Three Secrets for a Successful Strategic Planning Process
I have facilitated close to 200 strategic planning processes. Here are three secrets for a successful strategic planning process. Also you can join me for a webinar “Successfully Implementing Your Strategic Plan” on Thursday, June 17, 12:00-1:15 p.m. CDT. The Magna Publications program is aimed at higher education, but the techniques are applicable to any organization.
Collaboration in Action
We have an opportunity to get up to speed on today’s most pressing leadership and human productivity issues. Human resource leaders in the Madison area are collaborating to offer a day of hot topics as part of a larger conference of the IPMA-HR Central regional conference. This collaborative learning event takes place on Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at the Madison Marriott West. (The full IPMA-HR event runs June 6-9.)
Thanks to the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, you can measure for free how well collaboration is going.
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 shared research conducted on the UW-Madison campus which identifies several factors that correlate highly with successful execution of a plan. We discussed tools that ranged across developing the plan and evaluating it, communicating the plan, implementing, and budgeting. Melinda V. Heinritz, Executive Director, Wisconsin Historical Foundation, shared planning approaches that have resulted in significant gains for her organization.
The Communiversity Session was sponsored by the UW Center for Nonprofits. I will send you the handout, just contact me at kathleen@kathleenparis.com.
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.