminder of what to focus on.
I encourage you, as we approach August and really the start of Strategic Planning Season, ask yourself these questions:
Is it time for us to dust off the strategic plan post pandemic and see what still works and what doesn’t?
Do we know where to start to develop this 3-5 year plan? Do we need a facilitator and coach for something like this?
What does success look like for us at the end of 2021? How will we measure it? Who will hold us accountable?
Cheers to you finishing the year strong!