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Facilitating Conversations on Collaboration

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In my last post I asserted that the nonprofit organizations of tomorrow are being born out of the economic crisis of today.  In this current economic turmoil, there are many voices counseling the nonprofit world to increase “collaboration.” Unfortunately, many of these experts are using “collaboration” as euphemism for “merger and acquisition.”  However, unlike the opinions of these non-prophets (pun intended), I believe that the organizational tempering is less about “merger and acquisition” and more about vision, leadership, agility and innovation.  As a new operational model, authentic collaboration  needs to be grounded in sovereignty, aspiration, innovation and brought to life as a concrete operating strategy.  In this post, I wanted to outline what I consider to be the provocative questions that nonprofits (and nonprofit boards) need to consider before pursuing formal collaborations with other agencies.

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What are we trying to achieve through collaboration?  A first question that informs a discussion of collaboration is the fundamental question of outcome.  The expert perspective that “there are too many nonprofits,” may suffice as an efficiency justification for encouraging collaboration but for the individual agency struggling with the question of collaboration, efficiency is but one variable.  A nonprofit must clearly identify the drivers of collaboration.  The heart of the question is twofold.  First is a consideration of where an agency wants to be compared to where it is now.  In other words, what is the performance gap that needs to be closed?  The second question asks if collaboration is among the best ways to close the gap (systems-thinking knows that there is usually more than one “best way”).

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I would like to suggest that the question of outcome requires an agency to explore three dimensions of organization practice including its: Operating, Resource, and Social Impact models.  In the resources listed below,  I link to a couple of business planning documents that all discuss these three dimensions of practice.  Such and exploration ideally includes both inquiry and reflection.

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Resource Model: The current economic crisis sets up the  false dichotomy of a “merge or die” line of thinking.  “Our budget is shrinking, should we merge?” is one way to approach the question.  However, implicit in this approach is a scarcity mentality –namely, that there isn’t enough money to go around.  Illustrating this, I was recently talking to a colleague who made the blanket statement that he would “not encourage any agency to launch ambitious new plans in this economy.”  Scarcity thinking is one way to approach the resource model conversation but such an approach often misses larger conversations.  For example, I know an organization with heavy revenue concentration from stable long-term government grants.  It is also an agency that has a large number of volunteers, whom have never been asked for donations.  In the context of three straight years of government budget cuts, the stability of the organization was incrementally being threatened.  By revisiting the resource model of the agency, the decision was made to a build new revenue stream based on small individual donations. Two years into the plan the organization is on track to reinvent its resource development model.

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Operating Model: A second inquiry and reflection exercise is to consider an organization’s operating model.  Are services delivered effectively?  Can the system of operations be reconceived?  Such a conversation does not question the program strategy of an agency but looks for operating efficiencies. Conversations might focus, for example, on the value of collaboration to create “back office” efficiencies or the value of sharing space.

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Social Impact Model: the third conversation that informs the question of “what do we want to achieve?” is the conversation of social impact.  Here a group examines the heart of the organization through the lens of impact.  I can think of more than one nonprofit agency that has reinvented its programs and services to create a larger impact (or the same impact more efficiently).  Here is the greatest need for inquiry and reflection and, in my opinion, it is from this dimension of organizational practice where the best collaborative decisions are made.

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What are the models of collaboration?  Following inquiry and reflection, an agency needs to explore the various models of collaboration (and inherent philosophies of each).  In another post,  I identified five models of collaboration that serve as a good working outline of models.  (In the resources section below I reference a study documenting eight models). Too often groups think in polar opposites.  Merge and “go it alone” are simply two points on a scale of collaboration.  A thoughtful discussion of other collaborative models will help in articulating a collaboration strategy.

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What is the due diligence process associated with our collaboration? A third component of the strategic conversation around collaboration is to create a roadmap for exploring a specific collaboration model.  Making process a part of the initial conversation can help an organization get a clear picture of the scope of work, timeline and resources required to support the development of collaborative partnerships.  As with most organizational change efforts, developing collaborative relationships is subject to the old adage of: “fast, cheap, done correctly –chose any two.”   Collaboration, done correctly, takes dedicated resources of time and money and generally the faster you want it to happen the larger the costs.

