When Strategic Planning Goes Wrong
The problem is not that all planning is futile, but that the typical strategic planning process is divorced from the actual work.
Here’s what strategic planning looks like in many teams and organizations:
The team comes together for a strategic planning/team building retreat, filling pad after pad of butcher paper (or virtual white boards for the tech savvy) with their shared values, goals and theories of change.
With the help of thoughtful facilitators and leaders, the team develops those butcher paper pages into a set of goals that are Strategic, Measurable, Achievable and/or Ambitious, Relevant and Time Bound.
Those goals are listed in a spreadsheet or template labeled “This Year’s Strategic Plan”
That document sits unread and untouched in Google Drive until it’s time to do next year’s strategic plan.
Understandably this process leads some teams to dismiss strategic planning as a waste of everyone’s time. Campaign and advocacy work exists in an environment that is constantly changing, bringing both new and unexpected opportunities and new and unexpected challenges. How can anyone develop a useful annual--or even quarterly--plan given that volatility?
The truth is, we are always doing our work according to someone’s plan, the question is whose? If you are simply reacting to changes as they happen, the answer is “not yours.”
A strategic plan allows teams to respond to changed circumstances without losing sight of their established goals. There’s a reason strategic planners so often use the metaphor of a “North Star”—the plan is what keeps you on course, rather than simply allowing the current to carry you from shore to shore.
A strategic plan is also key to empowering staff and preventing burnout. Knowing the team’s/organization’s core priorities allows staff to take ownership of their work instead of simply executing the latest assignment handed down by supervisors.
The problem is not that all planning is futile, but that the typical strategic planning process is divorced from the actual work. Staff step out of their day-to-day routines to talk about the theory behind their work—how it should flow and connect to others—rather than the work itself.
The goals that come out of that conversation may be strategic, measurable and achievable but they are only relevant to the theoretical version of the work on the white board.
What Effective Strategic Planning Looks Like
An effective strategic planning process is one grounded in the real world of tight deadlines and limited resources. It allows teams to build a shared understanding of their goals, priorities and resources. It creates an opportunity to discover and address any unspoken assumptions, misunderstandings or disagreements at the start of a campaign, before they have a chance to undermine the work.
Here are a few tips and reminders for developing a strong process:
Strategic goals run on a timeline of 3+ years—not 1 and not 100 - The goals and milestones you’ve established for the next 12 months? That’s your operating plan. The goals you hope to achieve for your children and grandchildren? That’s your vision.
Strategic goals fall between the two. They are specific and measurable enough to inform how the team will set priorities and allocate resources in the short/mid-term and broad and ambitious enough to ensure the team is making tangible progress toward its overall mission.
Here’s an example:
Vision: A world where no child goes hungry.
Strategic Goal: Pass Universal Lunch Program legislation in the state legislature.
Operating/Tactical Goal: Mobilize 200 parents to meet with their State Senators and talk about their struggles with hunger.
Make space for implementation - Even if the planning process is focused on existing campaigns or projects, implementation of the plan requires team members to approach their work in a new way. It takes time to incorporate a new project—or a new way of working on an old project. This is especially challenging for teams that are already operating at or above capacity, ending each day with a To Do list that’s longer than the one they started with.
Leadership must create space in team workplans to allow for implementation. That may mean putting some projects on hold, or pushing back due dates. What it absolutely does not mean is adding yet another call to calendars.
Make the implicit explicit - Teams can work together for years without ever explicitly defining their terms (e.g., base, action, power, member/supporter, etc.) or discussing their theory of change. Often, when members disagree over a particular plan or tactic, that disagreement can be traced back to differences in terms or in their overall framework.
The purpose of surfacing these kinds of differences is not to force everyone into agreement, but to strengthen collaboration. Understanding the variety of approaches and mental frameworks on the team allows individual members to learn from each other and facilitates creative thinking as those frameworks are reconsidered and remixed. If nothing else, agreeing to shared definitions avoids confusion!
Decide what the team is NOT going to do - One of the reasons strategic plans die a lonely death in a Drive folder is because they are too overwhelming to be useful. A dozen goals outlined over dozens of pages is a manifesto, not a plan. Identify 2-3 SMART strategic goals and develop a detailed plan to execute them. Keeping the list short forces the team to prioritize and avoid spreading limited resources too thin.
Make strategic thinking a habit - While the formal strategic planning process may only happen once every year or two, strategic thinking should govern everyone’s day-to-day work as well. Having a clear, specific definition of success, a general understanding of the political/social landscape, and a sense of what resources and/or constraints you are operating with is key to every project.
Click here to learn how KSC Advocacy can work with your team to develop an effective strategic plan.
