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Table of Contents COVER TITLE PAGE LIST OF FIGURES AND EXHIBITS

Figures Exhibits

PREFACE SCOPE AUDIENCE OVERVIEW OF THE CONTENTS COMPANION STRATEGIC PLANNING WORKBOOKS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR THE FIFTH EDITION THE AUTHOR PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING

CHAPTER ONE: Why Strategic Planning Is More Important Than Ever

DEFINITION, PURPOSE, AND BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING DEFINITION, PURPOSE, AND BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS SUMMARY

CHAPTER TWO: The Strategy Change Cycle: An Effective Strategic Planning and Management Approach for Public and Nonprofit Organizations

A 10-STEP STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS TAILORING THE PROCESS TO SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES

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SUMMARY PART TWO: KEY STEPS IN THINKING, ACTING, AND LEARNING STRATEGICALLY

CHAPTER THREE: Initiating and Agreeing on a Strategic Planning Process

PLANNING FOCUS AND DESIRED IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES DESIRED LONGER-TERM OUTCOMES GETTING CLEAR ABOUT THE PURPOSE DEVELOPING AN INITIAL AGREEMENT PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES HAVE REALISTIC HOPES FOR THE PROCESS SUMMARY

CHAPTER FOUR: Clarifying Organizational Mandates and Mission

MANDATES MISSION STAKEHOLDER ANALYSES THE MISSION STATEMENT PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES SUMMARY

CHAPTER FIVE: Assessing the Environment to Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Challenges

PURPOSE DESIRED IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES LONGER-TERM DESIRED OUTCOMES EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENTS INTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES

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SUMMARY CHAPTER SIX: Identifying Strategic Issues Facing the Organization

IMMEDIATE AND LONGER-TERM DESIRED OUTCOMES EIGHT APPROACHES TO STRATEGIC ISSUE IDENTIFICATION SUMMARY

CHAPTER SEVEN: Formulating and Adopting Strategies and Plans to Manage the Issues

PURPOSE DESIRED IMMEDIATE AND LONGER-TERM OUTCOMES THREE APPROACHES TO STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES SUMMARY

CHAPTER EIGHT: Establishing an Effective Organizational Vision for the Future

DESIRED IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES AND LONGER-TERM BENEFITS AN EXAMPLE PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES SUMMARY

CHAPTER NINE: Implementing Strategies and Plans Successfully

PURPOSE AND DESIRED IMMEDIATE AND LONGER- TERM OUTCOMES PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS THE SPECIAL ROLE OF BUDGETS PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES SUMMARY

CHAPTER TEN: Reassessing and Revising Strategies and Plans PURPOSE AND DESIRED OUTCOMES

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BUILDING A STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEM PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES SUMMARY

PART THREE: MANAGING THE PROCESS AND GETTING STARTED WITH STRATEGIC PLANNING

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Leadership Roles in Making Strategic Planning Work

UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT UNDERSTANDING THE PEOPLE INVOLVED, INCLUDING ONESELF SPONSORING THE PROCESS CHAMPIONING THE PROCESS FACILITATING THE PROCESS FOSTERING COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP (AND FOLLOWERSHIP) USING DIALOGUE AND DELIBERATION TO CREATE A MEANINGFUL PROCESS MAKING AND IMPLEMENTING DECISIONS IN ARENAS ENFORCING PRINCIPLES AND NORMS, SETTLING DISPUTES, AND MANAGING RESIDUAL CONFLICTS SUMMARY: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER AND PREPARING FOR ONGOING STRATEGIC CHANGE

CHAPTER TWELVE: Getting Started with Strategic Planning THE THREE EXAMPLES REVISITED GETTING STARTED

RESOURCES RESOURCE A: A Guide to Stakeholder Identification and Analysis Techniques

AN ARRAY OF TECHNIQUES CONCLUSIONS

RESOURCE B: Using Information and Communications

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Technology (ICT) and Social Media in the Strategic Planning Process

ENHANCING ORGANIZATIONAL USE OF TECHNOLOGY THE TOOLS CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES NAME INDEX SUBJECT INDEX END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

List of Illustrations Chapter 1

Figure 1.1. The ABCs of Strategic Planning.

Figure 1.2. Rational Planning Model.

Figure 1.3. Political Decision-Making Model.

Figure 1.4. Purposes and Functions of Strategic Planning and Management.

Chapter 2

Figure 2.1. The Strategy Change Cycle.

Figure 2.2. Strategic Planning System for Integrated Units of Management.

Figure 2.3. Strategic Planning and Management Outcomes, Actions, Design Features, and Context.

Chapter 3

Figure 3.1. Possible Purposes to Be Served by the City of Utrecht in Addressing the Challenges of Housing and Integrating Asylum Seekers.

Figure 3.2. Outcomes Likely to Be Needed If the Strategic Planning Process Is to Succeed.

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Chapter 4

Figure 4.1. Stakeholder Map for a Government.

Chapter 5

Figure 5.1. Simplified Policy Field Map of the Relationships Surrounding the Metropolitan Economic Development Association's Program With the Association of Women Contractors and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency.

Chapter 6

Figure 6.1. Sorting Out the Issues and Their Implications.

Figure 6.2. Strategic Issues Facing a Roman Catholic Religious Order.

Chapter 7

Figure 7.1. The Loft Literary Center Map of High-Level Goals (boxed with shadow), Performance Indicators (boxed with no shadow), and Strategies Related to Resource Use (unboxed).

Chapter 10

Figure 10.1. Strategic Issues Management Model.

Figure 10.2. Purchaser-Provider Contract Model.

Figure 10.3. The Architecture of the Virginia Performs System.

Resources

Figure A.1. Strategic Management Purposes and Functions and Stakeholder Analysis Techniques to Assist in Fulfilling Them.

Figure A.2. Power Versus Interest Grid.

Figure A.3. Bases of Power—Directions of Interest Diagram, With Examples of Power Bases and Interests.

Figure A.4. Stakeholder-Issue Interrelationship Diagram.

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Figure A.5. Problem-Frame Stakeholder Map.

Figure A.6. Policy Attractiveness Versus Stakeholder Capability Grid.

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“Leading and managing public-serving organizations in complex environments is a distinct form of professional practice, and strategic planning is one of its key aspects. Bryson has thought through this issue from every angle, so the fortunate reader of the latest edition of this landmark book can readily deliberate about how best to apply their own intelligence to leading and managing public service organizations in the here and now, wherever and whenever that may be.”

Michael Barzelay

Professor

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

“Nobody captures the processes, insights, and strategies for strategic management like John Bryson does. He has produced another tour de force with the fifth edition of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations.”

Frances S. Berry

Reubin O'D. Askew Eminent Scholar and Frank Sherwood Professor of Public Administration

Askew School of Public Administration and Policy Florida State University

“The new fifth edition gives us a new best-book-in-the-world on strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations. Bryson does a masterful job of integrating intellectual insight and practical knowledge, showing conclusively that good theory can be very practical.”

Barry Bozeman

Arizona Centennial Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Public Management

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Director of the Center for Organization Research and Design

Arizona State University

“Public and nonprofit leaders are facing significant and unprecedented challenges today. Navigating these challenges and creating innovation in a complex world without a roadmap and guideposts is impossible. Once again John Bryson, in his latest edition of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, provides a clear framework for creating sustainable change in a complex world. This book is a must-read for leaders and managers to effectively create strategies for transformative change.”

Gary Cunningham

President and CEO of the Metropolitan Economic Development Association

Minneapolis, MN

“In a time of great uncertainty for public organizations, strategic management is a must to survive. Bryson's new book shows the way forward and how to manage it. A must-read for practitioners and students alike, which treats the whole strategic planning and management process and activities in depth.”

Erik Hans Klijn

Professor

Department of Public Administration and Sociology

Erasmus University

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

President

International Research Society for Public Management

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“There has never been more pressure on public and nonprofit leaders to demonstrate their value to the world. Strategic planning is a key means to do so, but too often it becomes a make-work exercise in practice. To avoid that trap, read this book. John Bryson is the undisputed master of how to make strategic planning work in the public and nonprofit sectors, and this book is the bible on the topic.”

Donald Moynihan

Professor and Director

La Follette School of Public Affairs

University of Wisconsin–Madison

“Anyone working in complex systems and facing dynamic change should grab this book to help you think, prepare, and act. For the novice, it provides an invaluable foundation for approaching strategy development and execution. For the experienced leader, this resource offers fresh tools and insights on applications that can energize your efforts within and across organizations.”

Laurie Ohmann

Senior Vice President of Client Services & Community Partnerships

Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, MN

“John Bryson's Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations is THE book I always recommend to practitioners and academics alike. There is no better book on planning on the market today.”

Rosemary O'Leary

Edwin O. Stene Distinguished Professor

Director, School of Public Affairs

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University of Kansas

President

Public Management Research Association

“Bryson's work has benefited innumerable practitioners and students in the US and well beyond it. Now this fifth edition even further ties together strategic planning with strategic thinking, acting, and learning. The book thus completes an impressive intellectual trajectory across the field of the strategic management of public services organizations.”

Edoardo Ongaro

Professor of Public Management

The Open University

United Kingdom

President

European Group for Public Administration (EGPA)

“John Bryson is the doyen of strategic planning for public services. This fifth edition of his book is essential and required reading for all students and practitioners.”

Stephen Osborne

Chair of International Public Management

University of Edinburgh

Editor

Public Management Review

“This new edition is a great resource for practitioners, scholars, and students learning the art and science of strategic planning as a basis

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for strategic management. It operationalizes practical guidance, showing how strategic thinking, acting, learning, and deliberation have to be designed and integrated into the strategic planning process.”

David M. Van Slyke

Dean and Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business and Government Policy

The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

Syracuse University

“The new edition of this most authoritative book on public and nonprofit strategic management responds effectively to the changing environment of our time, incorporating more content on governance, collaboration, deliberation, sustainability, and public value creation. Beautifully written, theoretically sound, and practically useful, it is a must-read for scholars, practitioners, and students who want to keep abreast of the field.”

