Class theme was strategic thinking; strategic planning

Table of contents

• Chapter 5, Managing Nonprofit Organizations, Tschirhart and Bielefeld (2012)
• Brown - Analyzing operating domains (2015)
• Clark - Introducing Strategic Thinking into a Non-profit Organization to Develop Alternative Income Streams
• University of Florida - Strategic Thinking
• Shore et al - “When Good is not Good Enough” (2013)
• Rutgers - Strategic Planning for Nonprofit and Nongovernmental Organizations

Chapter 5, Managing Nonprofit Organizations, Tschirhart and Bielefeld (2012)

• key role that strategic planning plays in directing and focusing the activities of nonprofit organizations as they seek to meet their missions and enhance their impact
• In this chapter we examine the nature of strategy.
• Strategic planning in American business can be traced to the adoption of a scientific approach to management in the early decades of the 1900s
• Scientific management’s central tenets were rational planning and organizational design based on corporate objectives
• Strategy got a big boost in the post-World War II period, when American industry underwent a major expansion, and long-term planning and control became key priorities
• prominent academic writers in the 1960s insisted that all companies needed an overall corporate strategy
• Alfred Chandler, writing in 1962, provided the classic definition of strategic management as “the determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals.”
• highly rational and analytical models and practices of strategy formation began to be challenged in the mid-1970s
• challenges to formal strategic planning led to a barrage of alternative definitions, models, and practices
• contemporary business strategy = diverse range of theories and models
• concluded that a variety of general definitions of strategy could be identified in the literature
• variety of general definitions of strategy:
  • a plan - a guide or quick course of action into the future
  • a pattern of consistent behavior over time
  • the position of particular products in particular market
  • an organization’s perspective or fundamental way of doing things
  • a ploy or specific maneuver intended to outwit an opponent or competitor.
• approaches to strategy are not conflicting, and they emphasize the different roles that strategy can play
• An alternative model that is receiving increasing attention is based on organizational learning and holds that strategy formation is an emergent process.
• debate developed in the 1990s between advocates of the more rationally oriented planning models and the emergence model
• differences between nonprofits and for-profits that might influence strategic planning:
  • Service is intangible and hard to measure, and a nonprofit may have multiple service objectives.
  • Customer influence may be weak.
  • Employees may be strongly committed to a profession or to a cause.
  • Resource contributors may intrude into internal management.
  • There may be constraints on the use of rewards or punishments.
  • A charismatic leader or the mystique of the enterprise may be the means of resolving conflict.
  • The existence of multiple stakeholders means that leaders need people skills in addition to or instead of planning skills.
  • A nonprofit’s ability to change may be limited.
• The benefits of strategic planning for nonprofits include identification of important internal and external influences, the generation of viable options, and understanding of potential effects of strategies on stakeholders.
• a number of general strategic orientations that nonprofits could adopt
• Strategic Positioning
  • generic overarching strategy
  • One of the best-known formulations of strategic positions is Michael Porter’s view that there are three generic strategies:
    • In a cost leadership strategy, an organization focuses on using efficiency, standardization, and high volume to reduce costs through economies of scale.
    • A differentiation strategy, in contrast, involves positioning the organization to offer unique products for select buyers in a broad market
    • a focus strategy relies on a narrow market focus as opposed to the broad market scope
  • an organization positions itself to succeed by developing a high level of knowledge and competence in its limited market segment
  • another popular framework, four generic strategy types:
    • Defenders are mature organizations in mature and stable industries. They seek stability and to protect their market position
    • Prospectors seek to exploit new opportunities in products, services, or markets. A prospector’s strength is in innovation and flexibility
    • Analyzers are organizations that seek to minimize risk while maximizing profit through innovation. They typically concentrate on a limited range of products and try to outperform others
    • Reactors are organizations that exert little control over their environment. They do not adapt to competition and do not have a systematic strategy. Nonprofits that find their mission is no longer relevant to existing conditions may become reactors.
• MacMillan’s Framework
  • based on the assumptions that nonprofit organizations must compete for scarce community resources, that duplication of services should be avoided except when a safety net is needed, and that communities are best served by a high-quality service provider.
  • MacMillan’s framework has three dimensions:
    • Program attractiveness is the degree to which the nonprofit sees a program as congruent with a number of positive factors
    • Competitive position has to do with how well the nonprofit serves its clients with a program compared to other nonprofits
    • alternative coverage is an important dimension because it allows a nonprofit’s strategy to take community needs and resources into account
  • MacMillan’s framework leads to eight possible types of strategies:
    • Aggressive competition
    • Aggressive growth
    • Aggressive divestment.
    • Build strength or sell out.
    • Build up best competitor
    • Soul of the agency
    • Orderly divestment
    • Joint venture