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What does the collaboration process look like?  The final component of the collaboration conversation is to be visually clear about what the entire collaboration process looks like.    I have also written before about describing process from the perspective of visual learning.  In mapping out a process of collaboration, creating a visual understanding can assist an organization build a shared image of the change ahead. However, even if an organization chooses not to visually represent the plan, there needs to be a written workplan developed with clear milestones and markers of success along the way.

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Collaboration exists on many levels in organizations.  As this post is a  follow up to my last post, it is important to recognize that I am referencing collaboration that can fundamentally change the fabric of an organization.  Change that can lead to sharing space, affiliation or even merger is a deep process and is not the equivalent of collaborating with other agencies on a community event.  Embarking on the process of inter-agency collaboration is a major undertaking for any organization and carries with it the weight of seismic organizational change.  Facilitating collaboration requires more than simply running a good meeting and requires the thoughtful attention to inquiry, reflection, and process.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Resources:

The Process of Social Entrepreneurship: creating opportunities worthy of serious pursuit

Business Planning for Enduring Social Impact

Models of Collaboration Nonprofit Organizations Working Together

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Facilitating Nonprofit Strategy in Economic Uncertainty

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I recently read, yet one more so-called expert advice column promoting the ultimatum of “merge” or “die” as the pathway for many nonprofits. In this iteration, the ultimatum arises out of the knee jerk reaction caused by the recent economic downturn. Citing duplication of service and competition for scarce resources, some foundations, philanthropists and many in the nonprofit consulting industry are becoming almost evangelical about the merger and acquisition strategy for social sector organizations.  For example, the leader of one organization that provides training and support to Oregon nonprofits made the statement that perhaps their agency “should serve as birth control for nonprofits,” adding that there are so many nonprofits and that money is scarce.  I agree that there are a fair number of nonprofits with bad business models and that even many stronger nonprofits have been severely damaged by the economic chaos of the last couple of years.  As I have posted elsewhere, I also agree that collaboration, at some level, is appropriate an appropriate strategic conversation for many nonprofit organizations.   However, having external funding agencies, philanthropists and a consulting industry pressuring nonprofits to either merge or acquire as “birth control” is, at best, narrow and unimaginative and, at worse, self-serving and bullying behavior. We would never think of being as paternalistic to “for profit” companies as we are towards social service agencies.

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While economic concerns among nonprofits are real and there are duplicative agencies competing for scarce resources, the driver for collaboration can’t be reduced to economics alone.  Economic solvency is a lazy marker for effectiveness or impact and to impose collaboration based on economics alone is misguided. Just as in the private sector, success for social sector agencies is determined by a combination of products or services, leadership, agility and capital.  Designing a facilitation process with nonprofit agencies facing financial challenges should not begin with the condescending assertion that merger is the assumed pathway. Rather, catalytic facilitation includes a multi-dimensional exploration of capital in the context of products or services, leadership, and agility.  I would like to suggest several guiding principles for facilitating such a process.

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Sovereignty:  In working with any organization, the spirit of sovereignty must be respected and embraced in the change process. Organizations in the midst of fiscal challenges need to be empowered from the strength of their sovereignty. While I believe that empowerment is a foundation of my consulting practice, empowerment becomes the dominant frame in a process might include as an outcome a collaboration that alters an agency’s autonomy.

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Aspiration: During times of fiscal challenge many organizations default to a “circle the wagon strategy ” where decisions are made from the framework of enduring the financial assault.  Unfortunately, this is precisely when the message of “merge or die” is often introduced from some “sage” consultant. In reality, the most helpful process to an agency is not an ultimatum to merge but is a process that  that focuses on aspirations. Economic challenges should cause an organization to refocus on mission and vision.  Considering the question of “why were we called to exist” can re-energize an organization to positively rethink the foundations of strategy and social impact.  Spending time on the aspirational question of “why” is critical as a precursor to considering any pathway to cope with economic challenges.

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Catalytic Innovation: I have been doing a fair amount of reading on the concept of “catalytic change” for social service organizations (see a couple resources below).  A key question of this emerging body of literature is “how can we create a strategy that achieves measurable impact?”  Implied in that question is looking for the second and third right answer and thinking bigger. The challenges imposed by economics are really opportunities to rethink “how” the “why” is implemented.  Spending time in the space of “how we get to the why” breeds innovation. The interests of convention, power and assumption that are united to say, “merge or die”  chokes the possibility of  innovation.

