Turn These Three Fears About Strategic Planning into Opportunities

It is common for leaders to feel some apprehension about undertaking a strategic planning process, nevertheless, in many cases these initial worries can become opportunities. Here are three fears we frequently hear and how we recommend overcoming them. 

Fear: “We are already overloaded with serving our mission day-to-day. How will I make time for working on a strategic plan on top of everything else? Our team would be totally overwhelmed if I asked them to take on one more thing!” 

Opportunity: In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey writes about the importance of working on the highly important and non-urgent issues. Strategic planning falls in this category. Strategic planning will never knock on your door urgently, however, it is an extremely important activity for a successful organization to engage in. It enables an organization to most effectively make use of its resources, overcome obstacles, and seize opportunities to achieve its mission all while engaging and inspiring staff, board, clients, funders, and partners in its important work. With a clear strategic plan in place, the day-to-day overwhelm decreases because you and your team have clarity about who you are as an organization, and on what priorities you should (and shouldn’t) focus.

Despite the additional work of strategic planning, nonprofit staff frequently note during the planning process how inspiring, connecting, and reassuring it is to them to zoom out and work with their colleagues on addressing broader organizational challenges and creating the future of their organization.

Fear: “Staff and board will be frustrated or angry if we ask for their input into the plan, but then we don’t adopt and follow every idea they propose.” 

Opportunity: People typically desire the opportunity to be included and heard even when it may not be possible to implement all their ideas. We start every strategic planning process with clear decision rules, so that everyone knows how and when decisions will be made. With clear expectations in place, staff, board, and other constituents can freely express ideas that can be considered for the plan, understanding that while all ideas will be thoughtfully considered and engaged with in a collaborative prioritization process, not all ideas may ultimately be adopted. Even so, staff and board members experience greater engagement with the organization’s work from the inclusive process. 

Fear: “If we have a written plan in place, then we will be constrained and won’t be able to respond to new opportunities or adapt to new ideas not explicitly written in the plan.”

Opportunity: As the world evolves, so should your strategic plan. Your strategic plan provides insights into your organization’s core strengths and identity — and a roadmap for priorities in the years ahead. It is not a rigid instruction manual for each step to take and when, but rather a guide that can change as the environment and circumstances change. While clients implement their plan, we recommend they hold at least an annual session with the board, strategic planning committee, and/or full staff to evaluate how the plan goals and strategies still reflect the organization’s priorities and circumstances, and then adapt the plan as required to fit the organization’s needs at that time.

What DEIBA Means to Us and How We Center It in the Strategic Planning Process

Diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and accessibility and disability justice (DEIBA) are important to our firm, as well as each of our individual team members. Drawing from our own lived experiences and trusted sources such as Racial Equity Tools, Equity in the Center, the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, and Creating Accessible Neighborhoods (CAN), over time our team has collaboratively defined what these principles mean to us:

• Diversity: The presence of people with different experiences, identities, and perspectives. 

• Equity: The guarantee of fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups. 

• Inclusion: An environment where all feel welcomed, involved, connected, respected, supported, and valued to fully participate and bring their full, authentic selves. 

• Belonging: Belonging is what happens as a result of inclusion. Belonging means more than just having access, it means having a meaningful voice and the opportunity to participate in the design of political, social, and cultural structures. 

• Accessibility and Disability Justice: No matter their ability or experience, people have equitable access and self-determination; institutions not only make space for difference, but they expect and embrace it.

We believe it is important to center DEIBA in the strategic planning process and the plan itself. Below are some of the ways we do this when guiding clients through strategic planning:

• Understanding the history and context of the organization’s current diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts

• Designing an inclusive and diverse strategic planning committee (as we’ve written about here)

• Prioritizing people directly impacted by the organization’s work when conducting research and engaging and guiding committee members to conduct interviews and focus groups

• Facilitating conversations that ask committee members to intentionally consider how DEIBA will be intertwined in their priorities, goals, and strategies

• Centering DEIBA in our facilitation methods, including balancing voices in the room and using different methods to raise the voices of those who are less represented or have less hierarchical power

• Applying an equity-grounded lens to strategic plan development and uplifting possible solutions to promote positive impact

How do you center DEIBA in your organizational planning? We’d love to hear about it. 

