Question Nine: How Will You Support Continuous Learning, Thinking and Acting?

Question Nine: How Will You Support Continuous Learning, Thinking and Acting?

Question Nine: How Will You Support Continuous Learning, Thinking and Acting?

John Bauer July 25, 2017 blog, News
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If you have followed the approach I have outlined, you have created a comprehensive, coherent strategic plan that not only describes your preferred future in high level position statements, operationalizes it through measurable goals, but also has in place a set of strategy tools to deal with unanticipated events. It all looks great on paper, but the question now is how to embed the strategic plan into the regular thinking of executive leadership and the board? Since the primary audience for these articles consists of chief executive officers, we might ask it in a little different way: “How can CEOs make sure that their organization’s strategic plan is and remains a living and dynamic document which directs the actions of the organization forward toward its preferred future?” Let me offer up a few ideas.

  1. First and foremost, the strategic plan has to guide the daily activities of senior leaders. In larger organizations, this might be accomplished by devoting one monthly executive staff meeting to evaluating progress toward achieving strategic goals. Such a meeting could include report-outs by those assigned to specific strategic goals or initiatives and should include metrics of progress. In smaller, less formal organizations, discussions by senior leaders should focus on the high-level priorities called out in the strategic plan, even if such discussions are around the water cooler. This focus should be modeled by the chief executive in both formal and informal conversations. There is, after all, nothing more important for executive leadership than execution of the strategic plan. So it would seem to make sense that its achievement would be the dominant topic of conversations. If it isn’t, then I would argue that the strategic plan is inadequate for its intended purpose.
  2. Formalizing the various levels of the process into policies and procedures ensures that certain planning and review processes occur at appointed times each year. Included in the strategic planning document should be an articulation of the organization’s planning philosophy and a broad annual schedule of planning activities. I have included a diagram which integrates the key elements that I developed for an organization that has four board meetings each year.
  3. Board engagement in supporting the plan can be achieved by structuring regular board meetings around the major themes of the strategic plan. Envision a board meeting in which the majority of time is spent evaluating the progress of the organization toward achieving its goals. Gone are boring operations reports. Financial reports are related to the plan, complete with scenarios and forecasts. I used this approach to good effect, not to keep the board unware of other operational matters (we published a board briefing book between board meetings which shared such information), but to help them fulfill their primary strategic, legal and fiduciary responsibilities. Boards can help their CEOs remain focused on strategy by explicitly demanding more board meeting time on strategic trends and issues. I’d even go so far as to assert that the agenda for board meetings IS the strategic plan.
  4. Explicit decision-making processes should be developed and utilized as an execution tool to actually drive forward the goals articulated in the strategic plan, while allowing for shifts in thinking that naturally come about in dynamic and changing environments. The CEO has to model this kind of continuous strategic decision-making and expect it of all other executives in his organization. The filters or screens for making value judgments about strategic issues that arise can flow directly from the environment scan, business model analysis, and capacity assessment that should be part of the strategic planning process.
  5. Let me interject a word here about consultants. It should be an expected part of every consultant contract for strategic planning facilitation to include the development and implementation of decision-making processes that support execution, implementation, learning, and adaptation. It may be necessary to utilize additional periodic consulting to advise the board and the CEO on how well its plans are being executed and to offer additional coaching and guidance. No organization should be satisfied with a “one and done” approach from a consultant. The ideal deliverable is an embedded process of strategic thinking, planning and decision-making that extends way beyond the publication of a slick planning document.
  6. A few articles back I wrote about the importance of data in order to measure progress toward achieving the preferred future. Whether these are called dashboard indicators, key performance indicators, operational metrics, strategic intelligence, goal statistics, or something else, they comprise what we now refer to as “business intelligence,” in other words, all the data which informs leadership about how well the organization is performing with respect to its strategic goals and objectives. For these to be of any value, however, they must be monitored regularly in order to preemptively detect any changes or developing trends. Having in place such monitoring and reporting systems ensures that leaders know if they are on track or not.
  7. Developing strategies to move toward a preferred future is not an end in itself. Implementing the strategies, monitoring their execution, learning from their impact, and being able to develop additional or alternative strategies to address conclusions from such learning – these are the critical activities needed to make the strategic plan a living and dynamic document.
  8. And finally, let the entire organization know where it is headed. Through newsletters, video messages to employees and stakeholders, posters and other media, the CEO is not just the visionary who sees the future, he/she must also be the story-teller-in-chief. Dreams are shared through story. The strategic plan is a dream, albeit one that may change over time, as do all dreams. But the dream will stay locked in the corner office if the story isn’t told. And, just like a television series, if you tell the story to people, they are going to want to see the next episode! If you tell the story, and it holds out an expectation, then you become accountable for making the story come true! I’ll write in more detail on this last subject in my article next week.

Regular review of the business model, evaluating the environment to support market awareness and competitive advantage, thinking about the values and criteria that are needed to make strategic decisions as issues emerge, developing additional or alternative strategies when data suggests the need for divergence from the plan, implementation and evaluation of strategies – these are the essential ingredients of active and dynamic strategic thinking, learning and acting. And in this, as in just about every other aspect of organizational effectiveness, it comes down to leadership as to whether they are successfully utilized to move the organization toward its preferred future.

Please contact me if you’d like to talk about this article or any other aspect of strategic planning.

 

 

Question Eight: How Will You Deal With the Unexpected?

John Bauer July 17, 2017 blog, News
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Robert Burns, in his poem To a Mouse, said, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” Most often this is translated as “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” How often hasn’t this been true of long-range strategic plans? After all, who can honestly guarantee what is going to happen over the next few years?

Does the possibility of unexpected challenges and opportunities mean that strategic planning is a waste of time? Would it make more sense to focus on responsive strategies to emerging issues instead and on how to execute them for maximum benefit? The case for such thinking has been argued and was the subject of an article I wrote a few months ago. In fact, it is a debate which continues – unnecessarily, in my mind.

Without rehashing the points I tried to make in that article, let me tell you two stories, both dealing with the same organization at different points in time. I happened to be involved with the organization as the chairman of the board during the first event, and later I was its President and CEO during the second event.

In the early 2000’s our board decided to engage outside counsel to guide us through a strategic planning process. The organization had not undertaken such an effort previously, and it followed a fairly traditional process involving staff research into strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It conducted focus groups around the Midwest to ascertain perceptions of mission and quality. It looked at data trends, revenue sources, and it came up with the usual assumptions about the economy, market share, employees and other variables. In short, it essentially crafted a strategic plan which projected the organization’s current status into a fairly stable future. It all looked good on paper.

But a phone call in the summer of 2004 changed everything. A similar agency on the west coast was in  trouble and asked for some assistance. Its CEO left under a cloud. Development revenue was way down. Debt load was too high. Its religious mission was being eroded. From 2004 to 2006, negotiations took place which eventually culminated in an affiliation that would ultimately result in a merger. The transfer of assets and membership took place in the summer of 2006 and overnight, the organization whose board I chaired doubled in size. Did we anticipate that opportunity when we did our strategic planning? No. And that is not surprising. Predicting such events is very difficult. But that unexpected opportunity still marked the single biggest milestone in the organization’s 105 year history, the impact of which is still being felt a decade later.

Most important for this discussion is the fact that we did not have a process in place for evaluating the opportunity from the perspective of the long-range vision and goals of the organization. We did not, for example, weigh the costs of such an acquisition against the other strategic priorities that we had set. We did not evaluate the labor issues or the impact of the merger on non-operating revenue. While it was argued at the time that the decision to merge was an ethical one (i.e., we just wouldn’t consider allowing the acquired company to go under), tools for evaluating the ultimate impact were not utilized. I’m not sure the outcome would have been different, but we certainly would have been better prepared for the longer-term challenges the merger brought about.

The second event occurred in 2008 and I have written about it before. Once the above-mentioned merger was imminent, I was asked to come to work at my agency as the merger integration project manager. In other words, I was to bring the two companies together into a cohesive whole. In the process, I was to facilitate a new strategic planning process which would lay out the preferred future for this new merged organization. Ten years ago I was already utilizing the approach that I have been advocating in steps one through seven of this planning process. In my opinion, we did everything right as far as articulating a coherent future for our organization. The board of directors ratified the new strategic plan at its February 2008 board meeting, the same meeting at which I was named to be the next CEO. The strategic plan was a work of art, a thing of beauty – at least as far as strategic plans went, and at least in my humble opinion.

And then August came and the financial markets started to tank. Within four months we had lost 35% of the value of our endowment. States were already beginning to either hold or reduce Medicaid reimbursements. Our country was in a full-blown recession. And my beautiful strategic plan went up in smoke. All its assumptions were voided. All the goals and objectives around growth crashed into a heap. We were in survival mode and the new reality we had to face had very little to do with that preferred future we had so eloquently described in our strategic plan. The next six months were spent identifying and implementing survival strategies. Restructuring and right-sizing management was implemented and we ceased operations in areas where funding could not meet expenses. We put on hold plans to develop our campus and expand various programs. In short, we abandoned our lofty aspirations and hunkered down to weather the financial storm.

I tell these two stories to reinforce the truism that things happen that are beyond our control. A strategic plan, by its very nature, is a tool to control people, places and things in order to achieve a desired state of existence at some point in the future. Not everything can be controlled. Therefore, it seems prudent to consider ways to mitigate the risk to the organization without abandoning the overall strategic vision described in a strategic plan. In other words, how can decisions be made to deal with either catastrophe on the one hand or windfall opportunity on the other?

There are two ways to approach this question. The first is to have in place a rigorous process for managing and mitigating risk. That will be the subject of another article. The second is to develop decision-making criteria for addressing such unexpected events WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE STRATEGIC PLAN! If you have followed the first seven steps, you will have a detailed picture of your preferred future. The plan is high-level. It is visionary. It also has measurable goals and it is annually reviewable. It also is the vehicle through which annual initiatives can be developed. But most important, it articulates a set of beliefs and values about the future which can be translated into decision-making criteria. Such a process has been developed by David LaPiana and was described in greater detail in the afore-mentioned article. Developing four or five such criteria affords the organization a rational basis for evaluating events and making judgments about possible responses that are in alignment with overarching strategic goals.

Let me illustrate with an example. Let’s say that the organization decides that the following criteria are of greatest importance when it comes to building responsive strategies:

  • the strategy must support or advance the mission,
  • the strategy must contribute to competitive advantage,
  • the strategy must enhance the bottom line financially,
  • and the strategy must improve the organization’s image with respect to quality of service.

Hindsight, of course, is always 20/20, but let’s apply these criteria to both of the events I described earlier. Would we have proceeded with the merger had we employed this screening device? The affiliation certainly allowed us to advance our mission. Giving us a national scale of operations afforded us a competitive advantage over smaller, more regional organizations. The affiliation certainly gained attention from funders and trade associations. And because we built into the merger integration process commitments to a philosophy of quality service delivery, the merger definitely helped us enhance our image for providing exceptional service.

But did we fully understand the implications of the decision for the larger goals of the organization? The impact on the organization’s finances was something else. Hoped-for expansion of the donor data-base did not materialize. Fund-raising could not keep up with a growing loss from operations. Promises to bring wages and benefits into alignment with the parent company only increased the cash-flow problem. I won’t say that the criterion related to financial impact would have been a deal-killer, but I do think it may have conditioned our negotiations in a way that would have lessened the negative impact. All-in-all, I believe the merger was the right thing to happen, but having such a screening mechanism in place would have influenced how we structured the deal.

And then there was the recession. Protecting the mission in the face of calamitous financial times was paramount and we worked hard to not compromise the quality of the services we provided. In fact, we were adamant that no strategy would negatively affect direct support. Strategies we did employ, therefore, we aimed a “right-sizing” to make sure that nothing interfered with mission and quality. Even when we had to announce closure of programs in a state which just would not reimburse at a break-even rate, messaging to the media was based on our uncompromising commitment to quality.  So, even though we didn’t have a realistic strategic plan, we did develop, out of necessity, a set of decision guides that allowed us to remain true to who we were and to respond to the deepening financial crisis quickly and effectively.

The fear of having to face unanticipated challenges and opportunities and not having rational tools to aid decision-making is the most pressing concern of most CEOs I have the opportunity to work with. In fact, they tell me often that they can’t wait to get through the larger tasks of strategic planning so they can develop screening criteria to deal with such events. But I tell them, as I am telling you now, that building the overall strategic framework FIRST is the necessary prerequisite to creating screening criteria. Making decisions in the face of the unexpected twists and turns of life requires a meta-vision, an overarching direction, a high-level position toward which the organization is moving. The strategic plan is the vehicle for articulating that vision. Strategy screens are the tools for making immediate decisions about unanticipated events within the context of the overall plan.

Here’s an image that may help you visualize what I’ve been talking about. Think of the strategic plan as driving on an eight-lane freeway. You have calculated the ending point, how long it should take, and what your destination looks like. Annual iterations of the rolling strategic plan may suggest decisions such as taking a different route to save time or stopping for gas or coffee.  Strategy decisions which are required to deal with unanticipated events can be thought of as being similar to making a lane change, deciding to speed up or slow down, or pulling over to fix a flat tire. You can see the relationship of each level of decision-making to the others.

When I have finished writing this ten-part series, I am going to share a schematic which visually depicts this ten-step process. You’ll want to stay tuned!

I am also planning to turn this model into a five-part video course which you and your board can use to work through a coherent approach to strategic planning.

In the meantime, your reactions and comments are always welcomed.

Question Seven: How Will You Know If You Get There?

John Bauer July 10, 2017 blog, News
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You have described your preferred future and you have broken down your dream into high level strategic goals. You have determined that you have the capacity to achieve your goals and you are ready to develop tactical objectives to move your organization into action. But how will you know if you actually get to your preferred future position?

Let’s say, for example, that you have decided that within five years you will become the “employer of choice” for your industry in your area. You have further defined what that means by stating that you will have the lowest employee turnover rate, the highest employee satisfaction scores, and the best wage and benefit packages among all your competitors. Before you start drafting tactical plans to accomplish these goals, it is necessary to quantify performance so you can set concrete targets and also monitor progress. In this obvious example, two things are required. First, you need to identify metrics that are commonly used in your field so you can compare yourself with others. Second, you have to set target goals and develop monitoring and reporting systems to track your performance over time and your progress toward actually achieving those goals. Every time you develop a new tactic or strategy to “bend the curve” or “move the needle” so to speak, you should be able to measure its impact on attaining the goal in question.

Take another example from higher education. You have decided that you are going to be the highest rated regional private college in your geographic region. To determine what that would look like, you have decided that you will use the U.S. News and World Report rankings of colleges and universities. These rankings are determined from a dozen different indicators including things like entering Freshman ACT scores, alumni giving, number of students graduating in four years, student to faculty ratios, and numerous others. You can craft a strategic goal statement with an associated metric which establishes a concrete target for any or all of those indicators. Initiatives or tactical plans can be measured for their effectiveness by monitoring the impact such actions have on the performance indicator. If you are successful at improving these metrics through careful planning and execution of strategies, there should be no reason why your institution can’t rise to the top of the charts.

Now, I should pause here to say that what I am suggesting is considerably different than routine measurement of efficiency. You should see, for example, that measures of efficiency (e.g., faculty/student ratios) might run counter to a strategic goal. It saves money to increase faculty/student ratios but improved quality and higher learning outcomes might be enhanced by lowering the ratio. While there are certainly other factors that contribute to learning, it has been generally accepted that smaller teacher/student ratios improve learning. Hence, U.S. News and World Report’s years-long use of this metric. This distinction is very important as boards may question certain resource allocations, especially when they are aimed at improving quality indicators that may be difficult to measure.

While setting quantified target goals is important, let me also emphasize how essential it is to have systems in place to monitor on-going progress. Such systems are different than the routine monitoring of key performance indicators such as net budget variance and other descriptive statistics like people served, number of employees, etc. Business intelligence requires another level of observation and analysis. It requires tracking performance over time along with the capacity to project possible statistical scenarios into the future. This sounds complicated, but it is really quite simple. Take one of the statistics I mentioned above such as the rate of employee turnover. Looking back over 20 or 30 quarters to get a clear picture of past performance will give you an idea of the ups and downs of the rate over time. Identifying events or environmental conditions such as the recession beginning in the third quarter of 2008 will help you to flag events which directly influenced your organization’s performance. Your environment scan in which you did your best to identify trends for the future, as well as your current status, should give you a sense of the kinds of events that might affect your ability to achieve your goals. Furthermore, the thorough capacity assessment you conducted will give you a good sense of the extent to which you can “bend the curve.”

So, considering where you would like the organization to be in three to five years, it is possible to map several possible scenarios that meet or exceed that goal. As data gets updated each quarter, it is possible to refine the path to success by evaluating those actions, conditions, or strategies that have an impact on performance, and to enhance, alter, or cease those actions as needed.

It is also possible to contemplate conditions or possible events that might lead you to fall short of your goal. While not a desired scenario, recognizing the factors that might bring it about is helpful in developing strategies to avoid failure. Such possibilities should be part of an overall risk management system and is a subject for another time. Predicting performance based on past performance, understanding current realities and future trends, and tracking real-time data to identify trends allows you to be nimble and responsive to changes in your environment.

But then, that’s the subject of next week’s article, “How will you address challenges and opportunities along the way?” Stay tuned.

As always, your thoughts and reactions are most welcome.

Question Six: Can You Get There?

John Bauer July 3, 2017 blog, News
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This question addresses an often-neglected aspect of thorough strategic planning. Having described your preferred future, it would seem to make a lot of sense to determine if your organization has the capacity to actually achieve that future. In other words, does your organization have the necessary resources, processes, policies, and infrastructure to effectuate the plan and arrive at the desired position? And along the way, can your organization adapt and respond to emerging challenges and opportunities, both of which also require organizational capacity?

A capacity assessment is different than a traditional SWOT analysis, although it could possibly be used here with some effectiveness. In most traditional strategic planning processes, SWOT analysis is conducted at the outset, with the unfortunate result that the desired future position is shaped by an understanding of weaknesses and threats, instead of a thoughtful regard for opportunities in an anticipated future. Furthermore, because every organization has capacity in varying degrees in different areas, pigeon-holing elements of capacity into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats boxes creates false dichotomies and renders absolute judgments without recognizing gradations in strength.

Regardless of the method employed (and I will share a number of such methods below), it is important that every aspect of the organization be considered. Allison (pp. 158-163) lists “eight areas of operations [that] are most relevant for strategic planning: (1) human resources, (2) organizational structure and culture, (3) financial management, (4) resource and business development, (5) external communications, (6) information technology, (7) facilities and equipment, and (8) planning and evaluation.”

Thigpen (2007) in her work at the Center for Nonprofit Leadership at Adelphi University expanded the list and created questionnaires for each of the following: mission, board governance, planning, resource development, external relations, administration and management, executive leadership, finance, human resources, program planning and evaluation, and space, facilities and technology. Individual questionnaires were created for each area along with suggested interviewees to ensure valid and knowledgeable input.

Using most of these same categories, the Marguerite Casey Foundation developed an assessment tool that groups 59 questions into four broad categories of capacity:  leadership capacity, adaptive capacity, management capacity, and operational capacity. Their questionnaire requires participants to select one of four narrative descriptors for each item, thereby ranking capacity in levels 1, 2, 3 or 4.

Levinger and Bloom developed an easy-to-use tool called the Simple Capacity Assessment Tool (SCAT) which engages staff and other stakeholders in rating criteria as “nascent,” “emerging,” “expanding,” or “mature.” Their seven areas of assessment are: governance, management practices, human resources, financial resources, service delivery, external relations, and partnering. One interesting aspect of this tool is that stakeholders are involved in developing additional criteria under each subcategory, thereby customizing the tool to consider the unique aspects of the organization.

One of the most widely used on-line assessment tools comes from the McKinsey Foundation. The Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool (OCAT) evaluates nine areas using 123 questions. Similar in construction to the Marguerite Casey Foundation questionnaire, four descriptors are provided for each item.

  • Aspirations
  • Strategy
  • Leadership, staff and volunteers
  • Funding
  • Values
  • Learning and innovation
  • Marketing and communication
  • Managing processes
  • Organization, infrastructure and technology
  • Advocacy (optional)

Several advantages present themselves by using the OCAT. Responses are tabulated automatically and the results are published in the form of a comprehensive report. Not only is capacity measured in a rating scale, but an indication of consensus is provided to indicate the extent to which participants were close or disparate in their responses. Those areas which were high or low in capacity are also color coded. The report provides recommendations for “low hanging fruit” and areas of strength upon which to build. Agendas and templates for planning committee meetings are provided. Graphic images depicting the status of the organization in the various areas are helpful for achieving shared understanding of the overall capacity. Finally, the option for a tenth criterion, advocacy, is provided for those nonprofits that have a budget and staff for that function.

Last, numerous state nonprofit associations have developed capacity assessment tools for member organizations. I noted interesting approaches from New Hampshire, Oregon and Michigan, but I did not take the time to examine all fifty states. Some of these tools are free and accessible on-line. Others are available to members only. It would certainly be worthwhile to investigate which resources are available in your state.

Regardless of how the capacity assessment is conducted, the results need to be carefully reviewed with an eye toward answering the critical question, “Can we get there?” Your dreams for a preferred future will turn into disillusion and disappointment if you don’t attend to your organization’s limitations. My preferred future of being able to dunk a basketball, for example, has to take into consideration my 67 year old knees. My brain may say “jump” but my body is just not going to do what I wish it could. If you lack the capacity to execute the tactical action plans needed to realize the future position you aspire to, attention must be given to building up those areas before you can reasonably hope to move forward. Conducting a thorough capacity assessment is an important step to being able to realize that future. The results of such an assessment may even cause you to rethink some of the positions you aspire to, recognizing the difference between the possible and the plausible, as I discussed in last week’s article.

Next week, I’m going to talk about the importance of measuring performance as you answer the question: “How will you know if you get there?”

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

 

References

Allison, M. and Kaye, J. Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations. (2015). John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ.

Levinger, B. and Bloom, E. A Simple Capacity Assessment Tool (SCAT). Developed for the Global Development Research Center, can be found at:  https://www.gdrc.org/ngo/bl-scat.htm

_____ Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool. Developed by the Marguerite Casey Foundation for use by nonprofit organizations, is found at:  http://caseygrants.org/resources/org-capacity-assessment/

_____ Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool (OCAT). Developed by the McKinsey Foundation for use as an online tool, complete with analysis and reporting, found at:  http://mckinseyonsociety.com/ocat/

_____ Self-Assessment Tool for Nonprofit Organizations. Developed by the Oregon Association of Nonprofit Organizations. The tool and its assessment grid are found at:  https://nonprofitoregon.org/sites/default/files/uploads/file/NP%20Org%20Self%20Assessment_0.pdf

Thigpen, A. Organizational Assessment. (2007) Developed for the Center for Nonprofit Leadership at Adelphi University, School of Social Work. The tool is available at:  http://nonprofit.adelphi.edu/resources/organizational-assessment/