Kaifeng Yang

Professor

Reubin O'D. Askew School of Public Administration and Policy

Florida State University

Dean and Professor, School of Public Administration and Policy

Renmin University of China

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STRATEGIC PLANNING

FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement

FIFTH EDITION

JOHN M. BRYSON

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Copyright © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising here from.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bryson, John M. (John Moore), 1947- author.

Title: Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: a guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement / John M. Bryson.

Description: Fifth edition. | Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2017. | Series: Bryson on strategic planning | Revised edition of the author's Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations, c2001. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2017040594 (print) | LCCN 2017040996 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119071792 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119071617 (epub) | ISBN 9781119071600 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Strategic planning. | Nonprofit organizations—Management. |

Public administration. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Nonprofit Organizations & Charities.

Classification: LCC HD30.28 (ebook) | LCC HD30.28 .B79 2017 (print) | DDC 658.4/012— dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040594 ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: © Ivanastar/Getty Images

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LIST OF FIGURES AND EXHIBITS

Figures 1.1 The ABCs of Strategic Planning.

1.2 Rational Planning Model.

1.3 Political Decision-Making Model.

1.4 Purposes and Functions of Strategic Planning and Management.

2.1 The Strategy Change Cycle.

2.2 Strategic Planning System for Integrated Units of Management.

2.3 Strategic Planning and Management Outcomes, Actions, Design Features, and Context.

3.1 Possible Purposes to Be Served by the City of Utrecht in Addressing the Challenges of Housing and Integrating Asylum Seekers.

3.2 Outcomes Likely to Be Needed If the Strategic Planning Process Is to Succeed.

4.1 Stakeholder Map for a Government.

5.1 Simplified Policy Field Map of the Relationships Surrounding the Metropolitan Economic Development Association's Program With the Association of Women Contractors and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency.

6.1 Sorting Out the Issues and Their Implications.

6.2 Strategic Issues Facing a Roman Catholic Religious Order.

7.1 The Loft Literary Center Map of High-Level Goals (boxed with shadow), Performance Indicators (boxed with no shadow), and Strategies Related to Resource Use (unboxed).

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10.1 Strategic Issues Management Model.

10.2 Purchaser-Provider Contract Model.

10.3 The Architecture of the Virginia Performs System.

A.1 Strategic Management Purposes and Functions and Stakeholder Analysis Techniques to Assist in Fulfilling Them.

A.2 Power Versus Interest Grid.

A.3 Bases of Power—Directions of Interest Diagram, With Examples of Power Bases and Interests.

A.4 Stakeholder-Issue Interrelationship Diagram.

A.5 Problem-Frame Stakeholder Map.

A.6 Policy Attractiveness Versus Stakeholder Capability Grid.

Exhibits 1.1 Strategic Planning and Strategic Management—Definitions, Functions, and Approaches.

3.1 Purpose Mapping Technique Guidelines.

3.2 Choosing the Right Stakeholders.

3.3 City of Minneapolis's Initial Agreement Process for Its 2014– 2017 Strategic Plan.

3.4 Metropolitan Economic Development Association's Initial Agreement Process for Its 2016–2017 Strategic Plan.

3.5 Intosai'S Initial Agreement Process for Its 2017–2022 Strategic Plan.

3.6 Near's Strategic Planning Process.

3.7 Longer Planning Process of a Large Human Service Organization.

4.1 THE VISION, MISSION, AND VALUES OF THE METROPOLITAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION, 2011–2015 AND 2016–2020.

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4.2 International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions' Mission and Vision Statements, 2017–2022.

4.3 Mission and Focus of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation.

5.1 The 2014 SWOT Analysis of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions.

5.2 Six Trends Driving Change in Government.

5.3 BUILDING THE NEW LEADER.

5.4 “Our Miserable 21st Century.”.

5.5 The Organizational Highs, Lows, and Themes Exercise.

5.6 THE SNOW CARD, OR AFFINITY DIAGRAM, TECHNIQUE.

5.7 MEDA Strengths, Weaknesses, and Strategic Implications— 2014.

6.1 Some Key Strategic Issues in the City of Minneapolis's Strategic Planning Process.

6.2 Strategic Issues Facing the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA).

6.3 Some Strategic Issues in the INTOSAI Case.

6.4 Operational Versus Strategic Issues.

7.1 The Vision, Values, Goals, and Strategic Directions in the 2014– 2017 Minneapolis Strategic Plan

7.2 Metropolitan Economic Development Association's Strategic Framework, 2016–2020.

7.3 Principles Guiding the Development of MetroGIS.

7.4 David Osborne and Peter Plastrik's Typology of Public-Sector Strategies.

7.5 BRYAN BARRY'S TYPOLOGY OF TYPICAL NONPROFIT STRATEGIES.

9.1 City of Minneapolis Community Indicators.

9.2 City of Minneapolis Fire Department Goals, Objectives, and ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Tactics, 2014–2017.

10.1 The City of Minneapolis Strategic Management System.

10.2 Virginia Performs Scorecard at a Glance.

11.1 How Gary Cunningham Has Worked to Fulfill the Leadership Roles in Making Strategic Planning and Implementation Work.

12.1 The City of Minneapolis Changes Under the 2014–2017 Strategic Plan.

12.2 MEDA Under Its 2016–2020 Strategic Framework.

12.3 Implementation of the INTOSAI 2017–2022 Plan So Far.

A.1 Participation Planning Matrix.

A.2 Ethical Analysis Grid.

A.3 Policy Implementation Strategy Development Grid.

B.1 Open Government Maturity Model.

B.2 Sites Where ICT and Social Media Tools Relevant to Strategic Planning May Be Found.

B.3 Matching Web-Based Tools to the Strategy Change Cycle.

B.4 Cmap Displayed in Cmap Viewer.

B.5 The Basic Logic Structure of a DebateGraph.

B.6 A Simplified DebateGraph Map of the White House Open Government Initiative.

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This book is dedicated to all of my students over the past 40-plus years, all the organizations with whom I have been privileged to

work, and the people who have been kind enough to read and comment on this book in its several editions. I owe you all a deep debt

of gratitude—not least for all that I have learned from you.

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PREFACE This book addresses a number of important questions facing the leaders and managers of public and nonprofit organizations as they cope with the challenges that confront their organizations, now and in the years ahead. How should they respond to the increasingly uncertain and interconnected environments in which their organizations operate? How should they respond to dwindling or unpredictable resources; new public expectations or formal mandates; demographic changes; technology changes; deregulation or reregulation; upheavals in international, national, state, and local economies and polities; and new roles for public, nonprofit, and business organizations, including calls for them to collaborate more often? What should their organizations' missions be? How can they create greater and more enduring public value? How can they formulate desirable strategies and implement them effectively? These are the questions this book addresses.

SCOPE Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations is based on two premises. The first is that leaders and managers of public and nonprofit organizations must be effective strategists if their organizations are to fulfill their missions, meet their mandates, satisfy their constituents, and create public value. These leaders and managers need to exercise as much discretion as possible in the areas under their control. They need to develop effective strategies to cope with changed and changing circumstances, and they need to develop a coherent and defensible basis for their decisions. They also need to build the capacity—the resilience—of their organizations to respond to significant challenges in the future.

The second premise is that leaders and managers are most likely to discern the way forward via a reasonably disciplined process of deliberation with others when the situations faced require more than

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technical fixes. To succeed, deliberative processes also need institutional and organizational processes and structures in place to support them. The deliberative tradition, however, nowhere implies that there is “one best answer” to major challenges, only that there is the possibility of gaining understanding, finding common ground, and making wise choices via the deliberative process.

Strategic planning at its best makes extensive use of analysis and synthesis in deliberative settings to help leaders and managers successfully address the major challenges that their organization (or other entity) faces. This book begins by defining strategic planning as a deliberative, disciplined approach to producing fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why it does it. Strategic planning has an important role to play as part—but only a part—of complex social problem solving. Specifically, it can be helpful for:

Gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing information to consider its strategic significance and frame possible choices

Producing considered judgments among key decision makers about desirable, feasible, defensible, and acceptable missions, goals, strategies, and actions

Producing similarly considered judgments about complementary initiatives, such as new, changed, or terminated policies, programs, and projects, or overall organizational designs

Addressing key organizational challenges now and in the foreseeable future

Enhancing continuous organizational learning

Creating significant and enduring public value

As experience with this kind of deliberative approach has grown, a substantial and expanding inventory of knowledge, guidance, procedures, tools, and techniques has also developed to assist leaders and managers. Strategic planning of this kind has become a standard part of management thinking and practice in the business world. Strategic planning has also become the standard practice of large numbers of public and nonprofit organizations. Of course, strategic ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

planning isn't always called for, doesn't always work, or can work quite badly. This book is intended to help practitioners make suitable, wise, and effective use of strategic planning.

The first four editions of this book played an important role in promoting the use of strategic planning by public and nonprofit organizations. The practice of strategic planning has progressed substantially, and new areas of concern have emerged. Although this fifth edition covers many of the same topics as the first four editions, it also focuses on additional areas requiring special attention. All of the chapters and references have been updated, and new cases have been added. In addition, new material has been added on:

How to identify the actual or desired purposes of initiatives, including, of course, strategic planning efforts

The importance of focusing on creating public value and preserving and enhancing core democratic values

The importance of critical thinking and the logical structure of deliberative arguments and the requirements for effective deliberation intended ultimately to create public value

A new approach to strategy formulation called principles-focused strategizing designed to guide strategy development in situations characterized by high complexity, shared power, significant feedback effects, and the absence of clear goals

Collaboration, including cross-sector collaboration

Implementation and performance management

Organizational learning and formative, summative, and developmental evaluations

Organizational and community resilience and sustainability, which also means more attention to risk management

The applicability of information and communication technology and social media throughout the process

The fourth edition's resource on developing a livelihood scheme, which links competencies and distinctive competencies directly to

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organizational aspirations, has been dropped to save space. The resource basically repeated what is in Bryson, Ackermann, and Eden (2007). In addition, the resource on how to use strategy mapping has been dropped because that information is now in a new workbook called Visual Strategy (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2014).

