Strategic Planning for Healthy Organizations

Strategic planning is an often-neglected task. The urgency for planning only comes when it has been left undone for too long and the organization has lost a sense of direction or unity of purpose. By that time, it is not just strategic planning but also identity discernment, mission, and vision work that need to be done. I am always amazed when organizations hope to accomplish this work in a half-day board retreat so they can move on to the real business of what they do . . . serving, creating, connecting, supplying, making, etc. For effective, healthy organizations, strategic planning is not a task, an event or a product that can be created or accomplished. It is an ongoing and integrated component of the life and breath of the organization, focusing its activities, engaging its constituents and defining its boundaries.

Yes, there is the official strategic planning process, where a leadership team may work with a consultant to conduct focus groups and interviews, complete an environmental scan, gather internal data and hold a retreat or series of meetings when the data and input are reviewed and the course is set with goals and objectives. However, there is also the ongoing strategic planning process that is so critical to healthy organizational development.

Ongoing planning includes the development and use of individualized work plans for committees, departments, staff, and sometimes volunteers, derived from the organizations primary objectives. Workplans, or action plans, are working documents that are reviewed and updated regularly and function much like a To-Do-List where all tasks are connected to broader organizational goals, objectives, and priorities so that each person or group’s work is directly tied to the mission and direction of the overall organization. Workplans are helpful in such areas as financial and fund development; marketing and communications; policy and procedure review; program development, evaluation and quality improvement; direct services or product development; board and staff development.

Ongoing planning also includes a continuous review of the environment – internally and externally – listening, assessing, engaging, improving, focusing, driving the action of the organization in such a way that the best of what they have to offer meets the deepest needs of the community it serves. Finally, ongoing strategic planning requires a regular dialogue about mission and vision, checking for clarity and unity, testing against opportunities, challenges, and changing possibilities.

How to make Strategic Planning a way of doing business instead of a task that is so often neglected until clarity is lost? Begin the dialogue! Begin the conversation at the board level, at the staff level, with stakeholders and clients. Engage a formal process if you have never done so or if it has not been done in the past three years. Use a participatory approach – this is where the consultant works with a team of staff, volunteers, board members, etc. to determine what information should be gathered, to review the data and decipher its meaning, to assist in designing the retreat and to provide leadership for the overall strategic planning process.

Then, most importantly, keep it alive. Use the vision for regular board and staff check-in conversations. Use the goals and strategies by integrating them across all facets of the organization. Use the plan in your marketing, in how you describe who you are as an organization and what you do. Use the plan every chance you get, and when there is a rub because the plan doesn’t quite fit the reality the organization is facing; it is time to revisit the plan. Don’t wait for chaos or conflict.

Stop . . . Breathe . . . Listen . . .

I find my way through this life by trying to understand and control. When there is chaos, I try to create structure. When there is confusion, I try to clarify. When there is mistrust, I try to be honest and real. When there is conflict, anger or discontent, I try to appease.

This strategy works, for the most part, at keeping my life stabilized and comfortable (though not particularly healthy, reflective or growing). And then there are times when events occur that I can’t balance, clarify, order, appease or even understand . . . at those times I have three choices. I can explode with the anxiety of trying to keep order. I can cut off emotional ties to the situation and imprison myself in denial. Or, I can just stop and breathe and listen.

If I can listen, I will notice that my breath is rhythmic and meditative and calming. The anxiety that comes from being unable to understand or control subsides and revelation lies waiting.

Whole systems work the same way. As a group we strive for stability, even at the expense of our health and often our friendships. Churches have the same three choices in times of disorder, change or crisis: explode with conflict; suppress emotion and become captive to superficial relationships; or stop and breathe and listen.

The third alternative creates space for seeing things in new ways, for self-reflection and behavior change, for creativity and possibility. Journaling helps me to stop and breathe. Prayer, meditation, exercise, coaching or even counseling can help as well. Helping a congregation to stop and breathe also requires process and intention such as group prayer and reflection, structured small group listening, liturgical expressions or intentional leadership from a trained interim minister, consultant or coach.

What strategies have helped you to stop, breathe and listen? What has helped your congregation?