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Alternative Reality: I started out this post lamenting the over-simplistic “merge or die” advice being metered out nonprofits and suggest that agencies in the midst of economic turmoil need to take the opportunity to go deep within their core competencies to find their own solution.  However, in community organizing there is the old saying that “the price of success is a constructive alternative” and so the final step of the reflection and planning process is the creation of a thoughtful alternative plan.  Intentional planning for how an organization will move forward while under economic siege requires leadership, vision and boldness as well as tactical and measurable action plans.

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The organizations of tomorrow are being born out of the economic challenges of today.  The dominant voices argue that the organizations of tomorrow are those who are merging and acquiring today. I would argue that successful organizations of tomorrow are already visioning tomorrow and allowing the economic challengesof today to temper their core competencies of leadership, agility and innovation as they create their own future.  In this context there is a need for catalytic facilitation and process to help social sector organizations, thoughtfully reflect, plan and move confidently forward to create a more civil society.

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Resources:

Disruptive Social Change

Catalytic Philanthropy

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Facilitating Models of Social Impact

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I will confess that I am a visual learner.  I like to not only see the big picture but to be able to draw it as well.  This inclination towards a visual process has served me well in facilitation.  In fact, I have staked out the position that visual learning is a critical facilitation skill.  Recently, I have been thinking about the use of visuals to convey Social Impact. If asked, how many agencies could draw a clear relationship between  the programs and services they offer  and the social impact that is created as a result of what they do? While visualizing social impact may seem like a fairly simple concept it is under-utilized as a tool to communicate the core social change embedded in the mission, vision, programs and services of organizations.

Recently, I have been working on several projects that involve helping agencies articulate a plan for growth and sustainability.  None of these groups have visual models of impact and it becomes a powerful exercise to help these teams create a visual representation of their social impact. While there are likely many paths to creating a visual social impact model, I would like to outline four models to introduce the concept.

Pathway Model:  One of the more generic processes of creating a social impact model is to describe the pathway between the current reality and the future vision. For example, if an agency envisioned a community where 80% of children are reading at grade level in 5th grade and the current statistic was that only 66% of students met that benchmark a pathway approach would anchor 66% of kids at one end and 80% of kids at the other end.  The facilitator would then lead the group through an open-ended conversation to describe what happens between those anchor points as the pathway steps that would close the gap.  If facilitated well, creating such a pathway would reveal if there is capacity in the agency to create the desired social impact. The weakness of a generic pathway model is that it is open-ended and prone to subjectivity because it does not lock groups into thinking in a structured cause-to-effect process.

Logic Model: While somewhat academic, developing a logic model is an excellent way to visualize social impact. One of the reasons a logic model works well is that it offers a framework for working sequentially from resources to impact.  Here is a link to an excellent guide on creating logic models developed by the WK Kellogg Foundation. Developing a logic model starts with creating the linear categories of: Input, Activities, Outputs, Outcomes, and Impact.  The facilitation process can start with either end of the continuum and moving either forward or backwards.  So if your Impact vision is that 80% of 5th grade children reading at grade level, then the first backward question is “What Outcomes do you need to see as milestones towards that Impact?” Outcomes that support the impact might include improved test scores, policies changed, number of school institutionalizing programs.  Moving one more step back to Outputs, the group would then describe the service delivery indicators that could cause the Impact. Output indicators might be such things as the number of children participating in programs, number of parents being engaged in the process, etc.  Further back, Activities describe what the organization does to cause the Outputs and, further back still, the Resources describe the assets that the agency has to dedicate to the task.  Conversely drawing a logic model can start with Resources and move forward to Impact.  Logic models work as a visual orientation because it forces a team or an agency to consider the relationship between resources and impact.  Are the resources adequate to produce the activities, outputs and outcomes that create the desired impact?  If not then the choices are to either scale back the impact or increase the resources dedicated to the change effort.

Outcome Mapping:  Another model for visualizing social impact is an outcome map. Similar to a logic model an outcome map sequentially considers the organizational process from strategies to impact.  A useful guide on creating an Outcome map comes out of Organizational Research Services’ experiences evaluating an Annie E. Casey Foundation projects. One difference between using outcome mapping and a logic model is that outcome mapping has been used extensively to describe social impact in the context of community driven processes. Outcome mapping is better tailored to encourage full participation of stakeholders and the community.  An excellent in-depth exploration of a community and participatory approach to outcome mapping can be found at the International Development Research Centre.