The fifth edition reflects a continuing major trend in the field by explicitly blending strategic planning with leadership and ongoing management. People realize that the former is no substitute for the latter. People also realize that strategic thinking, acting, and learning must go together for strategic planning to serve its function as a deliberative process focused on identifying and addressing important organizational issues. Of course, these points were all emphasized in the previous editions, but they are emphasized even more in the fifth edition. The book is therefore as much about strategic management— and indeed strategic governance—as it is about strategic planning. I have kept the original title, however, because of the recognition and following that the first four editions have achieved worldwide.

The new edition also reflects another continuing trend in the field by highlighting the importance of inclusion, analysis and synthesis, and speed as means to increasing organizational and community effectiveness (Bryson, 2003). The idea is to get more people of various kinds and skills involved, increase the sophistication and quality of analysis and synthesis used to inform action, and do it all more quickly than in the past. Doing any two of the three is not so hard, but doing all three together is very hard. One of the challenges the book presents, but does not really solve, is how to be inclusive, analytic, synthetic, and quick all at once. Figuring out how to address this effectively is one of the continuing tasks for the field.

In short, this edition places a renewed emphasis on the fact that strategic planning is not the same as strategic thinking, acting, learning, or deliberation. What matters most is strategic thinking, acting, and learning in a deliberative context. Strategic planning is useful only if it improves strategic thought, action, and learning; it is not a substitute for them. Strategic planning also does not produce deliberation unless it is designed into the process. The reader should keep clearly in mind that the formation, or realization, of strategies in ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

practice has a variety of sources (the vision of new leaders, intuition, group learning, innovation, what already works, chance), and strategic planning is only one of them. Wise strategic thought, action, and learning takes all of them into account. As Mintzberg (1994, p. 367) famously noted, “Strategy formation cannot be helped by people blind to the richness of its reality.”

Specifically, this book:

Reviews the reasons public and nonprofit organizations (and communities) should embrace strategic planning and management as ways of improving their performance

Describes the elements of effective deliberation and deliberative practices

Presents an effective strategic planning and management process for public and nonprofit organizations that has been successfully used by thousands of public and nonprofit organizations around the world—this approach is called the Strategy Change Cycle. The book offers detailed guidance on applying the process, including information on specific tools and techniques that might prove useful in various circumstances within organizations, across organizations, and in communities

Discusses the major roles that must be played by various individuals and groups for strategic planning to work and gives guidance on how to play the roles

Clarifies the various ways in which strategic planning may be institutionalized so that strategic thinking, acting, and learning may be encouraged, embraced, and embedded across an entire organization

Includes many new examples of successful (and unsuccessful) strategic planning practices

Relates the entire discussion to relevant research and literature

AUDIENCE

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This book is written for two main groups. The first consists of elected and appointed policymakers, managers, and planners in governments, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations who are responsible for and who want to learn more about strategic planning and management. The book will help them understand what those are and how to make use of them in their own organizations and, to a lesser extent, their communities. Thus, the book speaks to city council members, mayors, city managers, administrators, and planners; sheriffs, police chiefs, fire chiefs, and their staffs; school board members, administrators, and staff; county commissioners, administrators, and planners; governors, state cabinet secretaries, administrators, and planners; legislators; chief executive officers, chief administrative officers, chief financial officers, and chief information officers; executive directors, deputy directors, and unit directors; presidents and vice presidents; elected and appointed officials of governments and public agencies; and boards of directors of nonprofit organizations.

The second major audience consists of academics and students of strategic planning and management. For-credit and professional development courses on strategic planning and management are now typically offered in schools of public affairs, public administration, planning, and public policy. This book offers participants in these courses a useful blend of theory and practice.

Others who will find the book interesting are businesspeople and citizens interested in increasing their understanding of how to improve the effectiveness and value creation of governments, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations. To a lesser extent, the book is also intended to help these individuals understand and improve their communities.

OVERVIEW OF THE CONTENTS Part One introduces the reader to the dynamics of strategic planning. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of strategic planning and why such planning is important for governments, public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and communities. Attention is focused on strategic

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planning for: (1) public agencies, departments, or major organizational divisions; (2) general purpose governments; (3) nonprofit organizations; (4) a function, such as transportation, health care, or education that bridges organizational and governmental boundaries; (5) interorganizational networks and collaborations; and (6) entire communities, urban or metropolitan areas, regions, or states seen as economic, social, and political entities.

Benefits of strategic planning are emphasized as are the conditions under which strategic planning should not be undertaken. In this chapter, I also argue that the practice of public and nonprofit strategic planning will become further institutionalized and improved over time. The reason is that—at its best—strategic planning can accommodate substantive rationality; technical and administrative feasibility; legal, ethical, and moral justifiability; and—of crucial importance—political acceptability.

Finally, readers will be introduced to three organizations whose most recent experiences with strategic planning will be used throughout the book to illustrate key points. The first is the City of Minneapolis, which has been making use of strategic planning for many years and keeps developing its performance management system. The second is a nonprofit organization, the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA), which is headquartered in Minneapolis. MEDA has been in the business of helping minority entrepreneurs and minority-owned businesses for more than 45 years and has an excellent track record of success. The third is the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI), a nonprofit organization in association with the United Nations that brings together the peak audit organizations of 194 governments internationally. The U.S. Government Accountability Office is the U.S. representative.

In Chapter 2, I present my preferred approach to strategic planning and management, which I call the Strategy Change Cycle. This approach has been used effectively by thousands of governments, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia, and indeed on every continent—except perhaps Antarctica! Since Peking University Press ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

published a Chinese-language version of the book, use of the approach is also on the rise in China. Chapters 3 through 10, which make up Part Two, describe in detail how to apply the approach.

Chapter 3 covers the initial agreement, or readiness assessment and “plan for planning,” phase of the strategic planning process. Chapter 4 focuses on identification of mandates and the clarification of mission and values. Chapter 5 addresses the assessment of an organization's external and internal environments. Chapter 6 discusses strategic issues—what they are, how they can be identified, and how to critique them. Chapter 7 is devoted to the development of effective strategies and plans, along with their review and adoption. Chapter 8 covers the development of the organization's vision of success—that is, what the organization should look like as it fulfills its mission and achieves its full potential. Chapter 9 attends to development of an effective implementation process. Chapter 10 covers reassessment of strategies and the strategic planning process as a prelude to a new round of strategic planning. Chapters 3 through 7 thus emphasize the planning aspect of the Strategy Change Cycle, and Chapters 8 through 10 highlight the management aspects. Jointly, the eight chapters together encompass the strategic management process.

Part Three includes two chapters designed to help leaders know what they will need to do to get started with strategic planning and to make it work. Chapter 11 covers the many leadership roles and responsibilities necessary for the exercise of effective strategic leadership for public and nonprofit organizations. These roles include sponsoring, championing, and facilitating a reasonably deliberative process in such a way that an organization's situation is clearly understood, wise decisions are made and implemented, residual conflicts are handled well, and the organization is prepared for the next round of strategy change. Chapter 12 assesses the strategic planning experiences of the three organizations used as examples throughout the text. This chapter also provides guidance on how to begin strategic planning.

Two resource sections are included at the end of the text. Resource A presents an array of stakeholder identification and analysis methods designed to help organize participation, create strategic ideas worth ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

implementing, organize a coalition of support in favor of the ideas, and protect the ideas during implementation. Resource B presents information on how Internet-based tools and social media may be used to support a strategy change cycle.

Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations will provide most of the guidance leaders, managers, and planners need to engage in a deliberative strategic planning and management process aimed at making their organizations (and communities) more effective and responsive to their environments. This book presents a simple yet effective strategic planning and management process designed specifically for public and nonprofit organizations, detailed advice on how to apply the process, and examples of its application. The entire exposition is grounded in the relevant research and literature, so readers will know where the process fits in with prior research and practice and can gain added insight on how to apply the process.

COMPANION STRATEGIC PLANNING WORKBOOKS Three workbooks can help practitioners work through both the conception and nuts and bolts of the strategic planning and management process. The first is coauthored with Farnum Alston, a highly skilled and experienced consultant, called Creating and Implementing Your Strategic Plan, Third Edition (2011). This workbook is designed primarily to help those who are relatively new to strategic planning—along with those who are old hands—to guide themselves through the Strategy Change Cycle. The workbook, however, is clearly not a substitute for the book. Effective strategic planning is an art that involves thoughtful tailoring to specific contexts. Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations provides considerable guidance on how to think about the tailoring process, including many process guidelines, caveats, and case examples. Thus, the book should be read first before the workbook is used and should be consulted on a regular basis throughout the course of a Strategy Change Cycle.

The second workbook is designed to provide more detailed attention ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

to the implementation and management of strategies. For this workbook, called Implementing and Sustaining Your Strategic Plan (2011), I teamed with longtime consultant, colleague, and friend, Sharon Anderson, as well as Farnum Alston. Again, the book should be read before the workbook is used.

The third workbook, Visual Strategy: Strategy Mapping for Public and Nonprofit Organizations (2014), shows how to make use of visual strategy mapping, an extremely powerful technique for helping individuals and groups figure out what they think they should be doing, how, and why. Visual strategy maps are causal maps that show what leads to (or causes) what. When done, maps indicate how missions are fulfilled via goal achievement and how goals are reached through carefully thought-through strategy and action. The book is coauthored with long-time friends and collaborators Fran Ackermann and Colin Eden.

Minneapolis, Minnesota John M. Bryson

July 2017

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR THE FIFTH EDITION Space limitations prevent me from thanking again by name all those dozens of people who contributed to the previous four editions of this book. They should all know that I remain deeply grateful to them. Without their insights, thoughtfulness, advice, and other forms of help, neither those editions nor this one would have been written. I carry their wisdom with me every day. I must also express deep gratitude to the many readers who gave me valuable feedback on the previous editions of this book.

