Lyons-Newman Consulting

Strategic planning and facilitation for nonprofit organizations

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

Diverging and Converging — Tools for Human-Centered Design

In our strategic planning processes we collaborate with our clients to identify critical opportunities and obstacles to achieving their mission. We develop a comprehensive set of coordinated actions that work together to seize these opportunities, overcome the obstacles, and advance their mission. The process for doing this involves both diverging and converging. 

We begin by defining strategic questions — meaty business questions or uncertain decision-points facing the organization. Then we diverge. Diverging involves expanding the problem space, listening, reflecting on context and constituents, and brainstorming. After deep reflection and exploration in the diverging process, we then begin to converge. Converging involves refining and sharpening our focus, and making decisions about which paths to take, not take, expand, contract, end, and begin. 

We use design thinking, liberating structures, and facilitation tools to optimize human processes, innovative thinking, and teamwork. For example, we recently conducted a strategy session with founders of the Berkeley-based Chris Kindness Award to creatively explore the organization’s priorities. The design thinking process allowed these leaders to explore a myriad of possible ideas to achieve their vision, including many creative ideas, and then to assess and narrow in on the most strategic priorities. 

Our dynamic human-design-centered process involves intense iteration, community building, and team-building. These are all inextricably intertwined, and it’s inspiring to see the results the process brings for our clients.  

Contact Us:
(415) 845-5259
or email
462 Vincente Ave, Berkeley, CA 94707

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