A strategic plan can be a powerful and energizing force uniting members of a nonprofit organization in working together toward shared aims. What distinguishes plans that are engines for growth and improvement from those that mainly stay on the shelf? On Monday, March 8, I will  share research conducted on the UW-Madison campus which identifies several factors that correlate highly with successful execution of a plan. We will discuss tools that range across developing the plan and evaluating it, communicating the plan, implementing, and budgeting. Melinda V. Heinritz, Executive Director, Wisconsin Historical Foundation, will share planning approaches that have resulted in significant gains for her organization.

The Communiversity Session is sponsored by the UW Center for Nonprofits.

It’s an old fashioned approach to think we have to know all the answers before we are willing to communicate with clients, colleagues, customers or stakeholders. Inviting them to contribute to solutions is respectful and appreciative. This open approach is also very likely to shed useful light on the problem itself.

The World Café is a technique for really engaging people in questions and issues that matter to them. It combines doodling or drawing on the table followed by discussion and the opportunity to move to a different table with a different question and another round of writing, drawing and discussion.

Readers share their approaches for saying thank you to colleagues, co-workers, and clients. These suggestions followed the post “The Imperative to Say Thank You.“

If we really believed that our success at work depends on other people being successful in their jobs, what would we do differently?

I ask this in the context of exploring our interdependence as people working within the same organization. We Americans have a dim sense of our interdependence with each other and with the rest of the world.

Yet, no matter what our role is, we are supported by many other people of whose work we may know nothing. How many times do we think about the people who are on the roof fixing the leaks or the people who deliver the products or the people whose job it is to find resources for the organization or those who ensure that everyone gets a paycheck?