Volume 17 Number 2 • 2004

Great Tips & Techniques for Strategic Planning

By Mike Flaherty, The University of Montana Rural Institute

As every manager knows, you can be either proactive or reactive. The proactive manager makes the right moves by planning for long-term and short-term challenges. The "tool" a manager uses is the "strategic plan." Deciding what the right moves for your agency are—how to allocate staff time and dollars—is the heart of strategic planning. The benefits of a well-researched and well-written plan are great, compared to the cost spent developing it.

I have had the opportunity and challenge of leading three rehabilitation agencies in the past thirty years. I have recently taken on the responsibility of leading a community-based support program at the Rural Institute called MontanaWorks. Although it has been ten years since I was charged with the responsibility of planning strategically for an agency, the same principles I followed then are still true today.

Strategic planning that is effective is specific to the agency's values/mission and has measurable milestones. Ultimately the plan will be only as good as the information gathered from the involved stakeholders. A clear definition of who you are and what you are in the eyes of your community, your customers, and your collaborators is critical. Your final planning document should address the following questions:

• How can you achieve your goals and stay trued to your vision?
• Who are the people responsible to make it all happen?
• How will you measure your progress?
• How will you identify new challenges and remain flexible so you can respond?

Preparing for strategic planning is as important as the plan itself. I offer the following suggestions for making the right moves as you begin.

"If you don't know where you are going, it doesn't make any difference how you get there!"

Prior to your agency hosting a planning meeting, consider the following critical items:

• Remember your roots
• Know your customers
• Keep things in perspective (Get Real!)
• Focus on measurable outcomes
• Maintain flexibility

Remember your roots, shared history, and traditions. These reflect the customer service values that launched your organization. Your values should be revisited and evaluated; are they still applicable to your current program and, more importantly, its future? Ignoring or forgetting values will ultimately cause services to lose their focus and their vitality to effectively serve customers. Understanding what was important "back then" is a common sense reminder of what is important now as well as in the future.

Your mission statement is a great place to "research" the historical foundation of your organization. As a general guide, ask yourself the following questions.

• Does your program reflect the vision and values in your mission statement?
• Will this mission statement support the strategic planning you are undertaking?
• Are you considering a significant change in your organization's focus that might require a revision in your mission statement?

History tells us that we as individuals or organizations need to remain relevant to our customers' needs, aware of changing trends/methods of service, and open to new ideas to improve service delivery. Customers who feel their needs are going unnoticed or un-served will soon leave the agency. The agency without customers soon becomes a non-entity. Know your customers. They should be the first and best source of information about what is happening and what could be happening. They are a valuable resource to help you determine which services to offer and how those services should be delivered. Pose the following questions before making the strategic plan:

• Who are your customers?
• Why are you serving them?
• Has there been a substantial change in the number of people you serve?
• What do they expect as an outcome of your services?
• Are your services still viable and valued?

The other people who are valuable sources of information for your strategic plan are your other stakeholders. The folks that provide the day-to-day contact, service delivery and support, and are accountable for the quality of services your agency provides—your staff—are essential. Your board is also a group to consider; these folks are the policymakers and have yet another perspective on your agency's "haves and wants." Suffice to say, good sources of information are the persons directly impacted by your agency's operations, from policymakers to service providers. The realistic strategic plan requires feedback from all the folks that are involved and impacted, because they are all stakeholders in your organization's future.

Now armed with the knowledge of your historical roots/values and a stronger sense of the people you serve, you have a lot of data at your disposal. Agencies that want to thrive will need to address where you are today and what direction you want your agency to take in the future. The current "environment" should be assessed. This includes trends in funding, legislative activity, and cultural shifts (customer demand).

Keep things in perspective as you engage in both short and long-term planning.

• What are the realities of your current situation?
• What are the growth potentials?
• What are the limitations that currently exist?

Your organization will need to respond to the ongoing reality of high demand for quality customer service, positive outcomes, and scarce funding. Take into account your organization’s strengths and areas that need attention. Ultimately, perspective is the "reality check" that guides you as you shape your program to fit your values and customer needs. No service can be "all things to all people," and keeping things in perspective will help you plan realistically.

Getting responses to the "haves and wants" questions requires establishing an environment where ideas and experiences can be freely shared. The best information is given in an environment that encourages open and trustful communication. Having the wrong information at the start of strategic planning is problematic. If people tell you what they think you want to hear, rather than what they think, your outcome-based planning will miss the mark. If the expected outcomes do not truly match the issues, needs, and wishes of the customers as well as the staff that provide the services, your planning has no value.

Keep the discussion focused on issues not persons. The planning process is for identifying needs and wants, not for attacking personal positions or ideas. There is a natural tendency to get bogged down in a "venting session." It is important to identify negative issues, but even more important to recount positives—things that should be recognized and potentially enhanced. Fix the fixable and build on the good things.

The invited "information givers" (customers, staff and board) are assembled, an environment for open discussion has been established, all that remains is to put into place the method to record the answers to the above questions. Choose a leader to facilitate/direct the discussion. The facilitator sets the "ground rules" for the open exchange of individual responses and keeps the group focused in a positive direction. The facilitator asks for clarification and keeps the discussion on task.

The first job in the meeting is to identify what your current position is. The facilitator records answers to the questions you have been asking yourselves:

• What is your position in the community?
• What is your mission and the values that you adhere to?
• Are the founding ideals and visions of service to customers still true today?
• Who are your customers?
• Are they satisfied?
• What do you want?

Discussing wants helps to build a "wish list." Building the wish list is great opportunity to provide direction for the future. It is a rough draft for the outcomes that are the heart of the strategic plan.

Outcome-based goals—meaningful and measurable—are critical. The most important element of designing a strategic plan is writing goals/outcomes. In the absence of a written plan of action and measurable outcomes, a strategic plan is nothing more than a set of loose guidelines. An agency entrusted with public resources or private support must have a plan with specific, written outcomes, and timelines.

Your measurable outcomes represent those unique challenges that you decide that your agency will meet. They may represent milestones on the journey or they could be the ultimate destinations. They are based on specific values and are mission driven. In essence, these outcomes embody your roots and define your future.

How do you get what you want? What has to happen for your wishes, your vision, your outcomes to become a reality? Strategic planning should include a written list of "action items" needed to achieve your goals. Action items should be focused, time sensitive, and have a person's name attached to them. This is an opportunity to empower your agency and its customers by assigning people specific tasks. You can broaden your base of persons invested in the current and long-term health of an agency with this healthy exercise. It creates a broader "buy-in" potential and supports a work culture of taking responsibility for a final plan. Without commitment for the outcomes, all the energy expended to gather information and make your wish list is wasted.

Maintain flexibility! Things change. We know that our culture, communities, work environments, and financial circumstances all change. Planning in general, and specifically strategic planning, must include flexibility. Short-term events will happen and impact your plan.

Flexibility implies that there will be times that your plan may need to be addressed to account for new information, unexpected issues, and unforeseen challenges. The strategic plan addresses the reality that it is best to be in a position to respond to change rather that be caught in a position of reactive thinking. Belief systems can also be challenged, sometimes to the extent that an inflexible strategic plan may indeed so alter the ongoing mission of the agency that it may become nonexistent.

Making all the right moves means being a proactive manager and looking to the future of your agency. Strategic planning is a valuable tool for outlining the achievable, the doable, and the "dreamable" for your agency. There are always risks in making bold moves, but developing a formal strategic plan and putting it into action is the right move.