- - you may also find this blog post on the Center for Congregational Health website at www.healthychurch.org

Nonprofits - Taking a Risk in Sharing Resources

Watching nonprofit directors, staff and board members over the last two days at the NC Center for Nonprofits Statewide Conference . . . I see energy and passion for the services we provide . . . I see anxiety about funding . . . I see competition and collaboration. Yet, one story stands out to me, a story about a cluster of organizations that made lemonade out of lemons!

They could not afford to rent space in the downtown area of Charlotte where they most needed to be, where they could be close to their client base. When they did find affordable space (class C office space - not great!), it would be sold out from under them to developers and they were forced to move again and again.

One evening, while gathered in a casual atmosphere over drinks, a few directors began to talk about joining forces to get the space they needed - it was all about space issues and money. It was not about blending or sharing services; the environment was somewhat competitive and "merger" was a bad word. However, this conversation evolved into a 50-year lease agreement with the town of Charlotte, a separate nonprofit charged with the management of the building, and an amazing development in collaboration among the partner organizations. The new building oversight organization is called Children & Families Service Center (CFSC - not because it was the intent to bring together specific services for children & families. It just worked out that way).

CFSC has a board made up of representatives of each nonprofit agency sharing the building and an equal number of community at large members. Today they continue to provide unique services per agency while they share resources in finance, human resources and technology. They have formed relationships, shared values and work collaboratively to provide a more holistic range of services for children and families than anyone dreamed possible. The executive directors meet weekly around collaboration opportunities and board members stop and talk in the hallways. It is no longer all about space issues and money. It is about supporting each other with a common mission.

It all started with sharing the issues, looking at the resources right across the table and being willing to take a risk.

Who are your neighbors? What resources have you not considered? How can competition make way for collaboration in your world?

Processes that Work

End homelessness . . . Ensure a quality education for all children . . . Provide health care for all . . . Eradicate poverty . . .

These are lofty visions that ignite emotion, dedication and unity of purpose. However, when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of it, our diversity begins to shine and sometimes so does our contempt. The reality is, there is no easy way to move from here to there . . . or wouldn’t we be there already??

So, how do we even move forward at all? These worldwide social issues such as poverty, health care, and education change with the culture and with the generations but they remain steadfast in our faces as hurdles to overcome. Our organizational and community-wide visions may drive us in a big broad way but to make an impact, we have to have clear processes and priorities as well. The current health care debate is a clear example of how difficult it is for us to agree on a process!

I believe it all begins with knowing ourselves, each of us as individuals having a clear sense of our own values and guiding principles . . . and being able to articulate these principles as they apply to the situation. Your core self is that part of you that does not change as the wind blows and does not morph as you hear the views of others. This true self can be hard to uncover. While some people may stand on solid ground, others struggle to find their center. We give it away. We choose to value the opinions of others more than ourselves. We don’t trust ourselves. We are swept with emotion and fear causing us to lose our sense of who we are.

But sometimes, we find ourselves! We discover something that is uniquely ours – a belief or a value that is uncompromisable! And when you find such a nugget of truth, take the time to explore it, claim it, and as you are able, speak it.

It is these spoken values that will be heard above the sensationalism and polarizing scare tactics. It is these spoken values that come from our core that reach out to the souls of others and bridge our schisms. And when we begin from center value, even though each is unique and uncompromising, we discover boundaries that show the way to processes that work.

From Fear to Hope

"The opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear." (Verna Dozier, The Dream of God, 1991)

These economic times are fearful. Organizations and churches are facing serious financial crisis and cut backs in staff and programs. In states and local communities, government officials struggle to make budget decisions that will likely cut funds for education, early childhood support, mental health, public health and other programs and services that support some of our most vulnerable citizens. Nonprofits, United Way agencies and churches that depend primarily on individual and corporate giving are seeing huge discrepancies in income. Anxiety is high. Every day on the news you hear of an increasing unemployment rate and everyone knows someone who has been affected by recent job loss. With increased fear there may also be an increase in conflict - in families, in churches, in workplaces. Fear tells us to flee or fight . . . to hunker down, hide, escape or to attack. Faith tells us to hope and to create.