Social Impact Model™ A fourth visual representation of Social Impact can be found in the trademarked model of describing social impact that was developed by Root Cause.  The Root Cause model, bridges the gap between problem and solution through the clear representation of the Strategies and underlying Operational Model iteratively informed by clear Social and Economic Indicators and Organizational and Performance Indicators.  A full description of the Social Impact Model is found at the Root Cause website.

The point of outlining four models for describing social impact is not to suggest one approach over another or to prescribe how visualizing social impact “must” be done.  The purpose is to introduce several models that can frame the concept of making explicit the connection between the mission, vision, and program structure of an organization and the Social Impact of the organization.  In an age of accountability and the focus on outcomes and change, organizations need to be able to clearly articulate what social impact they influence or cause.  Finally, while describing social impact may appear to be a “nonprofit” concern, the increasing focus of private sector companies on a “double” or “triple” bottom line suggests that describing social impact is a model for any social enterprise.

It is my belief that the effective organizations of the future are those who are clear about their purpose and their social impact and can draw the picture to illustrate the connection.  As a result, facilitators need to be skilled in the process and visualization required to help organizations create a social impact model.


Advancing Capacity of Organizations: A Strategic Conversation

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In one of the early posts to this blog I offered a taxonomy to help nonprofits think about organizational capacity, resource development planning and fundraising.  In that post I described capacity development as the practice of developing and maintaining staff skills, organizational systems and intellectual and physical resources required to meet your organizational mission. In short, I suggested that capacity building is thinking about what it takes to maintain and build your organization.  I have been working with several organizations on thinking about organizational capacity and thought I would revisit the concept of capacity in a little more detail.

If you do a Google Search on the term organizational capacity you will see that there is not shortage of resources to help organizations think about capacity building (I reference a couple of the most practical resources below). Unfortunately such a search will reveal a couple of things.  First it will show that successful companies invest in infrastructure and capacity as a normal part of doing business.  Second it will show that in the nonprofit world, agencies strive to under-invest in capacity as a way to demonstrate “effectiveness.”  The idea is, “our overhead is low so we must be good.” This disconnect between the “for profit” and nonprofit agency thinking about infrastructure has been described by at least one set of authors as a starvation cycle. In the long-run, it is argued, under-investing in agency capacity is detrimental to any organization, The purpose of this post is not to overview all of the elements of capacity or even discuss how to build capacity but offers a facilitation approach to a strategic conversation about capacity building. What kind of conversation will result in an agency specific plan to develop capacity? While this post is geared towards nonprofits such strategic conversations might have place in commercial ventures as well.

Organizational capacity has the domains of: a) governance, leadership and strategy, b) organizational systems and infrastructure, c) reliable and autonomous funding, d) strategic partnerships, e) evidence based programming, and f) evaluation and outcome systems.  On one level, capacity can be measured using rubrics and other metrics to identify gaps between where an organization is now and where it needs to be.  Philanthropic foundations that fund capacity building efforts often take this quantitative approach.  However, capacity building can rarely be reduced to a “present or absent” checklist. Rather, capacity is better reflected as a strategic conversation that involves, story, aspiration and strategic intention. I would suggest that there are four questions inform a strategic conversation:

Where are the Critical Weaknesses?  While I just suggested that an objective assessment of the capacity portrays an incomplete picture of agency capacity, such an assessment does need to be the starting point of a capacity exploration.  While assessment of an established nonprofit agency might involve a more substantive assessment than is required in assessing a smaller agency, an objective review of capacity domains serves as the baseline understanding that frames the conversation.  In this assessment, agency staff, board and possibly other stakeholders need to engage in frank discussion about critical weaknesses requiring immediate attention.  One can think of any number of critical weaknesses such as a lack of adequate fiscal controls or a lack of HR policies and procedures that could trigger immediate action.

What are the Leverage Points?  A second question reflects on agency capacity and explores what is the leverage effect of focusing capacity building on one single element.  Is there one part of capacity building that can be leveraged to advance the agency’s larger goals?  For example, one agency that I worked with was planning to launch a fundraising campaign targeting small donors.  Prior to implementing the campaign the agency invested in capacity by redesigning its website to make online donations easier.  When the small donations campaign was launched, online donations represented the primary donation method and the revenues exceeded the investment in the website redesign by a large percent.

