Strategic Planning: Creating a Process of Becoming

Should the goal of a strategic planning process be to create an inspiring vision, establish an environment rooted in positivity, and emphasize strengths - or to identify and fix problems, thereby creating a robust and impervious organizational model?

The Nonprofit Strategy Group favors the first of these approaches. Planning sessions based on this approach generate engagement, creativity, excitement, and commitment. These ingredients create a positive organizational culture and a business plan that invites ownership by team members.

By contrast, the “problem-fixing” approach to strategic planning tends to embrace the idea that an organization should run like a finely tuned engine. The goal from this perspective is to achieve a state of being in which the organization will always perform at an optimal level, and the team’s responsibility is to maintain that level of functioning. If something misfires, it is time to get around the table and problem-solve.

Both of these approaches are vulnerable to the human impulse to embrace permanence. The idea of permanence is attractive to us humans because it provides us with a sense of security. It is as if we can understand the world better if it is permanent. This is why people are sometimes fearful of change and seek to avoid it.  The structures we build mirror our deep-seated apprehensions. Attempts to create a permanent organizational model fail because they do not embrace change.

Progressive approaches to strategic planning can similarly fail. The fear of change might not have been present during the planning process, but it can manifest itself in a rigid set of goals and accountability measures. Such goals and accountability measures are also an attempt to avoid change by predicting and trying to control events for the next three to five years.

Both approaches can result in static thinking.

Given the dynamic world in which we live, the most powerful question to ask is “Who do we want to become?” That question is pertinent to us as individuals and members of an organization. This is not a question to be asked every five years - but constantly; at the board table, at staff meetings, and with volunteers. Doing so establishes a creative environment that anticipates and creates change. 

This calls for a more flexible approach to strategic planning. We still need a framework - a common understanding of meaning and purpose - but one that is true to the dynamic world in which we live. The following suggestions are intended as a way to further this conversation:

Strategic planning: What do we want the organization to become? This is why visioning exercises are so important to planning processes. What better to base that vision on than an organization’s strengths and accomplishments? The starting point is not to identify and solve problems but to identify what works and build upon that. You can get some good data from constituents to help with that. 

Staff supervision: Similarly, staff are accountable to rigid goals and deliverables. The truth is that the future is unknown, so rigid goals do not work. The question “Have you succeeded (or failed) to achieve your goals is akin to traditional testing in the education system. It is based on a pass/fail mentality which is so endemic in our culture. In supervision sessions, try using questions such as, “What have you discovered through your work recently?” or “What opportunities are you aware of that will help us to evolve?”

Building a positive culture: The question “What do we want this organization to become?” is inherently conducive to team-building, creativity, and engagement. It stimulates positive dialogue, it is inclusive, and it creates synergy.

 Goals, action items, and implementation plans are constructs that we hope will guide us along the way toward the vision. But it is the process that is important – the process of becoming. Recognition of this orients us to being forward thinking, to embracing change, and drawing upon our strengths.