• The Strategic Planning Process
  • Formal strategic planning generally involves a series of steps:
    • Preparing to plan
      • To prepare for strategic planning, nonprofits should answer these questions:
        • What is the purpose of the planning effort?
        • What will the planning process be?
        • What reports will be produced, and when?
        • Who will be involved, and what are their roles?
        • What are the resources available?
      • Early in the process, limitations and boundaries to planning should be clarified. Mandates and restrictions may put significant bounds on the process or its outcome.
      • Another key part of the planning process is to review the nonprofit’s mission and values. These should be referred to throughout the planning process
    • Situation analysis
      • The typical next step in strategic planning is a situation analysis, which identifi es potentially relevant internal and external factors
      • goal is to provide a complete list of the factors, not to prioritize them
      • most common general tool is a SWOT analysis
      • External Environmental Analysis
        • A common technique for analyzing the external environment is described by the acronym PEST
          • political
          • economic
          • social
          • technological
        • An industry analysis can be used to look at how a nonprofit is operating in one or more industries
        • Sharon Oster offers a useful tool that nonprofits can use to identify vulnerabilities and key success factors:
          • Relations among the existing organizations in the industry
          • The threat of new entrants
          • The threat of new substitutes (competition from alternative services)
          • The number and power of user groups
          • The power of funding groups
          • The power of supplier industries (especially for staff and volunteers)
        • Environmental scanning can be used to examine how imminent or distant the positive or negative impact of an environmental factor is likely to be as well as the magnitude of the impact
        • Scenario analysis is a technique for developing scenarios describing possible future situations
        • These two techniques can be combined in an issue impact analysis grid
        • a force field analysis can be used to consider factors in the environment that may promote or inhibit change
      • Internal Factors Analysis
        • Although all aspects of internal structure and operations may be considered, a nonprofit must be sure to assess its capabilities and resources
        • Resources can be tangible (physical assets, financial resources) or intangible (intellectual resources, reputation, culture)
        • Although resources are important, it is their configuration that provides organizational competencies
        • Core competencies provide competitive advantage, they are difficult to imitate and provide an organization with distinctive capabilities
        • Internal analysis can use information from a variety of internal sources, including periodic program or organizational evaluations as well as information gathered specifically for the strategic planning process
        • A major way that internal information is gathered is through evaluations
        • evaluations should assess progress toward achieving performance objectives and point to internal factors enhancing or retarding progress.
    • Identification of Strategic Issues
      • Strategic issues are the small number of very important issues that emerge from evaluation of internal and external factors
      • A key point is that there are likely to be consequences at some point if the organization does not deal with them
      • Given the diversity of stakeholders and views and values within nonprofits, the process of issue identification will likely require extensive discussion and may entail conflict
      • John Bryson has identified a variety of procedures that can be used to identify strategic issues:
        • direct approach - a discussion of mandates, mission, vision, and SWOT analysis findings leads to the identification of strategic issues
        • indirect approach begins with brainstorming to generate a set of options for action that might be entailed
        • goals approach evaluates the issues that need to be addressed to reach the goals
        • vision of success approach starts with an idea of what success would look like and identifies issues that need to be addressed to reach it
    • Using SWOT to Establish Strategic Issues
      • The final step in this identification process is to rank, or prioritize, strategic issues to indicate the level of concern they should be given during strategy development. ranked on:
        • centrality
        • urgency
        • cost implications
        • public visibility
        • mission impact
        • connection to core values
        • research needed
        • feasibility of being effectively addressed
    • From Strategic Issues to Strategies
      • Bryson outlines a five-step process for formulating specific strategies once the strategic issues to be addressed have been identified:
        • Identification of alternatives, dreams, or visions for resolving the strategic issues
        • Enumeration of barriers to realizing those alternatives, dreams, or visions
        • Development of proposals for achieving the alternatives, dreams, or visions
        • Identification of actions that need to be taken over the next two to three years to implement each proposal
        • Development of a detailed workplan spanning the next six months to a year to implement the actions
      • planning should always be done with implementation in mind
      • resulting strategies should meet several important criteria, including technical workability, political acceptability, alignment with important organizational philosophies and core values, and ethical acceptability
    • Adopting and Implementing a Strategic Plan
      • Without proper attention to implementation, intended strategies may never be realized
      • Successful implementation involves marshalling people and resources in a timely manner
