When we launch into a strategic planning process, the intent is to listen to stakeholders; renew the commitment of and to our board members, staff, donors, and those we serve; realign and reinforce the organization’s focus on a shared set of goals and vision for the future; assign a degree of accountability to the goals by attaching metrics to objectives for staff to reach; and then package these expectations within a certain time frame (often three to five years) in which we hope to accomplish most of them.

Strategic planning provides the illusion of certainty. All of the components of traditional strategic planning make sense in an environment that is static and predictable. But in a world where change is the new normal and uncertainty is ever increasing, the traditional way we plan for the future often creates unintended waste and disappointing outcomes which we simply sweep under the rug in our next round of planning.

We need a new method and skills to lead our organizations.

We need a strategic planning process that:

1. Doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but in the reality and context of all of our stakeholders
2. Acknowledges the mountain of assumptions that underlie every key performance indicator and strategic goal
3. Differentiates our lofty goals into what we know we can achieve, from what we have less certainty of how to accomplish

We truly believe in the adage, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, but we have seen traditional strategic planning processes institutionalize unrecognized forms of failure such as waste, inefficiency, and “results” that produce little or no value.

1. How do we create a plan that fits within the context of our current reality?

It is common for organizations to create a strategic planning committee. The committee may perform a SWOT analysis, craft questions, conduct interviews and focus groups, clump what they hear into key themes, craft an elegant breakdown of vision, goals, and objectives (SMART or not), and then connect these to dashboards of tasks and timelines. What is fascinating is that this committee, in order to accomplish its goal of crafting the plan, often works outside of the day-to-day business (and busyness). In other words, the process is often disconnected from what is currently happening.

If you work in an organization like every single organization with which we’ve ever worked, you feel as though you have no time, no money, not enough staff, weak strategic direction and engagement, fuzzy impact metrics, and more to do on your plate than you can even fit. If this is the case and significant time and money are being invested in this exciting reimagining of your work, when do you pause to consider how this new plan will connect with existing work? What happens when the plan brings up a fantastic new opportunity, priority, or strategic direction? What happens when the strategic planning process surfaces that an existing program is ineffective? How do you spin up something new or wind something down when the reality of your day-to-day work is mismatched with the vision of the next three to five years? We used to think that strategic plans sat on shelves because they lacked integrated dashboards and accountability, but now we often see that they sit on shelves because they read like fairy tales that no one has time for in their busy and overwhelming days.

Just as we fall under the spell of the illusion of certainty, we fall into a blurred reality that ignores that “the plan” is part of the context of our existing culture, current work, and staff capacity. We feel strongly that before we engage in strategic planning we need to engage in current work prioritization and analysis. Before we envision what could be possible, it is important that we analyze what is, and make space for how new potential work could be integrated into peoples’ already full plates. In addition, if after talking to key stakeholders, our priorities change, staff in most cases cannot stop existing work, so it is key to consider transition plans and implications for discontinuation.

2. What happened to the last plan?

Most people see new strategic plans as a fresh start for their organization, a new opportunity “to get it right”. The old plan may still live on as a link on the website and on the shared drive, but it is quickly replaced by the new plan that we are so proud to share.

But what happened in the past three to five years? Did everything happen as we predicted and measured? Again, if your organization is like every single organization with which we have ever worked, probably not. But like most organizations, you may have felt partially dissatisfied, hired a new consultant team, and geared up for the next process. When things don’t work as we expect we don’t want to talk about it, share it widely or highlight it in any way, especially if we are entering a hopeful, new, “what could be possible” phase. Sadly, what is lost when we do this is learning, very powerful learning that could help us understand the why behind our successes and failures. How do we build a new plan that will be successful if we have not fully processed our last plan?

