Landscape Analysis, Competitor Analysis, Benchmarking.  Organizations of all types carry out these activities from time to time.

Landscape Analysis is the broadest of these activities and can include both Competitor Analysis and Benchmarking.  It may also include a Needs Assessment, Stakeholder Input, and Environmental Data Collection – often looking at PESTLE aspects of the environment: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental.  The purpose of this analysis is to stay current on trends and identify possible shifts in the Landscape that may require a Strategic response.

Competitor Analysis is focused on an organization’s main competitors.  Corporations typically focus on competitors for similar products that they sell, and sometimes substitutes as well.  Nonprofits look at organizations which provide the same types of services, but also at the types of services their key donors fund.  They may also look at competitors for Staff, Board Members, and Volunteers.  This type of analysis is usually done more frequently than a full Landscape Analysis.  Many companies, for example, will monitor competitor prices in real time.

Benchmarking involves identifying and studying comparable organizations that are highly regarded and/or peers.  Organizations will typically seek to emulate the “best in class.”

It is a good idea to carry out all three of these activities, especially during a strategic planning process.  However, here are the ways that Benchmarking can be improved:

*Cast a wider net.  Look beyond key competitors and the most popular choices.  Scour the world to identify the organizations that are the most innovative in your industry.  Ask others in your same industry who they think are the unsung innovators.

*Don’t copy others.  If you do this, you will always be behind.  The best keep innovating.  See what you can learn about what others are doing.  Take their ideas and figure out how to make them even better.

*Look under the hood.  Look at details.  What is really making this organization so successful?  Look beyond price and product features.  What is the culture like?  How do they do their hiring?  What leadership principles are they following?  Much of innovation is due to excellent implementation.

Keep your eyes open.  Once upon at time Circuit City was thought to be one of the best companies in the world.  They were heralded in the book, Good to Great – but now no longer exist.  One of their former CEOs wrote a book called Good to Great to Gone – that tells the story of how the Circuit City leaders ignored the competitive environment after he had left the company.

Change is coming.  We need to stay aware and innovative in order to make the best Mission Impact possible.

In a survey of more than 10,000 senior leaders, 97% said that being strategic was the most important leadership behavior needed in their organizations.

In the same survey, 96% of the leaders said they did not have the time for strategic thinking.

How can you make more time to be strategic?

1 – Give up your “busyness” as a status symbol.  Count this a second new year’s resolution which supports becoming a strategic thinker.  “Busy” does not equal productive.  Reduce your “urgent list” with these tips.

2 – Improve your productivity.  Check out this recent blog which details ways to focus your time on what is really important.  Hints: it includes more prioritizing and delegating.  Also stop trying to multitask.  By being more productive and allowing yourself to not be “constantly busy,” you are setting yourself up for the next step.

3 – Block one hour on your calendar every week for Strategic Thinking.  And keep this hour sacred.  Treat it as your most important hour of the week – delay everything else.  Start the hour by asking yourself: “What three big goals could transform our future if we were able to accomplish them?”  Ask the question anew every week.  This will set you on the path for thinking strategically.

Strategic Thinking does not require a weekend retreat of solitude once a month.  Giving yourself weekly windows to start your strategic engine will spark creativity and innovation.  In this way, you will make more of a Mission Impact.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Clark, D.  “If Strategy Is So Important, Why Don’t We Make Time For It,” Harvard Business Review online, June 21, 2018.

The substance and timing of Board Retreats vary widely.

My suggestion is that you take at least one day every two years for an off-site with your Board.  I know some Boards that do these annually for a couple of days and find it to be very helpful in building Board cohesion and commitment.

The substance of a retreat may include a combination of the following:

• Team-Building. This can be done in so many ways.  Do a personality styles assessment, read a teamwork book together, do a ropes course, or just have some fun together.
• Board Self-Assessment. Do a formal assessment prior to the Retreat, such as the one from BoardSource and review the results.  Make plans for improving your Board’s performance.
• Strategic Planning. This may be done as part of a larger overall strategic planning
• Personal/Professional Development. Bring in a guest speaker to teach about some work or life skills we can all use.

A few other tips:

• If possible, engage a facilitator to help organize and guide your activities
• Get away from the office and – if possible – spend at least one night away. Make sure people can fully disengage from their “normal” lives.
• Allow for unscheduled time when people can relax together

Most important of all – make sure that you are clear on your purpose and that you have communicated that to everyone.  Start the day with reminders of the importance of your mission, your vision for the future, and how the purpose of the Retreat connects to that.