      • implementation plan should include:
        • Implementation roles and responsibilities of oversight bodies, organizational teams or task forces, and individuals
        • Expected results and specific objectives and milestones
        • Specific action steps and relevant details
        • Schedules
        • Resource requirements and sources
        • Review, monitoring, and midcourse correction procedures
        • Accountability procedures
    • Periodic Review and Reassessment of Strategic Plans
      • Strategic plans are usually formulated to span two to five years
      • assessments will provide a basis for maintaining successful strategies and modifying or eliminating unsuccessful ones.
• Challenges to Planning: Emergent Strategy
  • an alternative view of strategy is that it emerges without planning
  • organizational success is sometimes not due to rational strategic planning
  • an overemphasis on detailed, formal, long range planning can lead to an underemphasis on continuous learning and flexibility
  • Strategic planning can set the organization’s direction, but it can also blind leaders to potential dangers
  • although strategic planning can promote consistency and coordinated action, it can also lead to less consideration of alternatives, less creativity, groupthink, or stereotyping.
  • traditional planning models have three particular difficulties:
    • prediction is a problematic process - even though certain repetitive patterns may be predictable, the forecasting of discontinuities, such as technological innovation or a price increase is virtually impossible
    • detachment can occur when strategy (thinking) is distanced from operations (doing)
    • formalization itself may be a problem. Formal systems cannot forecast discontinuities, inform detached managers, or create novel strategies.
  • Mintzberg notion of strategy as an emergent process
  • Charles Lindblom’s notion of muddling through
  • Mintzberg distinguishes between intended, realized, and emergent strategies:
    • Intended strategy is planned strategy as conceived and directed by the top management team
    • Realized strategy is the strategy that the organization actually pursues
    • Unintended realized strategies are termed emergent strategies
  • Intended strategies may never be realized, and realized strategies may never have been intended
  • Emergent strategies are the result of strategic learning through experimentation and discovery
  • Learning can take place at the individual, team, top executive, and governance levels may be driven by conscious desires to seek improvements or by external forces and internal pressures
  • Mintzberg proposed a grassroots model of strategy formation; strategies may grow initially like weeds in a garden rather than like tomatoes in a hothouse; they can take root in all kinds of places, virtually anywhere people have the capacity to learn and the resources to support that capacity
  • process of proliferation may be conscious but need not be and, likewise, strategies may be managed but need not be.
  • new strategies, which may emerge continually, tend to pervade the organization during the periods of change
  • For leaders, managing this process means not preconceiving strategies but recognizing their emergence and intervening when appropriate.
  • this approach to strategy formation has limitations and weaknesses if carried too far
  • Actions can spin off in all directions
  • in a crisis, the learning approach cannot be relied upon, and a clear strategy may be the key to success
  • Even in stable situations some organizations need strong strategic visions and the coherence that comes from centralized sources rather than decentralized learning
• Combining Perspectives
  • Increasingly apparent that the central issue is not ‘Which school is right?’ but, ‘How can the two views complement one another to give us a richer understanding of strategy making?
  • Nonprofit organizations need both stability and flexibility
  • establish broad guidelines, or umbrella strategies, and leave the specifics of strategy to those lower down in the organization
  • Nonprofits may pursue a given strategic orientation until they get out of alignment with their environments and a significant strategic reorientation is needed.
  • managers need to be able to recognize and detect new patterns that may develop into emergent strategies, and deal with them appropriately
  • emergence and learning tend to become relatively more prominent and important as environments become more volatile, complex, and unpredictable
  • Nonprofits that cannot accurately predict what their environments will be like in the future can only establish general strategic directions and react strategically as events unfold
  • Cummings outlines a new pragmatic approach that blends traditional planning with flexible “strategic improvising” approaches and that has these key characteristics:
    • Wide participation of staff, trustees, volunteers, and other stakeholders, rather than a top-down approach
    • Ongoing support and encouragement of creativity, innovation, experimentation, and learning
    • Recognition of the need to negotiate between the various sources of power, inside and outside the organization
    • A focus on key strategic issues, or challenges
    • Use of a range of scenarios to define potential external situations
    • Creation of a strong motivating vision, that is, a strategic intent, which enables an organization and its people to “live deeply in the future while gaining the courage to act boldly in the present”
    • Creation of a clear value base for the ethical management of the organization
    • Engagement in strategic thinking as a continual process, not just an annual cycle
    • Strategic processes that produce commonsense frameworks that will help managers make decision
• important that planning processes not be static and that they not be considered “done” once a strategic plan has been drafted and implemented
• challenge is to design processes that foster the type of strategy formation that the nonprofit needs

