La Piana's research shows that the current strategic planning process is used primarily to produce annual workplans and to communicate the leaderhip's intentions—not to form, adjust, and implement organizational strategies that will carry out those intentions.
The main problems David's team uncovered include
Mistaking goals for strategy
When you focus on goal-setting rather than strategy formation you get goals that, while valuable in themselves, may not add up to anything bigger.
Generating more goals than can reasonably be pursued
Most plans cover seven standard areas of concern: board, programs, finances, human resources, fundraising, facilities, and outcomes. Let's assume you have three programs. You set three goals per program (subtotal 9) and three goals for the other areas (subtotal 21). Now, each goal will need at least three action steps. That leaves you with a total of thirty goals and ninety action steps. David says he's come across plans with more objectives than this! No one is going to be able to keep track of all these goals and steps, much less work steadily on so many disparate issues at once. The result is either to pick and choose, or to ignore the document entirely.
Expecting strategies to fit within a rigid timeline
The typical time frame for a strategic plan is three years. In our rapid-response world, it's impossible to anticipate what's important to work on years, or even one year, in advance. David finds that most goals projected anywhere beyond the first year are not taken seriously. Yearly check-ups help but, even then, goals may not match reality a few months later.
Confusing strategic planning with consensus building
The well-meaning nonprofit drive for consensus can undermine difficult, but necessary, priority-setting decisions. Seeking consensus can in fact be damaging. The organization is stymied: unable to reach consensus, yet unable to move forward without it. Reaching consensus is not a good reason in itself to form strategies, but rather, it's a by-product of a good strategic process.
Forecasting the future from a snapshot in time
In David's experience, the process of researching your market (the "environmental scan") usually done at the outset of the process, is often poorly focused. "Tell us what people think of our organization, what our strengths and weaknesses are, and what opportunities we should pursue next," is a common starting place handed to consultants. "There are two problems with this approach. First, unless the consultant takes time to focus their research on the issues most pertinent to the organization at the time, the results can be both broad and shallow. Second, outsourcing the environmental scan doesn't help the organization learn how to do its own on-the-ground research. This skill is key to thinking and acting strategically on an ongoing basis."
Pretending to be objective
Another popular tool of traditional strategic planning is the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, or "SWOT" analysis. While this could be a useful exercise, David has found that the strengths and weaknesses portion of almost every SWOT analysis is essentially the same. "For example, strengths typically include: we have a great leader, we have a talented and dedicated staff, we have a great reputation, our clients love us. Under weaknesses, you rarely see: we have a weak leader, we have terrible staff, no one knows who we are, our clients are impossible to please. This exercise could almost be done with a checklist of fifty choices. When the opportunities and threats are then juxtaposed with the generally meaningless platitudes in the strengths and weaknesses list, most groups fail to take any actionable meaning away from the exercise."
Frustrating staff through bad data, inaction, or both
 Finally, and probably the worst of the difficulties with traditional planning, according to La Piana, is this trio of problems: 1) over reliance on under reliable data, 2) time delays that put the organization on hold, and ultimately, 3) the frustration of the very staff and volunteers who must act on the strategies.
Over reliance on under reliable data—It's a fundamentally flawed belief that good data, if it's available, will yield good strategy. Most nonprofits mistakenly believe that if they ask the right questions on a regular three-year cycle, they can predict major demographic or market shifts and then figure out what to do about them. In practice, it seldom works out this way. Traditional planning puts too much distance between prediction and action. Instead, nonprofits need to continuously scan and engage with their environment as part of their strategic effort.
Time delays that put the organization on hold—Research shows that the typical planning process takes six to twelve months to complete. Until the plan is finished, the organization may come to feel as though it's "on hold." Unfortunately, strategic opportunities don't wait to turn up until the strategic planning process is complete. In fact, they usually pop up at the most inconvenient times. Hesitating to respond can be costly, particularly when the organization passes on stellar opportunities that require immediate action.
Frustration of staff and volunteers—Perhaps the worst effect of traditional strategic planning is that it wears out participants just when the game is supposed to begin. After months of planning, there's a collective sigh: "At least that's out of the way for the next three years!" The end of the planning process sends exactly the wrong message: that the project is "done." And, too frequently, the strategic plan simply fails to make any significant difference in the organization's life. This would explain why traditional strategic plans aren't exactly at staff's fingertips. |