There is space, however, for me to thank at least some of the people who contributed their insights, advice, and support to the fifth edition. Deep thanks and appreciation must go to Colin Eden at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, and Fran Ackermann at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, who have been valued colleagues and coauthors in the field of public and nonprofit strategic management for over 30 years. Both are coauthors of Visual Strategy, a new companion workbook that shows how to do strategy mapping, an important strategic planning technique.

I would also like to offer special thanks to Michael Barzelay at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who has helped me gain a far richer understanding of what I was up to and how best to do it than I ever would have achieved otherwise. And I would like to offer special thanks to Michael Quinn Patton, a path-breaking evaluation theorist and practitioner who helped me see the connections between strategic planning and developmental evaluation. The result was a new approach to strategy formulation introduced in this book called principles-focused strategizing.

A number of practitioners also provided immense help. I am reminded of the old adage: A practitioner is a theorist who pays a price for being wrong. These thoughtful, public-spirited, good-hearted friends and colleagues have shared with me their hard-won insights and have

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provided invaluable knowledge and encouragement necessary to produce the fifth edition. Their number includes Farnum Alston, my coauthor on Creating Your Strategic Plan, Third Edition, a companion workbook focused primarily on developing a strategic plan, and of Implementing and Sustaining Your Strategic Plan, a second companion workbook focused on plan implementation. Another outstanding practitioner who has been an immense source of wisdom and insight is Sharon Roe Anderson, my coauthor (along with Farnum) on Implementing and Sustaining Your Strategic Plan. Peter Fleck and Mallory Mitchell helped coauthor Resource B, for which I am grateful.

All who finish reading this book will know how grateful I am to several other practitioners who were involved in the main strategic planning cases featured in this book. At the City of Minneapolis, these include Jay Stroebel (currently city manager of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota), Cassidy Gardenier, Kim Keller, Anna Koelsch, Andrea Larson, and Jeff Schneider. At the Metropolitan Economic Development Association in Minneapolis, special thanks go to President and CEO Gary Cunningham, Joanna Ramirez Barrett, Andrew O'Leary, Michelle Tran Maryns, Ashley Michels, and Kelley Reierson. And at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, I deeply appreciate the help of the staff who were the champions of the strategic planning process undertaken by the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI).

At the Humphrey School, I would like to offer special thanks to the former dean Eric Schwartz and our current dean Laura Bloomberg for their support in a host of ways. And, of course, I would like to thank all of my faculty and staff colleagues in the Public and Nonprofit Leadership Center. In addition, I want to acknowledge the contributions of my research assistants Jeff Ochs, Kassira Absar, Mallory Mitchell, and Danbi Seo.

I also owe my gratitude to my former students who helped develop some of the information used in the three case illustrations throughout the book. The following students produced invaluable team papers on the strategic management efforts of the City of Minneapolis: (1) Brad Christ, Lindsay Bergh, Megan Evans, and Milo Weil (Christ et al., ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

2009); (2) Chelsea Arbury, Laura Durden, Liz Harens, and Noah Wiedenfeld (Arbury et al., 2014); (3) Kaela Dickens, Daniel D'Haem, Darin Newman, and Jocelyn Rousey (Dickens et al., 2015); and Margie Andreason, Ashleigh Norris, Suzanne Oh, Patrick Roisen, Alan Roy, Mark Skogen, Scott Vargo, and Susan Wooten (Andreason et al., 2016).

Student team papers that were very helpful for understanding the efforts of the Metropolitan Economic Development Association case were written by: (1) Andrew Ostlund, Carolyn Dienhart, Sanjay Jain, and Yue Zhang (Ostlund et al., 2014); (2) Akua Asare, Serge Michel, Andrew Uhler, and Noah Wiedenfeld (Asare et al., 2014); and (3) Anand Agrawal, John Chisholm, Dani Gorman, Suzanne Lantto (Agrawal et al., 2015).

Finally, Peter Huff, Christina Field, Faris Kassim, and Kelly Parpovic produced a team paper that helped clarify and analyze the strategic planning efforts of INTOSAI. Peter Huff (2017) followed up on the team's work and produced the final document that was submitted to INTOSAI and was the major source of written information on which the book draws.

Some ideas in Chapters 1 and 2 appeared first in Bryson and Einsweiler (1987); Bryson and Roering (1987); and in a book coedited with Bob Einsweiler (1988). Parts of Chapter 7 appeared in Bryson (1988). Parts of Chapter 4 and Resource A appeared in Bryson (2004). Earlier versions of some material in Chapters 9, 10, and 11 appeared in Bryson and Crosby (1992) and Crosby and Bryson (2005). Some material on public values and creating public value appeared first in Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg (2014, 2015a and 2015b).

Finally, I must thank my spouse, Barbara Crosby, herself a skilled academic, and our two wonderful children, Jessica and John (“Kee”), for their love, support, understanding, intelligence, and good humor. Barbara is my best friend, closest adviser, and the person who more than any other has helped me understand and appreciate what love could be. She has also taught me a great deal about leadership and strategic planning. Jessica and Kee are terrific, and I love them deeply. I am also delighted to have our grandson, Benjamin, who more than

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anyone helps put this work in perspective. My hope is that this book will help make the world a better place for our children and grandchildren—and everyone's children. If it does, I will be very thankful.

J. M. B.

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THE AUTHOR John M. Bryson is McKnight Presidential Professor of Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs in Minneapolis. He works in the areas of leadership, strategic management, collaboration, and the design of organizational and community change processes. He wrote the best- selling and award-winning book, Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations (1988, 1995, 2004, 2011, 2018), and cowrote (with Barbara C. Crosby) the award-winning book Leadership for the Common Good (1992, 2005). He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Dr. Bryson has received many awards for his work, including five best book awards, six best article awards, the General Electric Award for Outstanding Research in Strategic Planning from the Academy of Management, and the Distinguished Research Award and the Charles H. Levine Memorial Award for Excellence in Public Administration given jointly by the American Society for Public Administration and the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration. In 2011 he received the Dwight Waldo Award from the American Society for Public Administration that is given to individuals for “outstanding contributions to the professional literature of public administration over an extended scholarly career of at least 25 years”. He serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Discoveries, Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, International Public Management Journal, Public Management Review, and Public Performance and Management Review.

Prof. Bryson has served in a variety of roles at the university and Humphrey School, including twice as associate dean. He has consulted with a wide variety of governing bodies, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit corporations in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. He is a regular presenter at practitioner-oriented workshops and short courses, including most frequently those of The Evaluators Institute of Claremont Graduate

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University.

Prof. Bryson holds a doctorate and master of science degree in urban and regional planning and a master of arts degree in public policy and administration, all from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was awarded a B.A. degree in economics from Cornell University.

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PART ONE UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING The environments of public and nonprofit organizations have become not only increasingly uncertain in recent years but also more tightly interconnected; thus, changes anywhere in the system reverberate unpredictably—and often chaotically and dangerously—throughout society. This increased uncertainty and interconnectedness requires a fivefold response from public and nonprofit organizations (collaborations and communities). First, these organizations must think and learn strategically as never before. Second, they must translate their insights into effective strategies to cope with their changed circumstances and to ensure resilience and sustainability for the future. Third, they must develop the rationales necessary to lay the groundwork for the adoption and implementation of their strategies. Fourth, they must build coalitions that are large enough and strong enough to adopt desirable strategies and protect them during implementation. And fifth, they must build capacity for ongoing implementation, learning, and strategic change.

Strategic planning can help leaders and managers of public and nonprofit organizations think, learn, and act strategically. Chapter 1 introduces strategic planning, its potential benefits, and some of its limitations. The chapter discusses what strategic planning is not and in which circumstances it is probably not appropriate, and it presents my views about why strategic planning is an intelligent practice that is here to stay—because of its capacity, at its best, to incorporate both substantive, procedural, and political rationality. The chapter concludes by introducing three organizations that have used a strategic planning process to produce significant changes. Their experiences will be used throughout the book to illustrate the dynamics of strategic planning.

Part One concludes with an overview of my preferred strategic

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planning process (Chapter 2). The process was designed specifically to help public and nonprofit organizations (collaborations and communities) think, act, and learn strategically. The process, called the Strategy Change Cycle, is typically very fluid, iterative, and dynamic in practice but nonetheless allows for a reasonably orderly, participative, and effective approach to determining how best to achieve what is best for an organization and creates real public value. Chapter 2 also highlights several process design issues that will be addressed throughout the book.

A key point to be emphasized again and again: The important activities are strategic thinking, acting, and learning, not strategic planning per se. Indeed, if any particular approach to strategic planning gets in the way of strategic thought, action, and learning, that planning approach should be scrapped.

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CHAPTER ONE Why Strategic Planning Is More Important Than Ever

If you don't like change, leave it here. —Sign on the tip jar in a coffee shop

Leaders and managers of governments, public agencies of all sorts, nonprofit organizations, and communities face numerous and difficult challenges. Consider, for example, the dizzying number of trends and events affecting the United States and the rest of the world in the past two decades. What follows is my list (you will have your own):

Technology has always been a game changer, but the speed and scale of the changes seem to be accelerating. In recent decades, technology has wrought dramatic changes in the workplace, social interactions, information and opinion sharing, politics, financial systems, health care, security systems, global interconnectedness, and so on. There has been a dramatic growth in the use of information technology, social media, e-commerce, and e- government. The nature of work is changing, and careers are being redefined.

Population flows, including migration, immigration, and refugees, have altered numerous societies and landscapes and affected demographics, workforces, and politics. Large parts of the Middle East have been destabilized, and in its wake, there has been enormous human suffering, redistributions of people, and challenges for the rest of the world. China is in the midst of the largest migration in human history as a result of massive moves from rural areas to cities. The 2016 U.S. presidential election, the United Kingdom's 2016 decision to exit the European Union, and the politics of other EU and other countries have all been affected by responses to large movements of people within and across borders.