Brown - Analyzing operating domains (2015)

• Analysis of the operating environment seeks to understand the factors that are likely to influence operational success
• Stakeholder analysis techniques are useful
• Competitive analysis provides insight
• Both perspectives provide insight into the strategic choices managers confront
• Stakeholder Analysis
  • Stakeholder perspectives provide guidance about how to make decisions because it is based on understanding, creating, and building relationships.
  • This analysis can help managers interpret the viability of different operating domains
  • ethical management principles extend the interest of the organization beyond profit maximization to consider various priorities that reflect the interests of a range of constituents
  • Effective stakeholder management practices have economic and social benefits
  • One distinction among stakeholder types is whether the stakeholder is internal (e.g., staff) or external (e.g., funders)
  • nonprofits need techniques to prioritize stakeholders.
  • Disaggregating stakeholder groups to distill unique attributes is critical to analysis
  • Mapping stakeholders across two dimensions of power and interest in the activities of the organization helps manager assess and prioritize stakeholders
  • It is somewhat straightforward to list known stakeholders and consider how they can influence the activities of the organizations
  • Interpreting these interests in reference to the priorities of the organization is a more tenuous process that requires judgments and insight
  • Organization must consider how to balance competing interests with inherent resource limitations.
  • Stakeholder analysis is particularly valuable to nonprofits as it helps the organization understand how and to what degree it might suffer legitimacy or trust concerns
• Competitive Analysis Techniques
  • concept of comparative advantage recognizes that organizations with unique, useful qualities are more likely to sustain success in the ways that matter
  • Nonprofits confront multiple domains with different objectives
  • public benefit priorities reflect a desire to have an impact on society
  • Priorities in resource markets are intended to gain capacity
  • The competitive analysis model has limitations, such as an emphasis on competitive relationships and limited attention to political influence
  • Porter (1998) identifies five forces in the competitive environment, and Oster (1995) adapted the model to the nonprofit context
  • The model is most useful when specific operating context characteristics are considered:
    • threats to new entrants
      • introduction of providers can upset the balance of relationships exhibited in the current operating context
      • seven major barriers to entry:
        • differentiation - an attempt to reflect uniqueness that is superior
        • economies of scale - the ability of large, scalable providers to reduce of the cost of per-unit service delivery
        • capital requirements - efficiency of scale in that some industries require large capital expenditures to provide services
        • cost requirements - benefits that large or established firms may gain
        • government policy - tendency of rules or practices to influence industry practices
        • access to distribution channels - tendency of networks to exclude those who do not currently operate in the area
        • switching costs - the cost users or suppliers might experience if they were to change providers
    • supplier power
      • Some overall considerations in relation to suppliers:
        • the extent to which the supplier environment is dominated by a few entities
        • the size of nonprofit providers
        • the degree fragmentation among supply markets
    • customer/beneficiary power
      • the nature and character of the customer’s ability to influence the quality or cost of services
    • threat of substitutes
      • the number and character of options for customers to attain the same or similar benefits from other sources
    • relation to other providers
      • Understanding the competitive and cooperative tendencies of entities within a particular nonprofit industry or market is complex.
• Reaction by others is another consideration that managers should understand and anticipate
• The tendency of existing entities to ignore, retaliate, or cooperate is an important consideration for programs seeking to enter a new market
• The analysis of competitive and cooperative tendencies within different nonprofit markets and industries is complex
• The ability of the organization to respond and operate is just as critical as positioning effectively The qualities and attributes of the organization are reflected in the core competencies that are built and exploited.

