There’s a lot of talk about strategic planning and being more strategic. In the business environment, and to a large extent in the nonprofit environment as well, these terms have evolved to mean a specific type of process. While there are many different approaches to strategic planning, they commonly include
- Understanding where the organization is today
- Understanding where the organization wants to go/what it wants to be in the future (can be next month/year/later)
- Planning how to get from today to the future.
Strategic planning can apply to a whole organization or just to one part or one program. Being strategic doesn’t mean fixing problems, even though it can include fixing things. It really means thinking through how a particular fix that’s being considered helps get to the target. Lots of things can be fixed but unless one knows what the target is, it’s hard to say whether the “fix” really gets “there.”
It’s a little like cooking. Let’s say you are baking a cake in Colorado (!). You follow the recipe but it falls after baking (!). You could tinker independently with the ingredients – more of this, less of that, or tinker with the steps. But unless you understand what made it come out this way, and have a clear target for how you want it to come out next time, how do you know that you are tinkering the right ingredients or steps? Being strategic might mean learning about baking in Colorado, understanding the impact of altitude on leaveners, gathering info on other solutions that have worked, and maybe even modifying your outcome (2 layers or 1 big cake?). Then the fixes you implement are strategic because you are selecting fixes that give you the best chance of getting the outcome you want.
There are lots of resources available for strategic planning. It is studied and written about a lot. Here’s a Wikipedia article that summarizes it well. A Google search of “strategic planning” or “strategic planning nonprofit” brings up lots of good info and links including articles, workbooks and books.