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Aging and diversifying populations are affecting workplaces, politics, and public finances. In advanced economies, business and government leaders wonder where needed workers will come from as populations age, huge numbers of workers retire, and the need for skilled workers increases. They also wonder how to pay for benefits to retirees. National and local politics and cultures are having to adapt to changing demographics, the changing nature of families, and spatial sorting by social and political preferences.

Climate change is real, whether you believe humans have much to do with it or not. And regardless of the causes, there is a huge need to develop effective ways to mitigate its effects and recover from its downsides. For example, the oceans are already rising and the effects of a collapse of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and subsequent rises would be devastating.

Inequality in the United States has increased substantially since the 1970s and is about where it was in the Gilded Age of the late 1800s. A number of scholars and social commentators argue that such inequality is seriously destabilizing both economically and politically. Others would agree and add that economic benefits should be shared more equally on moral grounds. Meanwhile, the level of absolute poverty globally has diminished dramatically in the past 30 years as a consequence of more open and effective markets and effective government action. Clearly, this should rank as one of the great human achievements. Yet inequality within many countries can still be a cause of major instability, and the moral argument for greater equality also carries weight with many people.

Violence in general is down globally and in the United States, yet public safety is always an issue. Worryingly, there has been a recent rise in the murder rate in the 30 largest U.S. cities even though crime nationwide remains near all-time lows. The United States experiences 30,000 gun deaths a year. When compared with gun deaths in other countries, outside of war and terrorist engagements, this number is astronomically high. Some argue that strong gun controls are needed, whereas others argue that fewer controls will lead to greater safety. So far, the latter argument is

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winning—we have close to as many guns as people in the country, and the deaths continue.

When it comes to game changers, nuclear war is always a threat. North Korea may soon have missiles with serviceable nuclear warheads capable of reaching its neighbors and even the United States. We can only hope nuclear weapons are never used by anyone. Meanwhile, terrorist organizations are constantly trying to acquire nuclear capabilities.

Terrorism is a growing challenge, whether inspired by Islamic jihadism, nationalism of various sorts, or racism. Let's hope that countries around the world, including the United States, find ways to reduce terrorism through a panoply of political, social, economic, educational, diplomatic, military, and policing means.

Economic management is becoming more difficult. Since 2000, we have seen huge bubbles in the housing and stock markets followed by long bear markets, recessions, and slow recoveries worldwide. Global interconnectedness, a belief in government austerity policies no matter the context, weakened or threatened central banking institutions, and an unwillingness by many governments to pursue fiscal policies to prevent recessions only make the challenges of effective economic management more difficult going forward. Although as I write we are now in the midst of one of the longest bull markets in U.S. history, what can and will be done in response to the next big downturn is an open question.

It seems like there are no icons left to knock down. According to a 2016 Gallup Poll, the only U.S. institutions in which more than 50 percent of the public had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence were the military (73 percent), small business (68 percent), and the police (56 percent). Of the 15 institutions listed, Congress was at the bottom with 9 percent. In other words, in the United States, trust in almost every institution is very low, their perceived legitimacy is also in question, and whom and what to believe is up for grabs. Meanwhile, partisanship is at pre–Civil War levels—and we know how that turned out. One can rightly worry about the future of our republic and democracy itself. Even worse,

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this crisis in confidence in the institutions countries need to govern themselves and to prosper is apparently worldwide.

Perhaps most ominous, in the United States, we have experienced a dramatic decline in social capital in recent decades, especially among the less educated and less well off. Defined as good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse, social capital is a crucial factor in building and maintaining personal and family physical and mental health as well as strong communities. The younger generation in general is not very interested in politics, not very trustful of politicians or others, cynical about public affairs, and less inclined to participate in enduring social organizations, such as unions, political parties, or churches (Putnam, Feldstein, & Cohen, 2004).

As a result of all these trends and events, it is not surprising that in the United States and elsewhere, we have seen sustained attention paid to questions of government and nonprofit organizational design, financing, management, performance, and accountability as part of the process of addressing these and other concerns. Indeed, in the public sector, change—though not necessarily dramatic or rapid change—is the rule rather than the exception (Kettl, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c; Light, 1997).

So do I have your attention? Organizations that want to survive, prosper, and do good and important work must respond to the challenges the world presents. Their response may be to do what they have always done, only better, but they may also need to shift their focus and strategies. Although organizations typically experience long periods of relative stability when change is incremental, they also typically encounter periods of dramatic and rapid change (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009; Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009). These periods of organizational change may be exciting, but they also can be anxiety producing—or even terrifying. As geologist Derek V. Ager notes, “The history of any one part of the earth…consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by short periods of terror” (Gould, 1980, p. 185). He might as well have been talking about organizational life!

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These economic, social, political, technological, environmental, and organizational changes are aggravated by the interconnectedness of the world. Changes anywhere typically result in changes elsewhere, making efficacious self-directed behavior problematic at best. As Booker Prize–winning novelist Salmon Rushdie said, “Most of what matters in your life happens in your absence” (1981, p. 19). More recently, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Junot Díaz asserted, “It's never the changes we want that change everything” (2008, p. 51). Only if you are lucky are the changes for the better; often “the best things in life happen when you don't get what you think you want” (Bakewell, 2010, p. 333).

This increasing interconnectedness is perhaps most apparent in the blurring of three traditionally important distinctions—between domestic and international spheres; between policy areas; and between public, private, and nonprofit sectors (Kettl, 2008 2015a, 2015c). The U.S. economy is now intimately integrated with the economies of the rest of the world, and events abroad have domestic repercussions. Distinctions between policy areas are also hard to maintain. For example, both educational policy and arts or cultural policy are seen as types of economic development policies to help communities and firms compete more effectively. Strengthening the economy will not eliminate government human service and Social Security costs, but letting it falter will certainly increase them. Physical education programs, educational programs promoting healthy lifestyles, and parks and recreation budgets are viewed as ways of controlling health care costs.

Finally, the boundaries between public, private, and nonprofit sectors have eroded. National sovereignty in several areas has “leaked up” to multinational corporations, international organizations, and international alliances. Sovereignty has “leaked out” to businesses and nonprofit organizations. Taxes are not collected by government tax collectors but are withheld by private and nonprofit organizations from their employees and turned over to the government. The nation's health, education, and welfare are rightly seen as public—and not just government—responsibilities, and we increasingly rely on private and nonprofit organizations and associations for the production and

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coproduction of services in these areas. Weapons systems are not produced in government arsenals but by private industry.

When such fundamental public functions as tax collection, health, education, welfare, and weapons production are handled by private and nonprofit organizations, then surely the boundaries between public, private, and nonprofit organizations are irretrievably blurred. But beyond that, sovereignty has also “leaked down” as state and local governments have been the big gainers in power in the past 25 years and the federal government the big loser. State and local governments now are typically more important as the problem solvers, even though they often lack the knowledge, resources, legitimacy, and political will to do so effectively. The result of this “leakage” of sovereignty up, out, and down—and the irretrievable blurring of boundaries between public, private, and nonprofit sectors—is the creation of what Brinton Milward and his colleagues call “the hollow state” in which government is simply an actor—and not necessarily the most important actor—in the networks we rely on to do the public's work (Milward & Provan, 2000).

The blurring of these boundaries means that we have moved to a world in which no one organization or institution is fully in charge, yet many are involved, affected, or have a partial responsibility to act (Bryson, Crosby, & Bloomberg, 2014; Kettl, 2015a, 2015c). This increased jurisdictional ambiguity—coupled with the events and trends noted previously—requires public and nonprofit organizations (and collaborations and communities) to think, act, and learn strategically as never before. Strategic planning is designed to help them do so. The extensive experience of public, nonprofit, and private organizations with strategic planning in recent decades offers a fund of research and advice on which we will draw throughout this book.

DEFINITION, PURPOSE, AND BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING What is strategic planning? I define it as a deliberative, disciplined approach to producing fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

why. Strategic planning may be thought of as a “way of knowing” intended to help leaders and managers discern what to do, how, and why (Bryson, Crosby, & Bryson, 2009). Strategic planning of this kind can help leaders and managers successfully address major issues or challenges facing an organization (or some other entity), by which I mean issues or challenges not amenable to simple technical fixes.

As experience with this kind of deliberative approach has grown, a substantial and expanding inventory of knowledge, concepts, procedures, tools, and techniques has also developed to assist leaders and managers in their deliberations. Much of that inventory is highlighted in this book.

As a deliberative approach, strategic planning must attend to the design and use of the settings within which constructive deliberation is most likely to occur (Crosby & Bryson, 2005, pp. 401–426). First and foremost, this means creating formal and informal forums in which important issues can be identified and addressed, useful learning can occur, and results can be carried forward toward wise decisions in relevant areas (Moynihan & Landuyt, 2009). In addition, formal and informal arenas are needed in which legislative, executive, and administrative decisions are made. Finally, formal and informal courts must be designed and used, where underlying laws and norms are reinforced or modified and residual conflicts from policymaking or executive decisions are managed. The most important court is probably the court of public opinion.

Of the three types of characteristic settings, forums are the most amenable to design, in contrast to formal arenas and courts, which often are quite rigidly structured. Fortunately, however, in my experience, forums are the most important kind of setting because they are where meaning is created and communicated—which is extraordinarily consequential for shaping what follows, including what gets considered in arenas and courts.

In each of these settings for deliberation, participants must take into account the “deliberative pathways” that are possible and available for use as part of mutual efforts at persuasion. The term was coined by Bryan Garsten (2006, p. 131) to describe Aristotle's sense of “the

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landscape of thoughts and patterns” that might exist in an audience and thus “the pathways” that might exist from one belief to another. These pathways are the starting point for understanding how mutual understanding, learning, and judgment might proceed. The pathways will influence a listener's beliefs via the structure and logic of an argument (logos), via trust in the judgment and good will of the speaker (ethos), or because he or she felt moved by an emotion (pathos) (Garsten, 2006).

