Is strategic planning a waste of time?
I recently worked with some clients on a strategic plan. When I work on a strategic plan with an organization, I engage in an appreciative inquiry process with key stakeholders in the organization – I include a wide spectrum of interviewees, from staff at all levels, to customers/clients, to donors or funders, to board members or executives. I always hear the same statement from at least one person I interview as part of the inquiry process:
“No offense, but we’ve done strategic planning before, and it never works. After the plan is done, no one ever looks at it again. No one tracks – or even cares – about the goals that were set. So I don’t know why we’re even bothering with this? I am not sure people actually care.”
That’s a completely fair statement, and I agree: many strategic-planning processes are awful. When I participated in strategic planning earlier in my career, it always felt like a group of people sitting in a stuffy room for a day or two, having these meandering circular conversations about stuff that didn’t really matter. Some consultant would be there, writing things on a whiteboard or flipchart paper. We’d adjourn; the consultant would go off to do some mysterious behind-the-curtain stuff, and then we’d get back this 50-page document containing all of these really huge goals we’d discussed, with no information contained about how we’d actually get all of this stuff done – or who was accountable for the goals being accomplished. People would file it away in their email and the vaunted “strategic plan” was never mentioned again. (But hey, at least we had it, in case some investor or funder came asking for it.)
Now, after having managed several of these processes myself, I understand why those other plans didn’t work:
They tried to predict what was going to happen or what the organization was going to do over too long of a time period. One of the first strategic planning processes I ever participated in was intended to create a five-to-ten-year strategic plan. Five to ten years?! You’ve gotta be kidding me. Given that average tenure-in-position has dropped to about four years for most professionals with a degree, and most board terms (for nonprofits) are around three years, chances are pretty good no one currently in the room is going to be around in five to ten years to see that the strategic plan was executed. Additionally, things just change too damn fast these days for us to think we can accurately predict what’s going to happen in (or around) an organization in five to ten years. (Think about all the people in 2019 who completed a 5-year strategic plan, not knowing what was coming in 2020.) Three years is the absolute maximum timeframe I’ll work with in a strategic plan. It’s much more likely the same people who are creating the strategic plan and are responsible for its implementation will still be around in three years. (Yearly strategic goal-setting, by the way, is also completely fine, as long as people are keeping the long-term vision for the organization in mind.)
The strategic goals weren’t SMART. I think almost everyone knows what SMART goals are now – they’re Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. But even up to just a few years ago, I saw a lot of strategic planning processes that would result in goals like “we will expand our service offerings” or “we will dominate X market.” What the hell does that mean? Those are squishy, feel-good goals that are ultimately meaningless. It makes people excited to say things like “we’re going to dominate the marketplace for widgets!” But that’s the kind of statement that makes me think of the saying that “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Strategic goals must be SMART: they must have measurability criteria built in, and they must specify a timeframe for accomplishment. Otherwise the “goal” is just a collection of feel-good words.
Goals were not assigned to specific people within the organization who would be accountable for completing them. A big, complex goal sounds great, right up to the moment when someone points at you and says you’re accountable for making sure it gets done. I require the groups I work with on strategic planning to go through a good old-fashioned RACIO exercise once the strategic SMART goals are written – we decide who is going to be Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed and Out of the Loop for each goal. We put actual people’s names next to the goals – no “this department” or “that committee” will be accountable. In for-profit organizations, each goal is assigned an executive champion who will be accountable for the goal; with nonprofits, I require that one board member is assigned as a kind of “executive champion” for the goal. This is game-changing for a lot of organizations – completely different energy is created when you see your name next to a goal and realize, oh boy - now I have to get this done. Don’t walk away from the strategic-planning table without ensuring someone – one person, with a name, and a Social Security number and all of that – is accountable for completing the goal.
Despite traditional strategic planning falling out of fashion in recent years, I still believe it can be a worthwhile activity for organizations – if people are in the right mindset going into the project (which is: we care about the organization and we want to see it, and our people, succeed) and if the process is done the right way. Ultimately, does your organization “have to” do strategic planning? No. No one is going to force you. But there is tremendous value in getting people who care deeply about an organization’s trajectory in the same room (even if it’s a virtual room) to talk about what the organization needs to prioritize, and where people need to put their time and energy. It’s easier to do smart, sensible resource allocation if people have a target to aim at in terms of strategic goals. It also helps people feel like there is a plan for getting the organization from point A to point B – the organization isn’t just “doing stuff,” engaging in activity for the sake of activity, without having an idea of what all that activity is meant to produce.
If you need assistance with your organization’s strategic plan, get in touch – let’s talk about how I can help.