Three Key Questions to Keep Your Strategic Plan Relevant in Uncertain Times
From Renee: We met Joanna Shoffner Scott over the past few years, through her writing on organizational development and equity - which are strongly aligned with the work that The Ross Collective is doing. We’ve invited Scott to share her thoughts on effective leadership actions at this time.
Dr. Joanna Shoffner Scott is an experienced organizational development consultant and the founder and principal of Stamey Street Consulting Group. Scott consults with nonprofits, philanthropies, and companies to help leaders create equitable organizations that work for everyone. She has consulted with more than sixty (60) organizations and private companies, whose work includes workforce development, research, public policy, social services, place-based community collaboratives, government agencies, education, and philanthropies. She is a skilled trainer and facilitator with career experience in research, advocacy, government relations, and organizational management. Scott holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and is the host of the Race in the Workplace podcast.
You Just Finished Your Strategic Plan…and the World Has Changed!
For just a minute, imagine it’s January 2025. You’ve just finished your three-year strategic plan. You’ve partnered with the right consultant for your team. Your partners did focus groups, individual interviews, and surveys.
Your strategic plan is full of your team’s best ideas for the future of your nonprofit. Even your Board of Directors loved it. Then, in late January, the new President takes office.
It has only been a few weeks. You’ve lost one grant already. It’s not a huge problem because you can reallocate your staff to other projects. It's concerning, but you're not panicked. You’ve had to pivot before. You wonder what this new reality means for your recently approved strategic plan.
For a nonprofit that has just finished a strategic planning process, pause your work and revisit these three areas of your plan:
Priorities and funding sources
Allocations of staff time
Timelines for new and existing projects
Adaptive leadership is always necessary.
Adaptive leadership, an approach created by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky is the practice of engaging leaders to navigate tough challenges. It consists of three parts: responding to large-scale change, building on past experiences, and prioritizing trying new ways of doing things.
ID: colorful people crossing a bridge between two cliffs, with a person holding the bridge
Like any planning process, strategic planning accounts for some uncertainty, particularly when a new President will take office during your plan’s timespan.
However, given the current political context, there was no way to know the level of disruption that would occur in the nonprofit sector once the new administration took office.
We are in a time in our nation’s political landscape where leaders and teams are being confronted with rapid change. For many nonprofit leaders, each day feels more uncertain than the day before.
The biggest opportunity for your leadership is likely on the other side of the question, “What do I do with my strategic plan?”
Treating this question as an adaptive challenge can guide you through this uncertainty. Here’s why.
Adaptive approaches respond to systemic problems that have no readily available answers. These problems are hard to solve because they demand the work and responsibility of people throughout the organization, not just the leader. Adaptive approaches are required when our deeply held beliefs are challenged.
To answer the question “What do I do with my strategic plan?” requires reflecting on two things: what you believe and what drives what you do.
Today’s challenges will force nonprofits to clarify their values, develop new strategies, and learn new ways of operating.
Three key areas to discuss now
To answer the question above, I would tell my nonprofit clients to revisit these three areas in their new strategic plan.
Priorities and funding sources. The project or goal that was super important in Spring 2024 may not be as important today. Additionally, the funding for that project may not even exist now. You may need to reduce the number of priority areas given the new landscape, the resources you have currently available, and the bandwidth of your team. For some nonprofit leaders, keeping the doors open and avoiding staff layoffs may be the most important thing.
Allocations of staff time. A review of your priorities will also spark questions about how your staff spends their time every day. Often, nonprofits struggle with saying “no” or saying “we can’t do that project right now.” However, to navigate an uncertain landscape, leaders must be clear about aligning mission-centered priorities and resources. Although difficult to let go of good work, it may be necessary to do so to stay in business.
Timelines for new and existing projects. Decisions that were not under consideration even two weeks ago may now be required. Or, a grant you were counting on a month ago is not moving forward because the funding has disappeared. Review the timelines connected with your priorities. Be realistic. Are those timelines still doable given where your team is today? It is okay to make adjustments.
Nonprofit leaders, review these three areas with your teams. Remember, adaptive challenges require input that extends beyond the leader. Your team will have feelings about even the most necessary pivots.
Take your remaining action items and drop them into a spreadsheet. Start with what you can accomplish in the next three months. Then, look at the next three months. The political landscape is likely to continue to shift, which makes longer term planning difficult.
Waiting on a strategic priority does not mean the work will never happen. Instead, you are deciding that it can’t move forward right now. No one knows what hard decisions will be needed in the coming weeks and months. Give yourself grace to pivot as needed.
Nonprofit leaders, we live in a time where open communication and agility will be useful tools in navigating the path ahead.
From Renee: Thank you Joanna for these helpful suggestions. We love the idea of adaptive challenges -- which we are hearing so much about from the nonprofit leaders we work with. As we are all faced with these new circumstances that are proving difficult to navigate as we simply don’t know what will come next. However, this is our area of expertise at The Ross Collective. We would be happy to coach you through your strategic plan - or pivoting if you’re at the start or in the middle of one now. Reach out to us if you would like to collaborate or share in our newsletter or if you just have thoughts to send along.