Strategic planning approached as the design and use of settings for deliberation must include an awareness of the features of effective deliberation, including the pathways that might be available for use. In other words, the overall process of designing a pathway (or process) for deliberation must take into account the pathways already existing within audiences' heads.

The basic form of a reasonable statement is to make a claim based on good reasons and evidence. Deliberation occurs in situations requiring choice—the basic form of a deliberative statement is choice based on reasons in order to achieve ends (Simons & Jones, 2011, pp. 241–267). This honorable tradition of reasonable deliberation goes back at least to Aristotle and Cicero, both of whom analyzed and promoted its virtues.

But to succeed, deliberative processes and practices also need institutional and organizational arrangements in place to support them. Deliberation certainly should be a part of politics, but its constructive role must be supported and protected or the politics can get very nasty indeed.

The deliberative tradition requires a willingness on the part of would- be deliberators to: resist rushing to judgment; tolerate uncertainty, ambiguity, and equivocality; consider different views and new information; and be persuaded—but also a willingness to end deliberations at some point and go with the group's considered judgment. The deliberative tradition doesn't presume that there is a “correct” solution or “one best answer” to addressing major challenges, only that there is wisdom to be found via the process (Garston, 2006; Stone, 2011). Many find the lack of definitiveness in

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deliberation frustrating. It takes time to build and maintain an appreciate audience for deliberation—as with poetry, jazz, hip hop, and rap music.

In short, at its best, strategic planning requires deliberation informed by broad-scale yet effective information gathering, analysis, and synthesis; clarification of the mission and goals to be pursued and issues to be addressed along the way; development and exploration of, and choice among, strategic alternatives; and an emphasis on the future implications of present decisions. Strategic planning can help facilitate communication, participation, and judgment; accommodate divergent interests and values, foster wise decision making informed by reasonable analysis; promote successful implementation and accountability; and enhance ongoing learning. In short, at its best, strategic planning can prompt in organizations the kind of imagination—and commitment—that can help effectively address the challenges they face. As psychotherapist and theologian Thomas Moore (2016, p. 292) observed, “Usually the main problem with life conundrums is that we don't bring to them enough imagination.”

One useful way to think about strategic planning is presented in Figure 1.1, The ABCs of Strategic Planning. The figure presents a capsule summary of what strategic planning is all about. Necessary richness and detail can be added as needed to this basic understanding. “A” is figuring out, via a deliberative process, where you are, “B” is where you want to be, and “C” is how to get there. Leaders and other process participants come to understand A, B, and C as they formulate, clarify, and resolve strategic issues—the fundamental policy choices or challenges the organization has to face. The content of A and B are the organization's existing or new mission, structure, communications systems, programs and services, people and skills, relationships, budgets and other supports. The content of C is the strategic plan; plans for various functions; and ways to restructure, reengineer, reframe, or repurpose (Scharmer, 2016); budget allocations; and other strategies and vehicles for change.

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Figure 1.1. The ABCs of Strategic Planning. Source: Bryson and Alston, 2011.

Getting from A to B involves clarifying vision, mission, and goals. Getting from A to C is the process of strategy formulation; getting from C to B is strategy implementation. To do strategic planning well, you need to figure out A, B, and C and how they should connect as you go along. You accomplish this principally by understanding the issues that A, B, C, and their interconnections must address effectively. Think of the arrows as making use of pathways for deliberation that result in the final choices of what is in A, B, and C. The summary also makes it clear that strategic planning is an approach, not a detailed, rigidly sequential, step-by-step, technocratic process. As an approach, it requires effective deliberation—and leadership—and a variety of ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

concepts, activities, procedures, tools, and techniques that can contribute to its success.

So that is how strategic planning is defined and briefly what it is. But why engage in strategic planning? At best, the purpose of strategic planning in the United States and elsewhere is to help public and nonprofit organizations “create public value,” to use Mark Moore's compelling and evocative phrase (Moore, 1995, 2013). This means producing enterprises, policies, programs, projects, services, or physical, technological, social, political, and cultural infrastructure that advance the public interest and the common good at a reasonable cost.

At a general level, in the United States, creating public value means enhancing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all while also fostering a more perfect union. It means ensuring that the beneficial effects of our institutions and efforts carry on into the indefinite future and that we change what we must so that the world is always left better off than we found it. Strategic planning is about listening to “the better angels of our nature,” as Abraham Lincoln called them in his first inaugural address—it is about organizing our best and most noble hopes and dreams, making them reasonable and actionable, and bringing them to life—in short, to create significant and enduring public value.

Experience has clearly demonstrated that strategic planning can be used successfully to help (Bryson, Edwards, & Van Slyke, 2017):

Public agencies, departments, or major organizational divisions

General purpose governments, such as a city, county, state, or tribal governments

Nonprofit organizations providing what are basically public services

Purpose-driven interorganizational networks (such as partnerships, collaborations, and alliances) in the public and nonprofit sectors designed to fulfill specific functions, such as transportation, health, education, or emergency services—that bridge organizational and governmental boundaries

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Entire communities, urban or metropolitan areas, and regions or states

This book concentrates primarily on strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations, including the collaborations of which they may be a part. It considers applications for communities in lesser detail. (The term community is used throughout the book to refer to communities, urban or metropolitan areas, and regions or states.) Although the process detailed in this book is applicable to all the entities listed above, the specifics of its implementation may differ for each case.

When strategic planning is focused on an organization, it is likely that most of the key decision makers will be “insiders”—though considerable relevant information may be gathered from “outsiders.” Certainly, this would be true of public agencies, local governments, and nonprofit organizations that deliver “public” services. When most of the key decision makers are insiders, it will likely be easier to get people together to decide important matters, reconcile differences, and coordinate implementation activities. (Of course, whether the organization's board of directors or governing body consists of insiders or outsiders may be an open question, particularly if they are publicly elected. For instance, are elected city council members insiders, outsiders, or both? Regardless of the answer, it remains true that typically a major proportion of the key decision makers will be insiders.)

In contrast, when strategic planning is focused on a function crossing organizational or governmental boundaries, or on a community, almost all of the key decision makers will be outsiders. In these situations, the focus of attention will be on how to organize collective thinking, action, and learning more or less collaboratively within an interorganizational network or networks where no one person, group, organization, or institution is fully in charge but many are involved, or affected, or have a partial responsibility to act. One should expect that it might be more difficult to organize an effective strategic planning process in such a “shared-power” context. More time probably will need to be spent on organizing forums for discussion, involving various diverse constituencies, negotiating agreements in existing or ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

new arenas, and coordinating the activities and actions of numerous relatively independent people, groups, organizations, and institutions (Agranoff, 2012; Deyle & Wiedenman, 2014).

Organizations engage in strategic planning for many reasons. Proponents of strategic planning typically try to persuade their colleagues with one or more of the following kinds of statements:

“We face so many conflicting demands we need to figure out what our focus and priorities should be.”

“The rules are changing on us. We are being told to emphasize measurable outcomes, the competition is stiffer, funding is getting tighter, and collaboration is being pushed, and we need to figure out what we do or can do well that fits with the changing picture.”

“We have gone through quality management, reinvention, and reengineering, downsizing and rightsizing, along with continuing revolutions in information technology. Now people are asking us to take on performance management, dashboards and scorecards, knowledge management, and who knows what else? How can we make sure all of this effort is headed in the right direction?”

“We can expect a severe budget deficit next year, and the public will suffer unless we drastically rethink the way we do business. Somehow we need to figure out how to do more with less through better integration of our activities, finances, human resources, and information technology.”

“Our city is changing, and in spite of our best efforts, things do not seem to be getting better.”

“Issue X is staring us in the face, and we need some way to help us think about its resolution or else we will be badly hurt.”

“We need to integrate or coordinate better the services we provide with those of other organizations. Right now, things are just too fragmented and poorly resourced, and our clients needing more than one service are suffering.”

“Our funders (or board of directors or new chief executive) have asked us to prepare a strategic plan.”

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“We know a leadership change is coming and want to prepare for it.”

“We want to use strategic planning to educate, involve, and revitalize our board and staff.”

“Our organization has an embarrassment of riches, but we still need to figure out how we can have the biggest impact; we owe it to our stakeholders.”

“Everyone is doing strategic planning these days; we'd better do it too.”

Regardless of why public and nonprofit organizations engage in strategic planning, however, similar benefits are likely to result. Many authors argue that strategic planning can produce a number of benefits for organizations. The first and perhaps most obvious potential benefit is the promotion of strategic thinking, acting, and learning, especially through “strategic conversation” and deliberation among key actors (Van der Heijden, 2005).

Let me define these terms. I define strategic thinking as thinking in context about how to pursue purposes or achieve goals. This also includes thinking about what the context is and how it might or should be changed; what the purposes are or should be; and what capabilities or competencies will or might be needed, and how they might be used, to achieve the purposes. Strategic acting is acting in context in light of future consequences to achieve purposes and/or to facilitate learning. And drawing in part on Simon (1996, p. 100), I define strategic learning as any change in a system (which could be an individual) that by better adapting it to its environment produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity to pursue its purposes. The learning thus is focused pragmatically on what works, which likely includes knowing something about what doesn't. Learning of this sort doesn't have to be by design; much of it will be tacit and epiphenomenal. In short, strategic planning is an approach to facilitate these kinds of thinking, acting, and learning.

The second benefit is improved decision making. Improved decision making is really crucial because studies have indicated that at least

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half of all strategic decisions fail as a result of poor decision-making processes (Nutt, 2002)! Strategic planning helps because it focuses attention on the crucial issues and challenges the organization faces and it helps key decision makers figure out what they should do about them. It can help them make today's decisions in light of future consequences. It can help them develop a coherent and defensible basis for decision making and then coordinate implementing the resulting decisions across levels and functions. It can help them exercise maximum discretion in the areas under their organization's control and influence actions and outcomes in those areas that are not. Strategic planning thus can help organizations formulate and clearly communicate their strategic directions and intentions to relevant audiences and also act on those intentions.

