Keeping Your Strategic Plan Adaptable in an Uncertain World

A strategic plan is not a document we just establish and execute. Rather, a strategic plan is the launch of an ongoing responsive process that continually evolves. A strategic plan helps an organization prepare for the future in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (also known as “VUCA”) world, and provides a way to navigate changing circumstances. 

Our VUCA world creates many leadership challenges including lack of clarity and focus, overload of priorities, difficulty building relationships, short-term thinking, and burnout. 

We ensure our strategic planning processes are adaptable and stay relevant by:

• Facilitating an inclusive process throughout. We wrote earlier this spring about how to form an inclusive strategic planning committee. This inclusive committee and early planning process ensures that critical constituents, both internal and external, participate in building the plan. Not only does this help get good content and insights into the plan, it also ensures the plan is successfully implemented because the participants are already engaged and owning it. Furthermore, the process of planning strengthens the team and builds their collective muscle for navigating, predicting, and preparing for changes. 

• Proactively identifying and planning for obstacles and opportunities. One way to do this is via scenario planning. Obstacles can include external uncertainties in the environment, or internal capacity challenges that the organization will need to bolster. Building contingency plans or a Plan B may be useful in certain cases as well. 

• Building in a rhythm for monitoring and evaluating the plan once it is adopted. Department and employee annual goals should track to the strategic plan. We recommend quarterly strategic reviews to report progress toward the strategic plan and provide an opportunity to discuss and assess what has changed and if there are any initiatives that you should start, grow, adapt, or stop in light of changes. 

Reading for Leading Change: March 2022

We recommend these two recent articles as you seek out new inspiration and innovative approaches to nonprofit leadership and social impact. What have you read lately that helped you lead your organization? 

1,000 Remedies to Structural Racism

The U.C. Berkeley Othering and Belonging Institute’s new resource, The Structural Racism Remedies Repository, compiles 1,000 policy recommendations to address structural racism and achieve racial equity. The recommendations address areas where structural racism is most prevalent, including in policing, criminal justice, housing, transportation, voting rights, education, and others.  

Advancing Justice With Love

We appreciated this short summary of some of the late bell hooks’ writing about a “love ethic” as an antidote to oppression. She writes, “Domination cannot exist in any situation where love ethic prevails. … All the great social movements for freedom and justice in our society have promoted a love ethic.”

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