There’s not much that can prompt as many sighs and eye rolls as the mention of strategic planning. Some of this is because we are so accustomed to the daily grind that we don’t know how to pause, step back and reflect. Another reason is that most strategic planning is horribly done: wordsmithing, exercises in grandiose but unrealistic thinking, acquiescing to groupthink. The concept of strategic planning itself gets thrown out as a result.
Done well, strategic plans can be useful guiding documents for any organization, especially nonprofits who don’t have the almighty dollar as their guiding light. Advocacy organizations are among the first nonprofits to shrug off strategic planning, pointing to the ever-changing political landscape and need to be adaptive as justification. These uncertainties make a solid strategic plan evermore necessary, otherwise organizations are flitting in the wind at the whim of political pressures.
Platform Civic has facilitated several strategic planning processes in the last couple of years and here are a few of the lessons learned along the way…
Spend Time Where It Matters
Strategic plans are a place for setting big goals and not getting too deep into the tactics an organization will use to achieve them. At the end of a strategic planning process, the organization should have a high degree of clarity about its goals, but flexibility about the strategies that will be employed. This leaves room to be responsive to the broader context and shed strategies that are ineffective.
Your strategic planning process should dedicate ample discussion time to the “big picture” of your organization: the vision, mission, and goals. Although these elements don’t require detail and will likely only take up a sliver of your final planning documents, the discussion they represent is critical. If organizations have sufficient clarity about these fundamental reasons for being, they have the tools they need to identify, shed, and adopt strategies in response to changing contexts, lessons learned, and changes in resources.
You know the famous statement that strategic plans should be “living, breathing documents”? It’s absolutely true but not equally applicable across your organization’s plan. Your vision and mission, these are keystones of your organization and should be adhered to. Strategies and action steps can and should be amended often, but with adherence to your vision and mission.
Did It Hurt?
Without a profit-motive to drive their existence, nonprofit organizations are hit by an onslaught of outsized and sometimes competing demands. There are about a million good ideas of services, programs, and enhancements that nonprofits can pursue. Strategic planning processes must face these competing demands and grapple with the trade-offs. A good strategic plan will prioritize among multiple good and worthwhile goals.
These conversations are never fun and will quite likely provoke tense and difficult conversations internally. That doesn’t mean they aren’t worth having. Arriving at some organizational clarity about what is and is not your organizations work to do is a necessary step in producing real change.
For Real?
One of the most common strategic planning missteps is developing an excessively ambitious plan that doesn’t match the financial and human resources of an organization. Are you a team of two? You probably aren’t going to manifest world peace, sorry. This “right-sizing” of a strategic plan to an organization’s infrastructure is difficult to achieve. Being the one in the room poking holes is never fun…killjoy, anyone? And yet, inviting these reality checks into the planning process is critical. An organization that crafts an outsized strategic plan will quickly fall short of its great expectations, creating a major letdown for the team and donors.
Inviting this “reality check” into the strategic planning process is important. At Platform Civic, we’ve found that this conversation is most fruitful when organizations are developing their goals. You want a lofty vision and mission, but by the time you get down to the nitty-gritty of setting measurable goals, your plan should be tempered by a hefty dose of reality.
Ready to get started?
We’ve put together a free action plan template to help kick off your strategic planning.
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