The third benefit is enhanced organizational effectiveness, responsiveness, resilience, and sustainability, which flow from the first two. Organizations engaging in strategic planning are encouraged to clarify and address major organizational issues, respond wisely to them, and deal effectively with rapidly changing circumstances. They are encouraged, in other words, to be well managed. And though it almost sounds tautological to say so, it clearly is not: The evidence is fairly clear that organizations that are managed well and are relatively stable perform better, are appropriately responsive to external demands, are innovative in effective ways, have greater influence, are more accountable, and are more resilient than organizations that are not managed well (e.g., Borins, 2014; Meier & O'Toole, 2009).

Good management helps create good organizational systems and response repertoires; in other words, good management is a process that draws on resources of many kinds to produce the outputs and outcomes that indicate organizational effectiveness and that trigger the resource flows the organization needs to sustain itself and to continue to create public value into the future (Bryson, Gibbons, & Shaye, 2001; Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda, Smith, & Papadakos, 2014). Increasingly, integrated use of human resources, information technology, and financial management are crucial elements of organizing, strengthening, protecting, and sustaining organizational capabilities for creating public value (e.g., Alford & Yates, 2014).

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The fourth benefit is enhanced organizational legitimacy. Organizations that satisfy their key stakeholders according to the stakeholders' criteria and that create real public value at reasonable cost have earned the right to exist (Ackermann & Eden, 2011). Said differently, public and nonprofit organizations are externally justified in that they exist to provide real service; those that do, and continue to find ways to do so as circumstances change, typically continue to exist. These survivors therefore can concentrate on doing better without having to worry quite so much as they otherwise might about having to justify their claims on others' resources (Suddaby, Bitektine, & Haack, 2017).

Fifth, beyond organizational effectiveness, strategic planning can help produce enhanced effectiveness of broader societal systems. Most of the public problems we face these days stretch beyond any one organization's boundaries. Our big challenges in education, health, employment, poverty, the environment—you name it—typically need to be conceptualized at the supraorganizational or system level, not the organizational level. Those systems are what really need to work better if our lives and the world are to be made better and broadly based public value is to be created. Organizations can contribute to better functioning of these systems, but they typically must do so in partnership with others or by somehow taking those others into account (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015; Mulgan, 2009). Strategic planning can help organizations take the broader environment into account and can help them figure out how best to partner with other organizations so that they jointly can create better environments (Agranoff, 2012; Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2016). The result probably should be some sort of concerted institutional redesign effort at the system level that better serves public services (e.g., Scharmer, 2016).

Finally, strategic planning can directly benefit the people involved. Policymakers and key decision makers can be helped to fulfill their roles and responsibilities, and teamwork and expertise are likely to be built among participants in the process. Human, social, political, and intellectual capital can increase. Morale can improve based on task accomplishment. Further, employees or organizations that can create

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real, demonstrable public value are more likely to have a job in the future. Reduced anxiety may result from a job well done, increased competency, strengthened relationships, and enhanced job prospects.

In short, strategic planning is very often a very smart thing to do for several reasons: It is relatively easy to do. It is not all that time and resource intensive, particularly when matched against the costs of potential failure. It seeks out relevant information; makes use of deliberative argumentation, which is an important route to producing wise judgments; and helps with figuring out how to organize the participation and coalition needed to adopt the ideas and protect them during implementation. And it would seem to go hand in hand with the craft of creating public value. When not overly formalized, bereft of participation, and obsessed with numbers, strategic planning can make effective use of deliberation to produce enhanced organizational responsiveness, performance, and accountability.

Although strategic planning can provide all these benefits, there is no guarantee that it will. For one thing, the process depends on its participants' willingness to engage in deliberation. In addition, strategic planning must be adapted to its context, even as its purpose may be to change aspects of that context. Leaders, managers, and planners therefore need to be very careful—and strategic—about how they engage in strategic planning because their success will depend at least in part on how they tailor the process to their situations.

This book will present a generic approach to strategic planning for governments, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations that is based in considerable research and experience. Advice will be offered on how to apply the process in different circumstances. But the process will work only if enough key decision makers and planners support it and use it with common sense and sensitivity to the particulars of their situation. And even then, success is never guaranteed, particularly when very difficult and fraught strategic issues are addressed.

Furthermore, strategic planning is not always advisable. In my experience, there are two compelling reasons for holding off on a formal strategic planning effort. First, strategic planning may not be

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the best first step for an organization whose roof has fallen—keeping in mind, of course, that every crisis should be managed strategically (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). For example, the organization may need to remedy a cash flow crunch before undertaking strategic planning. Or the organization may need to postpone strategic planning until it fills a key leadership position. Or it could be that showing compassion for people who have faced some sort of disaster is the first order of business.

Second, if the organization lacks the skills, resources, or commitment of key decision makers to engage in deliberative strategic planning, or if implementation of the results is extremely unlikely, strategic planning will be a waste of time. Such a situation embodies what Bill Roering and I have called “the paradox of strategic planning:” It is most needed where it is least likely to work, and least needed where it is most likely to work (Bryson & Roering, 1988, 1989). If strategic planning is undertaken in such a situation, it probably should be a focused and limited effort aimed at developing the necessary skills, resources, and commitment.

A number of other reasons also can be offered for not engaging in strategic planning. Too often, however, these “reasons” are actually excuses used to avoid what should be done. Many organizations— particularly small nonprofit organizations—may prefer to rely on the intuition and vision of extremely gifted leaders instead of on formal strategic planning processes. If these leaders are strategically minded and experienced, there may be no need for strategic planning for purposes of developing strategies. It is rare, however, for any leader to have all the information necessary to develop an effective strategy and rarer still for any strategy developed by a single person to engender the kind of commitment necessary for effective implementation. A reasonably structured and formalized deliberative strategic planning process helps organizations gather and assess the information necessary for effective strategy formulation. It also provides the discipline and commitment necessary to effectively implement strategies.

In addition, many organizations—particularly those that have enormous difficulty reaching decisions that cut across levels, ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

functions, or programs—find that incremental decision making and mutual adjustments of various sorts among interested partisans is the only process that will work. “Muddling through” of this sort, as Charles Lindblom (1959) described it, legitimizes the existing distribution of power and resources in the organization and allows the separate parts of the organization to pursue opportunities as they arise. Interesting and useful innovations may develop that enhance learning and promote useful adaptations to changing circumstances. In fact, if the muddling occurs within a general agreement on overall direction, everyone may be better off (e.g., Poister, Edwards, & Pasha, 2013). Unfortunately, muddling typically results in a chronic suboptimization of organizational performance, and key external and internal constituencies therefore may be badly served (Andrews, Boyne, Law, & Walker, 2012).

Strategic planning also probably should not be undertaken if implementation is extremely unlikely. To do so would be the organizational equivalent of the average new year's resolution. On the other hand, when armed with the knowledge that implementation will be difficult, key decision makers and planners can focus extra attention on ensuring implementation success.

Finally, organizations simply may not know how and where to start and stop the process. The good news is that strategic planning actually can begin almost anywhere—the process is so interconnected that you end up covering most phases via conversation and dialogue, no matter where you start.

What Strategic Planning Is Not Strategic planning clearly is no panacea. As noted, strategic planning is simply a deliberative, disciplined approach to helping people in organizations (collaborations, communities) figure out what they think they should be doing, how, and why. It may not be possible to design or use the needed formal and informal forums, arenas, and courts; the key decision makers may not participate. Even if they do take part, needed deliberations may not necessarily occur. And if they do, needed actions may not necessarily be taken as a result. There is an available set of concepts, procedures, tools, and practical guidance ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

designed to help leaders, managers, and planners think, act, and learn strategically, but those needed in any particular situation may not be used or used effectively. Indeed, in my experience—in life generally and in strategic planning specifically—there are more ways to fail than to succeed, so possible failure is always lurking in the footsteps of incipient success.

One must always remember that strategic planning is not a substitute for strategic thinking, acting, and learning. Only caring and committed people can do that—and almost always via deliberative processes. Unfortunately, when used thoughtlessly, obsessively, or with excessive formality or rigidity, strategic planning can drive out precisely the kind of strategic thinking, acting, and learning it was supposed to promote. That kind of approach may be worse than no approach at all.

Furthermore, strategic planning is not a substitute for leadership broadly conceived. In my experience, there is simply no substitute for leadership when it comes to engaging in strategic planning effectively. At least some key decision makers and process champions must be committed to it; otherwise, any attempts to use strategic planning are bound to fail. An effective strategic planning team also is typically needed. And skilled facilitators are often necessary.

In addition, strategic planning is not synonymous with creation of an organization's strategies. Organizational strategies have numerous sources, both planned and unplanned. Strategic planning is likely to result in a statement of organizational intentions, but what is realized in practice will be some combination of what is intended with what emerges along the way (Mintzberg et al., 2009). Strategic planning can help organizations develop and implement effective strategies, but organizations should remain open to unforeseen opportunities as well. Too much attention to strategic planning and reverence for strategic plans can blind organizations to other unplanned and unexpected—yet incredibly useful—sources of information, insight, and action.

It should be clear now that the deliberation among key actors in strategic planning—and especially among key decision makers—is of a very special kind: it is thoughtful, reflective, informed, appreciative, situation- and stakeholder-sensitive, mission-oriented, careful, and

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political—in the best sense. Deliberation of that sort involves a special kind of discipline harkening back to the Latin roots of the word emphasizing instruction, training, education, and learning. Of course, there is a second meaning of discipline embodied in later interpretations emphasizing order, control, and punishment. I personally prefer the emphasis on education and learning, though there clearly are occasions when imposing order, taking control, and imposing appropriate sanctions are appropriate. Strategic planning should be used as a kind of purposeful discipline to create noteworthy public value. If it does not, then it has been a waste of time other than to fulfill some symbolic or procedural requirement.

Why Strategic Planning Is Becoming a Standard Practice A very large fraction of public and nonprofit organizations now claim to engage in strategic planning (Bryson & Edwards, 2017). Having said that, many leaders and managers no doubt groan at the prospect of having to go through another round of strategic planning. They may have “been there, done that” and, depending on their experience, may not want to do it again. They also have seen all manner of management fads come and go. Managers in particular are frequently, and justifiably, tired of these fads and feel as though they are the victims of some sort of perverse management hazing or status degradation ritual.

