Archives For strategic planning

Why I’m recommending Charting Impact to my client partners

June 22, 2011 — Leave a comment

The Charting Impact logo.Here’s a promising activity for your nonprofit board’s next strategic thinking agenda slot:

  1. Write down what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and how you know you’re making real change.
  2. Get a reality check from your stakeholders on the above.
  3. Publish the results for the whole world to see and compare with other nonprofit organizations.

Scary? Not at all, thanks to a new(er) and free resource from the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, GuideStar and Independent Sector: Charting Impact.

Charting Impact is a common framework for strategic thinking and a way to share with stakeholders the change you’re making. According to Diana Aviv, president and CEO of Independent Sector, it’s simple, elegant, easy to understand, and anyone can use it. Charting Impact:

  • Encourages people to invest their money, time, and attention in effective organizations.
  • Helps your organization highlight the difference you make.
  • Helps your organization sharpen your approaches to making a difference.
  • Positions your organization to work with and learn from other organizations.

You do this through concisely answering Charting Impact’s Five Questions: Continue Reading…

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Involving everyone in strategic thinking

October 18, 2010 — Leave a comment

[T]he greater the sum total of strategic thinking and thinkers in the organisation the more readily and effectively it can respond to and take advantage of the vast array of changes occurring in today’s … environment.

—Iraj Tavakoli and Judith Lawton1

How can this strategic thinker use everyone's input? Photo: iStockphoto

Can an organization’s entire staff and its stakeholders think strategically even when individuals don’t have the necessary competencies? Yes. Leaders can aid their own strategic thinking and foster it in others by compensating for individual deficiencies. They can use small pictures, free people from distractions, and keep data in the room.

Why involve people outside the leadership circle at all? Why consult your staff and your stakeholders? Darden Graduate School of Business Professor Jeanne Liedtka writes, “[F]ar-sighted leaders are finding ways to make planning processes more open, creative, and inclusive and, in the process, are linking strategic thinking and strategic planning more powerfully.”2 Strategy writers long have urged organizations to seek input from staff closest to the stakeholders, but why bother with that extra layer when you can reach stakeholders directly with a One-Day Consensus Conference?

The strategic thinking leader draws as many people into her or his organization’s strategic thinking as possible. But strategic thinkers have competencies not everyone in the organization possesses. The strategic thinker must see the forest and the trees, focus intently on goals, and think experimentally. We can look at each of the competencies to see how we can involve people who don’t have them—and discover that in doing so, we make the strategic thinking leader’s job easier. The strategic thinker’s competencies are:3 Continue Reading…

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Should the board chairperson facilitate strategic planning?

October 9, 2010 — Leave a comment
A man dressed in a suit holds markers and points to a flipchart while two women and two men watch.

This board chairperson should not be facilitating the strategic planning meeting. Photo: iStockPhoto.com

A board I lead wrote its last strategic plan in 2003, and several members think (rightly) we should get moving on updating our strategy, given we’re, oh, two and a third three-year planning cycles overdue. (Say that three times fast.) So several board members have asked me, the chairperson who’s conveniently also a consultant, to design and facilitate a strategic planning process. This gives me an excuse to pose the question: Should the board chairperson facilitate strategic planning?

No. The board chairperson should not facilitate strategic planning because doing so:

  • Cheats the board;
  • Hurts the organization; and
  • Silences the chairperson.

Continue Reading…

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How to think strategically at every meeting

September 27, 2010 — Leave a comment
The cover of the book, "Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations"

According to the book on strategic planning, your planning efforts are wasted if you don't constantly think strategically.

At every meeting attendees should think and talk about how each agenda item advances the organization’s strategic plan. John M. Bryson, who wrote the book on strategic planning, says your periodic planning efforts are wasted if you don’t think strategically about them—constantly.

To achieve this strategic thinking, leaders need to make time in agendas packed with reports and other material that wastes the time and/or pay of those present. Here’s how:

Agenda: Allocate half the allotted time to strategic thinking, which involves doing three things in the context of each of your strategic plan items:

  1. Asking questions to identify and clarify problems
  2. Finding new ways to think about opportunities and challenges
  3. Drawing on the possibly hidden knowledge and talents of your colleagues and stakeholders

Continue Reading…

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What’s needed for strategic planning success?

September 1, 2010 — Leave a comment

John M. Bryson’s case studies of successful strategic planning in a school district, a community nonprofit, and a government agency in his book Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations revealed 10 keys to success:

  1. A process sponsor who endorses and legitimizes the effort.
  2. A process champion committed to making the process work.
  3. Among key decision makers, understanding of strategic planning and what to expect from it.
  4. Continue Reading…
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