Where are the Opportunities?   Another component of the critical conversation is to discuss the opportunities that present themselves.  In this challenging economic environment, a discussion of capacity might be a good time to explore concepts of reducing overhead to increase capacity.  Discussions of co-housing agencies or even the big “M word” (merger) might be fair game in the discussion of opportunity. In this case, sharing overhead might actually free up resources to invest in other facets of capacity. For some agencies strategic conversations about capacity resulted from opportunities presented by prospective Federal stimulus dollars.

Where is the Energy and Passion?  A final question that can inform capacity discussions is one that is best answered when the process is opened to the broader community of volunteers and other stakeholders.  By opening the scope of perspectives, the conversation can increase vision, energy and passion.  For example, younger volunteers might use their instinctive technology skills and take the lead on developing a new social media outreach campaign for the agency.  In another example, an executive director told me the story of hosting a capacity building conversation including the agencies that funded them.  The conversation surfaced the fact that one of the funding agencies was going through a department-wide upgrade of computers and because of the conversation the agency decided to donate their older machines to the nonprofit. For a couple hundred dollars to install, configure and network the computers the executive director said it resulted in a significant technology upgrade and standardization of computers for his agency.

With these four framing questions the next step to consider how you structure a strategic conversation about agency capacity.  Hosting a strategic conversation about capacity could neatly fit into a board/staff retreat or a similar block of at least 2-4 hours.  As suggested earlier, while not an end to itself, a capacity needs assessment should be conducted prior to the strategic conversation.  With a block of time dedicated to the task and assessment data complied, a strategic conversation might include the following format.

 

  1. Presentation of the Assessment Data:  Whether you use traditional presentation slides, story telling or other visual representation, it is important that everyone in the team is oriented to where the agency stands now.  The second part of the assessment presentation is to frame the vision of where the agency could or should be.  By presenting where you “are” and “where you want to be” you identify the gap that needs to be filled.

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  2. Reflection and Movement Building:  The second step of the strategic conversation is to create the opportunity for the group to reflect and engage.  While movement building is perhaps an ambitious word to describe this stage, the idea is to not just talk but to create energy and excitement around the potential. This stage might be achieved by a modified scenario planning exercise, appreciative inquiry process, or by using more traditional prioritization exercises.

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  3. Create Strategic Intentions: The third step is to create strategic intentions around capacity. Strategic intentions in this instance ate narrow and focused around the capacity needs and, while in sync with the agency strategic plan, are more likened to key implementation objectives.  The task for this phase of the conversation is to break capacity building into components that can be managed as a whole.  For example, moving from annual fiscal reviews to a formal audit might be one intention and a separate intention might be the development of a donor relationship database. Both together, however, are about improving fiscal management.

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  4. Develop an Implementation Plan: The final stage of the conversation is to develop broad implementation strategies. In this stage, there should be a range of creative strategies developed to achieve the strategic intents.  In some ways the strategies might look more like a brainstorm list than a step-by-step workplan. By having broader implementation plans allows for adaptive management of an array of opportunities.

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  5. Document the Agreements and Plans: As in all group process there needs to be some documentation of the strategic intents and implementation plan. Communication and feedback loops also need to be built into ensure accountability to the plan..

Agency capacity is intimately tied to the long-term growth and success of any venture.  Unfortunately, in the nonprofit world, many organizations have been acculturated to under-invest in capacity.  This cycle needs to be broken.  Capacity building needs to be acknowledged as a core responsibility of nonprofit agency management and all strategy must include the development of strong systems and infrastructure that support the missions of the organization.  Hosting a strategic conversation that results in concrete yet flexible action plan is a major first step to raising awareness of capacity needs.  Such awareness has never been more needed than in these challenging social and economic times. An agency willing to have a strategic conversation about capacity will find that such an investment results in the rewards of a clearer focus and greater infrastucture to carry out one’s organizational mission.

 

In Depth Capacity Assessment tool:  Venture Philanthropy Partners Capacity Assessment Grid

Great qualitative tool for smaller agencies: Tool for Assessing Startup Organizations


Strategic Planning: Building Momentum & Process

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In this series on strategic planning, my goal is to outline principles that inform the development of a strategic planning process.  The first principle is that agencies need to connect the planning process and their organizational culture.  The second principle is that strategic planning must be tied to a clear and specific agenda in order to be beneficial.  In this post the principle of momentum and process is introduced.