A well-done Board Retreat can help supercharge your Board and inspire them to make even more of a Mission Impact.

The issue she is getting at is that so many people see a problem in the world and then come up with a solution to that problem that they fall in love with.  Many people come to me with a solution to a problem they have observed and they want to start a new nonprofit that is built around this solution.

However, they are so IN LOVE with their SOLUTION that they have not even tested it to see if it WORKS!  This happens with products in the business world and programs in the nonprofit world.

And they often put on blinders that preclude them from “seeing” evidence that maybe this is not such a great solution.

Once we set our Mission, the next thing we want to do is to establish our Theory of Change – how we want to address the mission issue.  This is where we articulate our solution to the problem that our mission is focused on.  It is a theory that needs to be tested.

If we focus on the problem and on collecting data on how well our proposed theory/solution does that, then we are on track to make a real difference.  We should never be satisfied with the results of our tests until we are solving the problem 100%.  That will give us mindset of continuous improvement.

Are you in love with a solution – a program or product?  Change your focus to the problem.  Fall in love with the idea of solving that problem instead.  Then you can start making continuous progress toward fully solving it.

That’s one way to go and it is a very reasonable thing to do – as we are reminded by this quote from George Bernard Shaw:

“The reasonable person adapts themselves to the world.  The unreasonable one persists in adapting the world to themselves.  Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable person.”

Rather than adapting to a future that you cannot even reasonably predict anyway, I suggest to individuals and organizations that they take a more aspirational approach and invent the future that inspires them.  Then, look into the environment and work to shape circumstances toward your vision.

The “creating your future” approach is a more fulfilling option because “adapting to the future” always involves giving up (if not selling out) what you really care about for the future.  Even if you try and fail in your efforts to shape circumstances toward your vision, it is more fulfilling because you are following your dreams.

This is one of the problems, by the way, of the popular process of “benchmarking.”  Many organizations study what the “best in class” are doing and seek to replicate that.  By doing that they are, at best, following behind the leaders.  They are destined to be yesterday’s news.

A better approach is to “benchmark,” but use what you learn as springboard information from which you dream what you really want.

Our choices are clear.  Adapt, follow, give up on our real dreams.

Or create the future we want and pursue it with vigor.  Follow your hopes and dreams!

Check this out – it could work for a company or a nonprofit.

Step 1: Vision.  Once you are clear on your Mission, then create an Aspirational Vision – what would your organization look like and be like if you could have it any way you wanted it (same as Mission Impact).

Step 2: Opportunities.  Lots of people hate SWOTs and, let’s face it, they usually don’t do a very accurate job with it.  So, forget about Strengths, Weaknesses, and Threats – just focus on Opportunities.  Look at your Vision and the external environment, what Opportunities do you see which – if you seized them – would significantly advance your Mission and Vision?

Step 3: Capabilities.  What Capabilities do we need in order to seize these Opportunities?  The answer to this question may require you to totally reinvent your organization – and quickly.  You may need a totally different Board, Staff, Financial Model, Service Offerings, and more.

Step 4: Goals, Strategies, & Plans:  Your Goals would be designed to develop the Capabilities as quickly as possible.  And of course, I would advocate for Almost Impossible Goals (read more here).  Strategies & Plans would be created around these.

This approach puts a premium on accurately identifying Opportunities in the environment that will advance the Mission and Vision, and then identifying the organization Capabilities required.

The world is changing rapidly.  Most organizations are organized for what the world was like 25 years ago, not for today or much less tomorrow.  This new approach will require a radical rethinking and redesign of what your organization looks like.  But it just might help you stay relevant.

I have heard all of the excuses.

“They don’t know enough about the substance of the issues to provide input.”

“They don’t really care.”

“We already know what they think.”

Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong.

There are many different categories of stakeholders.  They could be customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, community members, and more.  If someone “feels” that they have a “stake” in your organization’s future – then you should provide them with the opportunity for input into major decisions – certainly this includes your strategic planning efforts.

Involving stakeholders is the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.

For sure, not everyone will have great ideas – but the same can be said about “senior” people.  And sometimes brilliant ideas will come from voices you would least suspect.