Clark - Introducing Strategic Thinking into a Non-profit Organization to Develop Alternative Income Streams

• Traditional streams of income are drying up.
• Nonprofit organizations can develop businesses that can earn them income.
• Organizations that do it correctly find financial success and sustain their organizations independent of grants.
• Nonprofits that are seeking to establish businesses need to ensure that everyone in their organization and on their board of directors are strategic thinkers so they can provide maximum value. Strategic thinkers contribute to the development of creative sustainable ideas that give the organization a competitive advantage
• Overcommitting resources beyond its capability is a recipe for disaster and reduces the likelihood of any organization achieving its goals
• must corral strategic thinkers at all levels of the organization to capture the best ideas that will lead to the implementation of supplemental income
• Strategic thinking is the process of collecting, interpreting, generating, and evaluating information and ideas to shape organizational sustainability and competitive advantages
• Strategic thinking results in a strong planning process that scrutinizes every idea and leads to the implementation of a sound strategy.
• Performance management allows leaders to make strategic business decisions that are in the interest of organizational sustainability
• Strategic thinkers are in constant pursuit of innovative ideas that will create a sustainable future for their organization
• Strategic thinking is vital to the sustainability of an organization and often contributes to the redevelopment or tweaking of an organization’s mission statement, goals, objectives, and strategies
• Good strategic thinking leads to sound strategic planning
• The absence of a plan leaves non-profit organizations handicapped and inflexible
• Many non-profit organizations prefer to engage in convenience planning than strategic planning to avoid changing their culture. They later learn the likelihood of being successful is diminished by not having a strategic plan
• Communication builds a bridge between the strategy of an organization and its implementation
• coaching is essential to developing a culture of self-leaders and strategic thinker
• Implementing a new culture, organizational structure, or strategic plan requires leaders to engage and empower their staff to take ownership of the process
• The culture and success of an organization is closely linked to its management and the quality of leadership
• make an honest assessment of the management style and quality of leadership within their organization’s structure and determine if the current leadership team is fit to lead the organization in this new direction
• Self-leaders value the behaviors they exhibit, how they reward themselves for their performance, and the constructive thoughts that sustain self-analysis
• Self-leaders hold themselves accountable for accomplishing goals related to the organizational strategy, keep the goals of the organization in the forefront, are constructive thinkers and concerned about motivating themselves.
• A self-leadership culture sustains strategic thinking within an organization
• Strategic thinking is the process of collecting, interpreting, generating, and evaluating information and ideas to shape an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage
• Recommendations on how to teach staffers to become strategic thinkers:
  • Match employees with assignments that make use of their expertise and abilities
  • Give employees autonomy in how they approach their work
  • Provide the necessary resources
  • Establish supportive work-teams
  • Provide performance recognition
  • Create a climate where the whole organization supports creative efforts
• Show staff how to leverage their past experiences as evidence of their ability to think strategically
• diverse experiences provide alternative insights on how to solve current organizational problems
• Eliminate the “we do not have time” syndrome. Strong leadership makes time investments worth the while of team members
• Encourage team members to explore their ideas and tactics and bring them before the team
• Feedback brings the best out of all team members
• Team members must be prepared to seriously listen to each other
• A team that listens to each other learns each other’s strengths and builds commodity around their collected strengths.
• Treat team members as colleagues
• Pass on recommendations to senior leaders for consideration.
• Strategic thinkers, above anything, need encouragement from those that make final decisions within the organization
• non-profit organizations are at a disadvantage when they decide generate income because of the following reasons:
  • Conflicting priorities
  • Lack of business perspective
  • Reliance on indirect customers
  • Philanthropic capital and the escalation of commitment
• Non-profit organizations should be selective and strategic about how they can realistically create additional income streams
• Boschee’s basic principles for nonprofit entrepreneurs:
  • Earned income is paramount
  • Non-profit organizations struggle with being all things to all people.
  • Revenue streams can come from various means
  • unrelated business activities can become a threat to your bottom line
  • Cash flow is so important to sustaining any type of business
  • Recognize the differences between innovators, entrepreneurs, and professional managers.
  • The non-profit culture gets in the way of making sound business decisions
  • Pricing aggressively ensures a non-profit will experience longevity and sustainability.
• Hybrid non-profits are non-profit organizations that have a relationship with for-profit entities via a contract agreement or subsidiary arrangement.
• both organizations must have legally independent and different boards
• Avoid conflicts of interests. As much as possible, separate the two boards.

