How involved should your Board be with your strategic planning process? As usual, opinions vary all over the map on this question. On one end of the spectrum, some people view strategy-making as the responsibility of the staff. The Board should be generally informed – and certainly consulted if anything “wild” is being considered – but their main role is to ask good … [Read more...] about Your Strategy & Your Board
Strategy
Building Bridges
For the past many months, construction workers have been tearing down and then rebuilding both sides of a bridge I take to work every morning. Traffic was redirected over one side while they worked on the other. So, I have been able to observe their daily progress – and I have a new appreciation for everything it takes to build strong bridges. I think that relates to … [Read more...] about Building Bridges
Preparing the Strategy Process
“We are too busy doing stuff! We don’t have time for strategic planning!” Once you get past this objection then you get: “Okay, but we need to be efficient!” Which I appreciate. None of us have the time for everything we want to get done. But I do recommend that you be deliberative about three aspects of preparing for your strategic planning process before charging ahead … [Read more...] about Preparing the Strategy Process
The Value of Nurturing Stakeholders
You know it’s something you should spend more time on, but it gets put on the backburner. This blog is dedicated to encouraging you to take “nurturing stakeholders” from your “C” list and moving it up to your “A” list. We all know how important it is to have strong relationships with our stakeholders, whether they are donors, board members, volunteers, alumni, people … [Read more...] about The Value of Nurturing Stakeholders
Reader Results Are In!: Good Strategy vs Great Plan
And the winner is . . . Good Strategy by 63% to 37%! This was fun and thanks to everyone for playing along. In fact, it was so fun that I am thinking of turning this into a mid-term question for my grad class on Nonprofit Strategy at Maryland. Is “Good Strategy” the “right” answer? It all depends on your reasoning. A number of people pointed out that the only way for a … [Read more...] about Reader Results Are In!: Good Strategy vs Great Plan