You might think that people do not care, but you could be shocked at how much more engaged they can become when they are asked to participate in meaningful ways.

And what if you actually do not learn anything new when you cast the net widely for input?  At least you have respected the role of the stakeholders in the process and – here is an important learning – the support and participation of all stakeholder groups is usually vital to the implementation success of any decision.  They are more likely to be actively supportive if they were involved.

Once involved, some people will give their heart and soul to make an effort successful.  An organization I know of once asked line staff to elect three representatives to the strategic planning committee.  After every meeting the reps held town halls with all employees to explain what was happening and ask for input.  By the end of the process, there was more than “buy-in,” there was active, enthusiastic participation in making sure the strategy was successful.

A culture of meaningful involvement of stakeholders on a continual basis – not just episodic – can be transformational for an organization.

*What products/services/programs of value are we going to provide and to whom?

*Who do we need to staff the provision of these products/services/programs?

*How will we finance all of this activity?

An organization should have at least one strategic goal which relates to each of these questions.

The organization should have an integrated and coherent strategy that connects the answers to these questions and the goals together.

IMPORTANT: during the sequencing of your strategy implementation, you must consider how the actions you take in one area (products/services/programs, staffing, financing) affect the others.  Your actions in one area need to complement the other areas of the organization’s operation.

As an example, many strategies are launched because an entity sees an opportunity to serve customers/clients with new services/programs/products.

Often overlooked, however, is whether the entity has the right number of people with the right skills to implement such a new endeavor.  If not, then reorganizing staffing needs to be addressed first.  “Doing more/different with the same” is usually not a good strategy.

Next, are you properly set to fund the new effort – including the staffing mix? What will you do to capitalize the new strategy – take money from reserves, debt financing, venture capital, venture philanthropy?

What’s the longer term financial model?  Are there customers/donors who will pay for this over time?  Have you done research on this or just trusting your “gut?” (Not a good idea.)

Maybe taking actions to secure your financing plan needs to be your first set of activities, followed by staff reorganization, and then new product/service/program launch.  But each strategy is different and you need to study the connections between products/services/programs, staffing, and financing before making that determination.

Strategic leaders know that strategy needs to be orchestrated and integrated in order to lead to high performance.  It is one of the most important responsibilities of senior leaders.

Research has demonstrated that “prospective hindsight” – imagining that an event has already occurred – increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%.*  Therefore, some organizations conduct a “premortem” to identify potential problems before implementing a project.

To conduct a “premortem” ask your team to imagine:
“If this project ends up having some breakdowns, what would you guess those might be?”

This gives people license to play a sort of brainstorm guessing game without the pressure of being labeled as a negative thinker.

A premortem is a good discipline to add to the end of your planning process to identify possible hidden problems lurking around the corner.  It also helps slow the process down just a bit in case the team (or more especially some excited leaders) are going a bit too fast.

There is no way to predict every possible problem that can occur when implementing a project, but the premortem provide a chance to avoid some challenges and allow the organization to make even more of a Mission Impact.

*Performing a Project Premortem, Gary Klein, Harvard Business Review, September, 2007.

To help people think big, I sometimes say “Imagine you just received an unrestricted gift of $100 billion.  The donor said to do anything with it you want.  What would you do with it?”

Wow – with that kind of money you could do some incredible things.  I encourage you to use that question with your staff or Board one of these days to help them dream big.

A few years ago, I was privileged to facilitate strategic planning for Ronald McDonald House in Baltimore.  At first, the Board was thinking about a strategy for raising money to fix up the current house.  But when I asked them what they really wanted – if they could have anything – they said “New House!”

Even though they did not have property for a new house or the money, they dreamed and dreamed big – HUGE actually.  You can read this earlier blog (“Ritz & Disney at Grandma’s House”) about how they dreamed.

Next week, Ronald McDonald House in Baltimore is going to break ground for their new house!  You can read more about it here.  They got the property and raised money – not $5 million, not $10 million or $20 million.  They have raised $27.5 million and are closing in on their goal of $30 million.  It is going to be an amazing place for children and families.

If I would have told the Board – in our first meeting a few years back – that they would figure out to a way to raise $30 million for this effort, I think they may have laughed me out of the room or fired me on the spot.

But this just goes to show the power of vision, aspiration, and commitment to it all.  Way to go RMH of Baltimore!!!  You are making an amazing Mission Impact of the lives of kids and families.