Strategic Planning and Deployment
The best strategic plans create clarity, direction, and guidance for an organization. The plan acts as an extension of the mission, vision and values and clearly delineates priorities. An effective plan is simple, easy to understand and actionable. How should I be spending my time? The strategic plan helps answer that question. Without this foundation in place, it is common to get caught up in today’s most urgent activities that may not help the organization long-term. Plans should be reviewed, measured, and assessed on a regular basis.
What are we trying to achieve? Where are we now? What are the obstacles to our target?
I can help you answer these questions using facts and data.
Approach
Phase 1: Planning
Plan agenda, attendees, stakeholders, goals, outcomes, logistics, review key data and metrics. Key questions include: What data is available to us to explain the current state of operations? What data exists to tell the story of our accomplishments?
Phase 2: Two-day strategic planning event including all board members, staff, and relevant stakeholders.
Key topics include mission evaluation, current projects, strengths, opportunities, results, and aspirations. The focus will be to identify what is working well in the organization now and how the existing strengths can be leveraged to achieve an even greater impact.
Phase 3: Ongoing Implementation Support for 6 months
Once the planning process is complete, the work of implementation begins.
I will support you in creating a visual management system that clearly displays organizational goals (per strategic plan), along with department-level measures. Weekly meetings will include the process of asking individuals to report on their target condition, actual condition, obstacles and next steps. The goal of the discussion is not accountability in a punitive sense, but to create an atmosphere of learning, experimentation, and iterative improvement. Progress/status will be clearly visible to all staff members thus creating transparency and engagement opportunities.
I will begin by leading these meetings and eventually transition to organizational leadership while I act as coach and support. Implementation support will include two board meetings focused on updates, feedback, and progress towards the strategic plan.