University of Florida - Strategic Thinking

• Strategic thinking is different from strategic planning
• To think strategically means to see and understand the bigger picture of what the organization is, where it needs to go, and how it will get there.
• In simple terms, strategic thinking and/or planning consists of three phases that identify and clarify:
  1. where we are now
  2. where we want to be
  3. how will we get there
• Six common components include:
  1. tools for analysis
  2. strategic purpose
  3. values
  4. vision
  5. key goals
  6. action planning
• Sheila Campbell and Merianne Liteman describe strategic purpose as the “heart of blueprints for the future.”
• We often describe strategic purpose as clear understanding of why we exist and why that’s important
• also described as a team’s essential reason for existence
• When everyone on a team or in an organization gets it, hundreds of daily decisions are informed and guided by that common purpose
• Without clarity around shared purpose, however, priorities are typically chosen based on individual/personal criteria or in response to crisis
• “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If your culture doesn’t work, your strategy can’t work.
• clarity regarding values allows the organization to tap into those values to foster a culture that supports its purpose and vision
• Vision identifies the direction of the department - answers the question “If we consistently fulfilled our purpose with excellence, what would that look like?”
• Vision creates a compelling picture of the team’s or organization’s future.
• An effective departmental vision can frame the work that is done on a daily basis and help the members of the team move in a common direction.
• “What must we accomplish to move toward the fulfillment of our vision?”
• fundamental component of any strategic process is to identify those priorities
• Key goals play the vital role of connecting the team’s ongoing work with the broader purpose and vision
• Action planning clarifies the ways in which our daily work will help move the goals forward
• helpful prompts to frame the action planning. These include: goal statement, description of what success would look like, three important steps toward implementing the goal, resources needed, who needs to be involved in the successful implementation of the three important steps, suggested champion or owner for the goal, and potential challenges or hurdles

Shore et al - “When Good is not Good Enough” (2013)

• Leaders of two of the most successful nonprofit organizations argue that the sector needs to shift its attention from modest goals that provide short-term relief to bold goals that, while harder to achieve, provide long-term solutions by tackling the root of social problems.
• the foundation on which many nonprofits are built is flawed and simplistic, focused on a symptom rather than the underlying set of problems, developed in isolation rather than as part of an integrated system
• As a result, change is incremental, not big or bold enough to make a lasting and transformative impact.
• If solving social problems is what we aspire to achieve, we need to set long-term, bold goals that acknowledge the magnitude of an issue
• Though it may seem counterintuitive for a sector already struggling to support, sustain, and scale up its impact-our approach calls for nonprofits to embrace a much heavier lift
• look beyond short-term achievements that please funders, staff, and stakeholders but yield only incremental change, and instead hold ourselves accountable for the harder-to-achieve long-term outcomes that will ultimately solve social problems
• To define our goal, we thought about the writer Jonathan Kozol’s advice to pick battles big enough to matter, but small enough to win.
• four lessons most critical to achieving transformational change, starting with the most important:
  • set a long-term, bold goal
    • Solving a social problem at the magnitude it exists requires an organization to shift from focusing on short-term incremental progress to focusing on long-term transformational change
    • This means developing a goal so bold that achieving it means a social ill has been eradicated
    • also important to create a sense of urgency and a reason to believe that the long-term bold goal can be accomplished.
    • can be achieved by setting shorter-term milestones and developing small-scale proof points
    • The challenge with a bold goal is that, by definition, it aims at a target that is large, complex, and poorly understood.
  • Stakeholders: open up your circle
    • Transformational change requires an organization to look outside of its core group of true believers and put greater emphasis on mobilizing those less engaged
    • must ask the simple question: Who has a role to play in solving this problem?
    • often includes cross-sector stakeholders
    • They excel at converting “maybes” into “yeses”
  • Communication: change the conversation
    • Solving problems at scale requires an organization to do more than open up the circle of champions. At times, it requires leaders not just to join a conversation but to actually change the conversation
    • can broaden the base of support for an idea by making it accessible to more people
    • Leaders also need to be willing to change the conversation by asking for more money or new types of funding that may be needed to achieve bold goals.
  • Approach: Disrupt the Norms
    • To create transformational change, organizations must be willing to act as skeptics, questioning—and often disrupting-the norms among those affected by and those who affect a social problem
    • Ultimately, the reason to disrupt norms is to motivate a critical number of people to change their behavior, leading to a new norm
• We understand that this is fraught with challenges and runs a high risk of failure. A large part of the current leadership challenge for us is to resist temptations to slide off strategy when the going gets tough
• The purpose of this article is not to suggest that there is a formula for solving social problems or that every organization should follow our path. But we-as individuals, a sector, and society-cannot be satisfied with business as usual
• we must commit to finding our unique place in creating transformational change
• find the courage to aim for the harder-to-achieve long-term outcomes
• everything is impossible until it isn’t