Executive Directors and CEOs: Share Your Perspectives with your Teams

Executive directors and CEOs frequently confide in us that they worry about speaking their minds with their staff and boards. They worry about silencing other people’s alternative ideas, dominating the conversation, or having too much influence on decisions. These are very understandable feelings, especially given the work these leaders are doing to center equity, advance social justice, and build power and community among their staff and constituents. 

Nevertheless, we advise executive directors and CEOs to speak up and share their views. You have a unique, big-picture perspective that staff and board count on hearing. Moreover, inspiring the conversation with the CEO’s insights helps create a shared knowledge base that the whole team can use as a starting point for further discussion. 

This is especially true in matters where the CEO, from their particular vantage point, may have gathered enough information to form a position. We recommend you share this upfront — rather than asking for opinions on something you’ve already shaped a perspective about — while also inviting push back, edits, and alterations. 

Communicating your nonprofit’s strategy and vision is a central and unique role of a CEO and doing so keeps people energized and motivated. Also, staff like hearing from their leaders about a vision for the future and appreciate hearing their thinking.

So executive directors and CEOs, speak up and share your views, then invite your team to collaboratively make adjustments and build together from there! 

Reading for Leading Change

We recommend these recent articles as you seek out new inspiration and innovative approaches to nonprofit leadership and social impact.

 “Bake A Difference”: Unpacking the Real Needs of Nonprofits in Just One Animated Video

Despite significant discourse debunking the nonprofit overhead myth and shedding light on the nonprofit starvation cycle, unfortunately these dynamics are still going strong in the nonprofit sector. A majority of our clients struggle with grants and government contracts that do not include cost of living adjustments, fail to cover the full costs of delivering services, and do not support them to pay their staff sustainable salaries — and simultaneously many individual donors expect them to keep overhead low. In this two-minute video, Voice for Social Good demonstrates why nonprofits need support for infrastructure, not just direct services. Just like a loaf of delicious bread, the ingredients don’t bake themselves! 

Facilitating Through Hard Moments: Synthesize, Slow Down, and Shift

As facilitators ourselves, we know that facilitating a group is an art! This article from CompassPoints of View includes helpful tips for meaningful and effective meetings, whether you’re leading your own meetings or working with a professional facilitator.

What have you read lately that helped you lead your organization? We’d love to hear about it.

Who to Include in Strategic Planning:How to Build Your Strategic Planning Committee

A strategic planning committee shepherds the strategic planning process, conducts research to inform the plan, and develops drafts of the plan while engaging and incorporating input from internal and external constituents in the process. While it doesn’t typically decide on the strategic plan, the committee decides on the recommendations to make to the organization’s board of directors. Forming a small group of diverse thinkers to shepherd the planning process and engage input from everyone else supports an effective, inclusive, and meaningful planning process. 

We often get asked by clients who should serve on the strategic planning committee. We work collaboratively with our clients to answer this question for each organization. 

First and foremost in the planning process, we want to focus on the people directly impacted by the organization’s work, including as members of the planning committee. 

In addition, other important people to consider involving are:

• People representing all kinds of diversity, such as: 

  • different levels of the organization, including the board, executive leadership, managers, and direct service staff

  • different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and ages 

  • a variety of skills and subject matter expertise, which may include finance, development, program, and especially skills related to the organization’s core strategic questions

• People who are able to look at the organization and its ecosystem holistically and take a strategic perspective

• An emerging leader or two who would benefit from a leadership opportunity and who you want to get oriented on the holistic work of the organization

• People who are good problem solvers and who work well on a team