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Previously I used the illustration of a new Executive Director of a nonprofit agency who had inherited a series of iterative yet similar strategic plans from her predecessors.  As she and I spoke about these plans it became clear that her need was to create momentum and process for the board and staff around the existing strategic plans rather than creating a new plan. The fallacy of many strategic planning processes, I suggested, is that many agencies treat strategic planning as “an event” or “a product” rather than seeing strategic planning as the launch point for a process that requires momentum and long-term engagement.

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Consider how many strategic plans are developed.  Senior management or the board of an agency decides that a strategic plan needs to be created (typically tied to a three or five year planning cycle). So a retreat is scheduled at some off-site location and everyone is convened.  The goal is to spend a period of time engaged in a facilitated process involving many pages of easel chart paper. Events like these range from an irrational 4 hours to a more rational span of a couple of days. Usually a small team or an external consultant then digests the proceedings and puts them in the context of a document that is launched a couple of weeks later.  The written plan often contains goals and objectives and in some cases maybe even a workplan.  However, it is precisely at this point where more than one strategic plan dies.  The reason for the death is that “the event” is over. When the plan arrives on the desk or in the email box of the staff members, any momentum created in the planning retreat has long since been consumed by the day-to-day work and the plan becomes just one more “data point” competing for time, energy and attention. Raise your hand if this description resonates with you.  Whoa, look at all those hands.  Okay you can put your hands down. How can the process be different?

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As the two previous posts suggest, reflective thinking is required before embarking on strategic planning.  By considering how the strategic planning process will support and reinforce an organizational culture and by focusing the process on a clear strategic agenda, an agency has already set in motion a dynamic that will produce a different kind of strategic plan.  The third reflection that will give a different energy and life to the plan is to carefully consider how your agency will create an “implementation environment” for the plan.  This should not be hard to do because a strategic plan has the embedded DNA of motion and action in the goals, objectives and workplan. While strategic planning is typically based on an assessment and collaborative planning (such as a retreat) an agency needs to also create an intentional process that empowers staff members and provides resources to support the plan implementation.  Here are three ideas for creating process and momentum for strategic planning.

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Share Leadership before the Process: Too often strategic planning is a function owned by the senior staff and/or agency board.  I have observed this even in organizations that otherwise have an egalitarian management style.  Incremental change can be managed narrowly but strategy is inherently a broad, systems-level level function that must be shared.  As the authors of  Forces for Good: The six practices of high impact nonprofits, eloquently observe, that only by giving power away and empowering others do groups develop networks and movements large enough to catalyze widespread social change. One way to create a model of shared leadership is to involve the entire team in the pre-planning process.  Using an appreciative inquiry model or another deliberative dialogue process, all stakeholders should be drawn into the circle of leadership and as the process is planned everyone has a voice and understands that s/he has a stake in the success of the planning process.

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Creating a Shared Space: One powerful way foster momentum and process is to create and facilitate “shared space,” where everyone involved has a place to “gather” and “contribute” to the implementation of the plan.  For example, a couple months ago I was at a meeting at the offices of a small and nimble nonprofit agency.  While the space was cramped one large wall had a large 4’ X 6’ dry erase board that had a series of performance metrics packed with visual tracking diagrams such as a thermometer and a pie chart color coded by month.  The board captured the major operating principles of the agency’s strategic plan and the entire team could update, annotate and collectively track progress towards the goal.  For larger organizations and distributed teams technology might play a significant role (here’s how).

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Resource the Process:  A third idea for helping to create momentum is to fully resource the implementation process. I have seen more than once a company pour a lot of resources into the front-end of the planning process by such things as hiring consultants, hosting off-site planning retreats and developing four-color glossy published documents at the end of the plan but then expect the plan to remain a living, animated document without any additional resources.  Resourcing the implementation of the strategic plan is important to the plan’s success. At a minimum, resources need to include: a) time for staff to devote energy and effort to the implementation process, b) additional staff training or other professional development related to plan implementation, c) creation of feedback loops, and 4) the designation a process facilitator.  Without the time, knowledge, tools, and a facilitator with the authority to keep the team focused, engaged and supported then strategic planning runs a high risk of being a “product” or “event” rather than a process that significantly advances the agenda of your agency.

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Aligning strategic planning with your organizational culture, defining a clear and compelling agenda, and creating structures to support the implementation process are three principles to consider before implementing a strategic plan.  The next post in this series will close the loop by discussing the principle of accountability in strategic planning –  who is accountable, to whom, and for what?

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As always, your comments are welcome.

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