The Ross Collective

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Strategic Planning Discovery

Renee Rubin Ross

How looking at organizational secrets can be “almost fun”

Hello and how are you? Hope your summer has included some time for rest and recovery.

Since we last wrote, wisdom teeth have been extracted. Large mountains have been explored. Stomach butterflies have flown around and then settled down.

And then – our family visited Vancouver and took in some new sights and tastes. Family Performing Arts Camp got cancelled this year due to COVID ☹. And we ended up going to the California Sierras to hike, walk, and dip in mountain lakes.

Now more butterflies came out this week as it was the first day of school – for one kid, the first day of high school (!), and for the other, the first day of junior year with a lot of serious learning ahead.

And we are continuing our series on Strategic Planning, to discuss the Discovery stage.

Discovery is the process of collecting data about an organization in order to generate conversation and reflection.

As we’ve mentioned before, this data collection may include interviews, focus groups, and surveys.

How much data do you need to collect?

Short answer: Less than you would think!

Or as a wise colleague described about collecting too much data during strategic planning, “We wanted to get to Paris. Instead, we have done a six-month study of our driveway, and made plans to get to the supermarket.”

 

How to avoid “studying your driveway”

While we agree that it is not useful to collect too much data, we believe that some data collection grounds the strategic planning process.

Data collection for recent clients has focused on a few key questions:

  1. How are we doing as an organization?

  2. What part(s) of our work are most valuable?

  3. What opportunities or trends should we be paying attention to?

  4. Where is there evidence of our organization’s equity work and what other opportunities are there to deepen equity in our work?

Facing the hard truths

Information frequently emerges in the Discovery phase that organizational leaders need to pay attention to so the organization can thrive.

We might call these “organizational secrets” except they are not really secrets. Often, this is information that everyone knows, but no one wants to focus on.

For example, a recent client had experienced growth and uncertainty due to the instability of government funding. A focus of strategic planning was greater financial clarity. The Discovery process highlighted concerns from board and staff members about this issue, so that the group was eventually able to come together and map out steps to achieve greater clarity in this area over the next few years.

A consultant will hold you accountable

The advantage of working with a consultant or facilitator is that the consultant is responsible for surfacing whatever emerges – and then sharing it back to the organization, so that leaders can figure out how to go forward together.

While some people do not like talking about the hard truths, we find the elephant in the room oddly energizing and satisfying. So often, those “hard truths” contain a lot of energy. Facing the challenges untangles that energy, freeing it to support the organization’s work.

If you are reading along, you are starting to get a sense of the process! As you can tell, we have worked through many “butterfly in stomach moments” with leaders to guide an effective and energizing process. (And we’re pretty good at it – a recent client shared that our planning retreat was their “least painful ever” experience of strategic planning 😊.)

Reach out if you would like to discuss strategic planning for your organization.

Other resources to support strategic planning:

This is part 3 of a six-part series on the stages of nonprofit strategic planning: