It’s pretty common to hear stories about strategic plans that are developed with the assistance of a professional planner and then end up gathering dust on an office shelf of a busy executive. Stepping in to create a plan and then stepping out is very different from stepping up to stay the course to make help make sure it gets implemented and that it works.

Since we specialize in long term planning, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the learnings from our work with the San Diego Family Justice, the President’s Family Justice Center Initiative and the San Diego County Preschool for All, strategic planning-wise, as a jumping off point for future articles about strategic planning that works. We welcome insights from other planners and will post here on our website under Best Practices.

Challenges and Lessons Learned
Keeping partners motivated and participating in the strategic planning process over a prolonged period of time requires a concerted effort. Here are some of the things we did that worked…

Walk With Tall Trees! Include Leadership in All Aspects of the Planning Process. This sends a clear message to participants that the planning process is important, valued, and has credibility. Let the Leadership know they are valued, too. Send meeting notes and participant quotes.

Keep Dribbling – Stay in Motion. Conduct strategic planning follow up meetings to monitor progress, trouble shoot problems, and to introduce new issues that need to be incorporated into the planning process. Always review the vision, create an environment of celebration and build in time to reflect on learnings. People know we’re serious if we follow up and follow through. 

Create a Little Stash - Honor People’s Time and Contributions. Begin and end meetings on time; provide an agenda and identify the meeting’s purpose and desired outcomes. Use ground rules to help the group manage itself.  Build in time for the unplanned and unexpected. An agenda is like a budget. Always have a little stash of time tucked away to cover you in case something takes longer than expected.

Who’s on First? - Create a Single Point of Contact to Keep People Informed, up to date, and to answer questions about the planning process. Assign someone to send out reminder notices and meeting notes. Create a database of all participants and share, share, share. Nothing drives participants wild like not knowing who to call for meeting dates and reports, not having phone numbers and email addresses in order to communicate

Make Merry - Provide Food and Drink at meetings and be on the look out for opportunities to publicly recognize a Job Well Done. Food and acknowledgement always improves the strategic planning product!

Always Open the Door for Others - Provide Opportunities for Leadership to Emerge from the Participants. The natural leaders will emerge if they are given an opportunity to use their leadership skills in the planning process. Make sure planning processes are inclusive and collaborative. 

There’s Always Room for One More - Use the Strategic Planner to Facilitate All Kinds of Meetings. This will allow everyone else to fully participate without worrying about process.  If the strategic planner is doing her job well, no one will notice the process until the desired outcomes are achieved. Big learning. All too often the problem is simply not committing the time to huddle and ‘figure something out.” Research has shown that an hour of planning saves two in execution.

Insights and Tips

• Hire an excellent strategic planner!
• Don’t let subject matter experts substitute for a good strategic planner
• Start strategic planning processes from the beginning and don’t stop even after the Center is launched
• Document the process at every step
• Praise and reward those who engage fully in the strategic planning process

Make good food and drink a priority during the strategic planning process!