Issue No. 179 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a guidebook and CD-Rom for a “do-it-yourself” strategic planning process—maybe. As Elbert Hubbard wisely observed, “Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of a field in hope that the cow will back up to them.” And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
Tools for Mt. Everest
Einstein reportedly said that “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results.” If you and your team members continue to delude yourself by saying, “THIS is the year we’re going to get serious about a strategic plan…” and you’ve said that year after year after year…well, Einstein has you nailed.
But there’s hope. BoardSource, which claims to have “the world’s largest, most comprehensive selection of materials on nonprofit governance,” has just released the second edition of a basic, yet very helpful guide on strategic planning.
Driving Strategic Planning: A Nonprofit Executive’s Guide (Second Edition), by Susan A. Waechter, is just 71 pages. It’s short enough that you (or your Strategic Plan Point Person) might actually read and use it. I’d buy this resource just for the bonus CD-Rom that comes with the book.
The CD-Rom includes five PowerPoints. Session 1 has 36 slides on “Presenting Strategic Planning: Choosing the Right Method for Your Organization.” It’s excellent for a team meeting or a board meeting—as part of the book’s Phase 1, “Planning to Plan.” It also asks key questions on who should facilitate the process. Should you do it yourself, could a board member guide the process, or should you retain a consultant?
The book divides strategic planning into five phases:
Phase 1: Planning to Plan
Phase 2: Understanding the Context
Phase 3: Agreeing on Purpose and Direction
Phase 4: Moving from Vision to Action
Phase 5: Monitoring Progress
My friend and long-time consultant, David Schmidt of J. David Schmidt & Associates, once gave me some golden counsel. He said that there are multiple ways to climb Mount Everest. Most climbers use a guide. When you select your strategic planning guide (whether in-house, volunteer or outside consultant), empower your guide to use his or her own tools. Every guide will have their own time-tested tools to help you achieve mountain-top success. But you must trust the guide and the guide’s process. Don’t impose your own process or tools on your guide. Just be sure that the desired outcome is crystal clear. Focus on the end result, not the process.
For example, I recommend that organizations create a “rolling 3-year strategic plan” with disciplined quarterly off-site meetings that keep the focus on the annual plan—plus the second and third year—so you’re always looking ahead three years. Other consultants recommend a war room exercise once every three years. The point is to find a process that works for you and produces results. Reminder again: it’s about results, not process.
Peter Drucker said, “Vision without execution is delusion.” If you’re still in the delusional mode, this book might help you move into sanity. Or call or email me about attending my three-day series of workshops on April 29, Sept. 22 and Nov. 15 for “The Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Workshop.”
To order this book from BoardSource, click on this title: Driving Strategic Planning: A Nonprofit Executive’s Guide (Second Edition), by Susan A. Waechter.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Bob Buford, in a recent communiqué, had this: “’When you are lost, how do you find your way back?’ My favorite answer comes from Oxford Don and author of many wise books, C.S. Lewis. When you’ve taken the wrong road, says Lewis, the worst answer is to keep pressing forward. Instead the answer is to reverse course in order to find the intersection where you got off track.” (So today, let’s talk about wrong roads as they relate to our strategic planning process.)
2) Speaking of roads, Roger Staubach said, “There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” What is your unique calling in your organization’s plans for the next three years? Do you have high passion and energy for it?
Listen! Listen! Listen! - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Customer Bucket, Chapter 2, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to research what your customer values. “Listen! Listen! Listen!” This is a critical step in any strategic planning process. It’s one of Peter Drucker’s five critical questions.
The CEO of Estee Lauder Companies, Fabrizio Freda, was interviewed in the “Boss Talk” column of the Wall Street Journal on March 8, 2010. He served previously as president of Procter & Gamble, but in his new role he discovered a management structure that had “encouraged fierce rivalry among executives.” (See…it even happens with the big boys.)
WSJ: “You are investing more in consumer research. Why?”
Mr. Freda: “We don’t want to just do the products that consumers want. We want to be inspired by consumer desires and surprise them with products and services that they don’t expect.”
How will they do this? By greater investment in consumer research. “Listen! Listen! Listen!”
For more resources, click on the Customer Bucket, for a link to 10 book recommendations, including Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy.
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