It is imperative to analyze the goals, objectives, and metrics that were set forth in previous plans and understand why goals fell short or why they worked so smoothly. Interviewing staff is a great place to start in order to hear their impressions about what happened. Staff often will not openly share that they see the new plan as a fairy tale (just like the last one), that hopefully will be implemented by someone other than them who has more time and receives more pay. What they will share is often what they see as the disconnection points between the plan and their reality. In this setting of potential mismatched expectations and outcomes, how can we expect buy-in from staff that were part of implementing the last plan, and that saw some of the less than successful results? How are they to trust and buy-in to the new plan if they saw that the old one simply disappeared?

It is very important, before asking people what their vision for the future would be, to deeply understand what happened (and didn’t) in the past three to five years. Understanding where we have been and what was in our way can highlight core and foundational opportunities for change that exist within the organization. What surfaces can be addressed before we set ourselves up for additional expectations of a new strategic plan. If we want to invest time and money in creating our plan, don’t we want the foundation on which we activate it to be fertile and prepared?

3. What can we pull off and what is a mystery?

When we adopt the illusion of certainty, we also often adopt the belief that every element of our plan is entirely possible. It is wrapped up in the intent of the process to dream big and re-imagine the next three to five years. While we love bold and potentially highly impactful goals, not all goals are created equal and tend to fall into one of two categories:

• Execution: These goals are guided and informed by solid evidence, experience, data, and impact that absolutely make sense to include. These are usually existing programs or initiatives in which we know who we are serving, what problem we are solving, how we solve the problem, and how to measure impact. These goals usually involve some incremental innovation or optimization (often seen as less sexy in the strategic planning process), and are the perfect type of goal to apply existing execution skills intended for high-quality project management.
• Search: These goals center around new, bold ideas. They could include working with a new stakeholder group never served before, tackling a problem not yet addressed, or crafting a potential solution that not yet been explored. These goals are exciting and inspiring but also carry a lot of uncertainty and risk.

Unfortunately we do not take the time to differentiate between these two very distinct forms of goals in our plans and we often treat them in the very same manner. We do not pause and challenge ourselves to really examine to what extent the work is unknown and where there is uncertainty. When analyzing their strategic plans, some organizations have found that five out of seven of their major goals are highly uncertain.

Pretending as if all of our goals are equal is dangerous for two reasons:

• We risk creating enormous potential waste trying to execute on a goal that has not been tested and may not be the most impactful solution. In the illusion of certainty, we believe that our goal is sound and our plan to get there just needs to be activated. Instead of experimenting early and making evidence-informed decisions about a goal’s validity in a matter of weeks or months, we instead, monitor the results over three to five years.
• We set our staff up for failure by expecting them to reach assigned key performance indicators and timelines around highly-uncertain projects. When we give staff a highly executable project, they can apply known skills and behaviors to make it happen. They can see the clear path forward and feel confident when they reach the stated goals (and reap the rewards of doing so). When we give staff highly unknown projects without expecting and providing the support and skills in how to efficiently approach the uncertainty, staff use more time and often become stressed, confused, and terrified of potential failure, which ripples through the organization.

If a goal leaves you wondering how you will achieve delivering ultimate value to your stakeholders, then call it out and use different skills to vet and validate its worth.

We need new skills in the sector to address uncertainty and we need new skills in the sector to address strategic planning. The ways in which we currently address problems by assuming we are right, putting our heads down and pushing forward, perhaps made more sense when our work was perceived to be more stable or static. It is very clear that stable and static are rarely part of our current experience and we are in a time of constant flux and change.

What if instead of traditional strategic planning, we:

• Analyzed our current work before introducing our new plans
• Examined the success and failure of our previous plan(s) and addressed cultural and structural opportunities for change to provide a fertile foundation for the future
• Differentiated between goals that are known and uncertain and applied new skills to uncovering how to create maximum value

Working in this new way may seem overwhelming, but the secret is simply to pause, ask new questions, put assumptions to the test, and use learning to increase our confidence and guide our way. When we embrace new ways to craft a strategic plan that are based upon realistic opportunities that are vetted, validated, and evidence-informed, we will be set up for ultimate success and resource maximization.

We love to discuss this topic and help organizations find a way forward. Contact us and share your strategic plan process (and potential conundrums).