Situation: A newly formed charity had survived its first year as a shoestring operation through the sheer grit of its stellar board and the passionate commitment of its Executive Director. But to realize its ambitious goals of alerting the 90 million Americans who suffer from persistent heartburn that it can be an early warning sign of esophageal cancer, the organization needed to develop clear long terms goals and the strategies for reaching them. The process of setting long term goals and reaching consensus on strategy marked an important transition for the organization – its mission of promoting early detection had been clear from the outset – but how long it might take to achieve it and what steps along the way were necessary in its pursuit were far from certain.
Approach: RGsquared assumed a project leadership role on the charity’s strategic planning committee to help the group work through the development of a strategic plan over a four month timeframe. The first step in the process involved getting everyone on the same page about the fundamental purpose of strategic planning and defining what successful outcomes would look like for the organization. The bulk of the activity was taken up with a series of workshop-style meetings that focused on building a high level framework of goals and adding sufficient detail about strategy. The strategic planning committee then presented the plan to the entire board. RGsquared moderated the board level discussion so that it would be clear which changes that were proposed would be incorporated into the final version of the strategic plan.
Result: A strategic plan, of course, is not the most significant outcome of strategic planning. The process of a group (or groups) imagining the future, thinking hard about the path that it wishes to take to make that future possible, and reaching agreement about both is the main reason to engage in the process of strategic planning. Ultimately, strategic planning is about groups owning their collective future and agreeing that it is best pursued as a group effort. For this charity, the strategic plan has become a guidepost against which it: 1) builds its operating plans to insure that what it proposes to fund and resource is aligned with the strategy and 2) evaluates the serendipitous opportunities that come its way – so that it can choose what NOT to do which is sometimes more important to know than what to do, because no organizations has unlimited resources.