Faith is (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith)

• having confidence or trust in something or someone
• belief in God
• belief in anything
• the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person or belief

Faith is not intellectual or physical – it is spiritual. It is rooted beyond our physical response of fight/flight and beyond our analytical response of pros and cons. Faith in God, faith in yourself, faith in your company or your church or your family, faith in friendship, faith in community, faith in our government, faith in humanity, faith in possibility, faith in the future, faith . . . is what moves us from fear to hope. And hope is what inspires creation. And creation births new life, new ideas, new solutions, new growth, new innovation, new reasons to have faith. Hope is the motivation to stay connected without fighting or fleeing. Hope is the avenue to intentional rather than reactive responses to the crisis. Hope gives reason to work for something better. Hope gives strength to endure change and the time of chaos that always precedes the new beginning.

Keep the faith!

On the Cutting Edge: Best Practice in Organizational Planning & Coaching

I have been fortunate throughout my career to be surrounded by some of the most cutting-edge, best practice leaders in human services in North Carolina:

• Community Partnerships (then Specialized Services for Children) was one of the first programs in the area to provide support for preschools in creating fully inclusive environments for children with significant developmental delays and disabilities . . . when others were still saying it couldn’t be done. http://www.compart.org/
• The Orange County Partnership for Young Children, was an early leader in the Smart Start initiative to improve the quality of child care and increase accessibility to early childhood education and family support services so that children arrived at kindergarten ready for success. Smart Start, now a state-wide program, has won national awards for its proven success and is being replicated in many states across the country. http://www.orangesmartstart.org/
• Though the mental health system in NC has faced unquestionable struggles, Durham County was at the front of the line bringing together community partners to develop a nationally recognized System of Care for struggling children and youth. In collaboration with schools and the criminal justice system, youth were kept out of detention facilities at an amazing rate and surrounded by evidence-based community services allowing them the opportunities to get healthy, redirect their lives, and stay at home with their families. http://www.durhamcenter.org/
• PLM Families Together is currently the only program of its kind in Wake County, providing short-term housing for homeless families with an 80% success rate of families obtaining permanent housing. At PLM Families Together, families stay together – even Dads and teenaged sons – because they provide apartments rather than group living. And they believe in the power of families being together in tough times. http://www.plmft.org/

Now I continue this tradition in joining organizational development consultants and coaching professionals who have discovered the cutting-edge of appreciative inquiry/appreciative coaching.

The basic concepts:

1. Where we focus and how we use language creates our reality – so let’s put our focus on what we want to work (our vision) and the assets and resources we have to move us there, rather than on what isn’t working and what we need but don’t have!
2. Emotions, both positive and negative, tend to be contagious. Recent research in emotional intelligence and positive psychology shows that positive emotions can be antidotes and even undo the effects of negative emotions (Sara Orem, Jacquelie Binkert & Ann Clancy, Appreciative Coaching, 2007). Plus, positive emotions open the doors to creative thinking, intrigue and curiosity as well as feelings of safety allowing a person or group to explore in deeper more productive ways.
3. As all researchers, evaluators, therapists and interviewers know, questions drive thinking processes! Asking the right questions makes all the difference in the world and can lead to a powerful critical thinking process bringing new meaning to past experiences, new understandings about today’s reality and new excitement about the future dream.
4. Our lives and the lives of our organizations carry the powerful success stories that we need to move into the future we strive for.
5. Our vision of the future guides our current behavior. Hope makes all the difference in the world!

What does this appreciative approach to strategic planning or coaching look like? It looks like remembering and telling the stories of our successes, discovering and embracing our assets and resources, dreaming about the future and pulling the threads through that tie together our stories of past successes with our vision for future success . . . and then making it happen!

Big Change

I was once a new member of the management team with an organization that downsized from 200 to around 50 employees over a 3-6 month period while overhauling the entire internal structures of management, departments, functions, processes and even the basic purpose of the organization. The change was devastating for most - the loss of jobs, of friendships, the insecurity of changes in job responsibilities and new managers with new expectations. This organization did not have the luxury of implementing change over time - the change was mandated. Sometimes big change comes real fast.

There were some members of the organization who seemed to have a sense of stability, grounded among the chaos of the big change. You could almost see an aura around these individuals, linking them with others and creating pockets of stability where morale picked up quicker and business began to develop again. Talking with them, you would not feel the intense anxiety that pounded the pulse of the organization in those days. Instead, you would see a steady sense of purpose that transcended the immediate tensions connecting solid values from the past with hopeful glimpses of the future.

Wherever these pockets of stability resided, change moved more readily.

What a paradox, that within stability, change is more readily embraced – even big change.