Tag Archive - strategic planning

Why I’m recommending Charting Impact to my client partners

June 22, 2011 in Cause Organizations, Strategic Planning with 0 Comments

The Charting Impact logo.Here’s a promising activity for your nonprofit board’s next strategic thinking agenda slot:

  1. Write down what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and how you know you’re making real change.
  2. Get a reality check from your stakeholders on the above.
  3. Publish the results for the whole world to see and compare with other nonprofit organizations.

Scary? Not at all, thanks to a new(er) and free resource from the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, GuideStar and Independent Sector: Charting Impact.

Charting Impact is a common framework for strategic thinking and a way to share with stakeholders the change you’re making. According to Diana Aviv, president and CEO of Independent Sector, it’s simple, elegant, easy to understand, and anyone can use it. Charting Impact:

  • Encourages people to invest their money, time, and attention in effective organizations.
  • Helps your organization highlight the difference you make.
  • Helps your organization sharpen your approaches to making a difference.
  • Positions your organization to work with and learn from other organizations.

You do this through concisely answering Charting Impact’s Five Questions: Continue Reading…

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Involving everyone in strategic thinking

October 18, 2010 in Strategic Planning with 0 Comments

[T]he greater the sum total of strategic thinking and thinkers in the organisation the more readily and effectively it can respond to and take advantage of the vast array of changes occurring in today’s … environment.

—Iraj Tavakoli and Judith Lawton1

How can this strategic thinker use everyone's input? Photo: iStockphoto

Can an organization’s entire staff and its stakeholders think strategically even when individuals don’t have the necessary competencies? Yes. Leaders can aid their own strategic thinking and foster it in others by compensating for individual deficiencies. They can use small pictures, free people from distractions, and keep data in the room.

Why involve people outside the leadership circle at all? Why consult your staff and your stakeholders? Darden Graduate School of Business Professor Jeanne Liedtka writes, “[F]ar-sighted leaders are finding ways to make planning processes more open, creative, and inclusive and, in the process, are linking strategic thinking and strategic planning more powerfully.”2 Strategy writers long have urged organizations to seek input from staff closest to the stakeholders, but why bother with that extra layer when you can reach stakeholders directly with a One-Day Consensus Conference?

The strategic thinking leader draws as many people into her or his organization’s strategic thinking as possible. But strategic thinkers have competencies not everyone in the organization possesses. The strategic thinker must see the forest and the trees, focus intently on goals, and think experimentally. We can look at each of the competencies to see how we can involve people who don’t have them—and discover that in doing so, we make the strategic thinking leader’s job easier. The strategic thinker’s competencies are:3 Continue Reading…

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Should the board chairperson facilitate strategic planning?

October 9, 2010 in Strategic Planning with 0 Comments

A man dressed in a suit holds markers and points to a flipchart while two women and two men watch.

This board chairperson should not be facilitating the strategic planning meeting. Photo: iStockPhoto.com

A board I lead wrote its last strategic plan in 2003, and several members think (rightly) we should get moving on updating our strategy, given we’re, oh, two and a third three-year planning cycles overdue. (Say that three times fast.) So several board members have asked me, the chairperson who’s conveniently also a consultant, to design and facilitate a strategic planning process. This gives me an excuse to pose the question: Should the board chairperson facilitate strategic planning?

No. The board chairperson should not facilitate strategic planning because doing so:

  • Cheats the board;
  • Hurts the organization; and
  • Silences the chairperson.

Continue Reading…

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