Rutgers - Strategic Planning for Nonprofit and Nongovernmental Organizations

• Strategic planning is a process utilized to assure the ultimate success and sustainability of the organization
• Helps managers and leaders think, learn, and act strategically
• allows organizations to position themselves to adapt, overcome the challenges presented, and realize their opportunities
• Strategic planning helps an organization clarify where it is, where it wants to be, and the steps necessary in order to get there
• This kind of planning involves:
  • information gathering from stakeholders
  • the conduct of internal and external environmental scans
  • analyses of the agency’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges
  • the identification of goals and objectives
  • creation of an effective plan for implementation
• Benefits of strategic planning:
  • Provides a road map
  • Promotes strategic thinking, acting, and learning
  • Improves decision making and the ability to face challenges
  • Enhances awareness of the organization’s potentials
  • Promotes a sense of security among employees
  • Develops better internal coordination
  • Benefits all those involved
• The Strategy Change Cycle
  • a strategic management process used to link planning and implementation
  • consists of 10 steps:
    • Initiate the strategic planning process and agree on a process
    • Identify organizational mandates
    • Clarify the organization’s mission, vision, and values
    • Examine internal and external strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges
    • Identify strategic issues the organization is facing
    • Create strategies to manage the issues
    • Review and agree upon strategies
    • Establish a vision for the organization
    • Develop an effective implementation or business plan
    • Review the selected strategies, progress achieved and whether established plans require adjustment
• Stakeholders and Their Role in the Process
  • An individual should be involved in the process if he or she has information that cannot be gained otherwise or when their participation is necessary
  • The strategic planning team should agree upon a list of stakeholders and identify how each individual is affected by the organization
  • By engaging in a stakeholder analysis, the organization can begin to get a feel of the level of satisfaction its stakeholders are experiencing
  • It is important to make stakeholders aware that their participation is vital
  • Information gathered in the stakeholder analyses can be used to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of the organization as well as identifying strategic threats.
• Organizational Mission & Vision
  • A solid mission statement helps the organization focus its energy, clarify its purpose, and motivate its board, staff, volunteers, and funders.
  • The difference between a mission and vision statement is a vision expresses an organization’s long term goal and reason for existence, and a mission statement provides an overview of the organization’s objectives to reach that vision
  • A mission and vision statement helps guide the organization’s day-to-day activities
  • strategic issues or goals identified during strategic planning should be related to achieving the mission and vision.
  • helpful to answer two questions if revision of the mission or vision is needed:
    • For the vision statement, the organization must ask what are the values or beliefs that informs its work
    • For the mission statement, the organization must ask how it plans to work towards its broad vision and for whose specific benefit
• Developing an Action Plan and Implementation
  • important to create an action plan that will guide the organization with implementation of its strategies
  • every action plan will look different
  • some items that can be included:
    • Specific goals, objectives, results, and milestones
    • Roles and responsibilities of individuals in the process
    • Required resources
    • A communication process
    • A monitoring and accountability process