But strategic planning is far from a passing fad, at least not the sort of deliberative strategic planning proposed in this book. The reason is that the strategic planning process presented here builds on the nature of political intelligence and decision making. So many other management techniques have failed because they ignore, try to circumvent, or even try to counter the political nature of life in private, public, and nonprofit sector organizations. Too many planners and managers, at least in my experience, just do not understand that such a quest is almost guaranteed to be quixotic. Politics is the method that we humans use to answer the analytically unresolvable questions of what should be done for collective purposes, how, and why (Moore, 2013; Mulgan, 2009).

Most of these new management innovations have tried to improve ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

government decision making and operations by trying to impose a formal rationality on systems that are not rational, at least in the conventional meaning of the word. Public and nonprofit organizations (and communities) function primarily based on a political intelligence and rationality, and any technique that is likely to work well in such organizations must accept and build on the nature of political rationality (Stone, 2011).

Let us pursue this point further by contrasting two different kinds of decision making: the “rational” planning model and the political decision-making model. The rational planning model, a rational- deductive approach to decision making, is presented in Figure 1.2. This model begins with goals, which are achieved through policies, programs, and actions. If there is a traditional planning theology, this model is one of its icons. Indeed, if there were a Moses of planning, Figure 1.2 would have been etched on his tablets when he came down from the Mount.

Figure 1.2. Rational Planning Model.

Let us now examine a fundamental assumption of the rational planning model—that in the fragmented, shared power settings that characterize many public and nonprofit organizations, networks, and communities, there will either be a consensus on goals, policies, programs, and actions necessary to achieve organizational aims or there will be someone with enough power and authority that any disagreements can be effectively overruled. The assumption just does not hold in most circumstances—only in fairly centralized, authoritarian, and quasimilitary bureaucracies—maybe (Bolman & Deal, 2013).

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Let us now examine a model that contrasts sharply with the rational planning model, the political decision-making model presented in Figure 1.3. This model is more emergent or inductive rather than top- down or rational-deductive. It begins with issues, which almost by definition involve conflict, not consensus. The conflicts may be over ends, means, timing, location, political advantage, reasons for change, or philosophy and values—and they may be severe. As efforts proceed to resolve the issues and learn how to move ahead, policies and programs emerge that address the issues and are politically rational— that is, they are politically acceptable to involved or affected parties. Over time, more general policies may be formulated to capture, frame, shape, guide, or interpret the policies, programs, and learning developed to deal with the issues. The various policies and programs are in effect treaties among the various stakeholder groups and, though they may not exactly record a consensus, at least they represent a reasonable level of agreement among stakeholders (Bolman & Deal, 2013; Spee & Jarzabkowski, 2017).

Figure 1.3. Political Decision-Making Model.

Now, the heart of the strategic planning process discussed in Chapter 2 is the identification and resolution of strategic—that is, very important and consequential—issues. The process, in other words, accepts political decision making's emphasis on issues and seeks to inform the formulation and resolution of those issues. Effective strategic planning, therefore, should make political decision makers

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more effective, and, if practiced consistently, may even make their professional lives easier (Janis, 1989; Nutt, 2002). Because every key decision maker in a large public or nonprofit organization is, in effect, a political decision maker (Bolman & Deal, 2013), strategic planning can help them and their organizations. Strategic planning—at least as described in this book—therefore will last in government and nonprofit organizations because it accepts and builds on the nature of political decision making. If done well, it joins political acceptability with administrative feasibility, procedural rationality, and substantive rationality.

Having drawn a sharp distinction between the rational planning and political decision-making models, I must now emphasize that the two models are not inherently antithetical. Indeed, several researchers have demonstrated that multiparty efforts to reach consensus on important issues fraught with conflict often can look extremely messy in practice but then meet very high standards of rationality after all of the political, technical, administrative, procedural, and legal issues have been sorted out (Deyle & Weidenman, 2014; Innes, 1996; Innes & Booher, 2010). The challenge in this case is simply to sequence the approaches appropriately. The political decision-making model is necessary to work out consensual agreements on what programs (services, projects, and so on) and policies will best resolve key issues. Then the rational planning model can be used to recast that consensus in the form of goals, policies, programs, and actions.

Although the planning and decision making that goes into the formulation of a strategic plan may look fairly sloppy to an outsider, once a consensus is reached on what to do, the resulting strategic plan can be rewritten—rationalized—in a form that is quite rational by ordinary definitions (Ackermann & Eden, 2011). Furthermore, the rational planning model may be used to sort out and address any minor (and perhaps major) inconsistencies embedded in the political consensus. Clear goals, when backed by political agreement and authority, can help foster and guide organizational innovation and effectiveness (e.g., Fernandez & Rainey, 2006).

To use another example, in many organizations and communities, there exists a broad-based consensus on basic purposes and values— ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

and often on many policies, programs, and actions as well. There may even be a consensus on the organization's or community's vision. This consensus can be recast using the rational planning model. The political model can then be used to address remaining issues on which there is no agreement, which are likely to revolve around what has to be done to achieve the agreed-upon goals or vision.

To summarize: A great advantage of the strategic planning process outlined in this book is that the process does not presume consensus where it does not exist but can accommodate consensus where it does exist. Because there is no presumption of consensus, the process is more suitable for politicized circumstances than purely “rational” approaches. An intense attention to, and deliberation about, stakeholders and their interests, external and internal environments, and strategic issues means that the actions that are ultimately agreed upon are more likely to be politically wise and that organizational survival and prosperity are, therefore, more likely to be ensured. Furthermore, by gathering relevant information, asking probing questions, and focusing on how best to raise issues, the process can be used to inform political decision making in such a way that virtuous public and nonprofit purposes are better served than they would be if only the rawest forms of political decision making prevailed.

The process, in other words, provides a way of blending substantive rationality (that is, the content of the final answer makes sense), procedural rationality (that is, the steps followed make reasonable sense to the parties involved or affected), and political rationality (that is, acceptability to the interested parties)—content and process and politics—in wise ways to the betterment of the organizations and communities that use it (e.g., Page, Stone, Bryson, & Crosby, 2015).

DEFINITION, PURPOSE, AND BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT What is strategic management, and how does strategic planning relate to it? Strategic management is a more inclusive concept than strategic planning because strategic management is the reasonable integration of strategic planning and implementation across an organization (or ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

other entity) in an ongoing way to enhance the fulfillment of mission, meeting of mandates, continuous learning, and sustained creation of public value (see Exhibit 1.1). Strategic management should thus be considered a part of organizational governance, which, as Owen Hughes (2010, pp. 87–88) points out, “is about running organizations, about setting up structures to enable the organization to be run…. In English, the verb govern derives from the Latin gubernare, meaning steer, direct, rule.”

Exhibit 1.1. Strategic Planning and Strategic Management—Definitions, Functions, and Approaches.

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Source: Adapted in part from Two Views of Strategic Planning, by M. Barzelay and J. M. Bryson, 2010, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Management (unpublished manuscript); and Bryson (2010).

Functionally, strategic planning involves the kind of deliberative, disciplined work intended to help clarify organizational purposes, mandates, goals, and strategies. It also includes designing an effective and responsive strategic management system that will build the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

enterprise's capacity for, and delivery of, success over time. Implementation, however, involves the effort to realize in practice an organization's mission, goals, and strategies; the meeting of its mandates; continued organizational learning; and the ongoing creation of public value. Doing so requires actually developing a useful strategic management system, including linking budgeting, performance measurement, and performance management, and allowing desirable changes in ends and means to emerge over time. Conceptually, it is useful to view strategic planning as the “front end” of strategic management, even though most strategic planning efforts begin amid the implementation of previously designed, or currently emerging, strategies.

There are many different ways to approach strategic planning in practice. This book focuses on one, the Strategy Change Cycle, which is presented in some detail in the next chapter. The approach is generic and must be tailored in an ongoing way to fit specific purposes and circumstances. It is also important to keep in mind that strategic planning is just one of the ways in which important strategy change is brought about; those using the process must be attentive to other sources and avenues of positive change and figure out ways for the strategic planning effort to make use of or complement them.

Similarly, there are many different approaches to designing a strategic management system in practice, where the approach again must be tailored in an ongoing way to fit specific purposes and circumstances. Seven different major approaches are listed in Exhibit 1.1, of which the most important is perhaps the last: hybrid models. Because purposes and circumstances are often so situation-specific, most effective strategic management systems are hybrids of two or more of the other approaches. All seven approaches are discussed in Chapter 10. To summarize, this book is mainly but not exclusively about strategic planning, but I will always emphasize the need to do the planning with the requirements for, and functions of, implementation and strategic management kept clearly in mind.

Three Examples of Strategic Planning Throughout this book, the experiences of three organizations (one ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

public, one nonprofit, and one multiparty collaboration) are used to illustrate key points about strategic planning—including its capacity for accommodating procedural, substantive, and political rationality. Each of these organizations used a variant of the strategic planning process outlined here, explicitly or implicitly adapting it for their own purposes. I had some direct or indirect involvement in each effort though the extent of my involvement varied greatly. Each of these projects represented a kind of action research project in which the aims included developing theory and guidance for practice (Eden & Huxham, 1996).

The three organizations described here are the City of Minneapolis, a municipal government; the Metropolitan Economic Development Association, a nonprofit organization; and the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI), an international nonprofit organization linked to the United Nations consisting of the chief accountability offices of 194 member nations. The U.S. General Accountability Office is the supreme audit institution for the United States.

The City of Minneapolis. Minneapolis and St. Paul are known throughout the country as the Twin Cities. Indeed, the local major league professional baseball team is known as the Minnesota Twins. Minneapolis is the larger of the two cities with approximately 420,000 people in 2017; St. Paul has slightly more than 300,000. Both cities are growing after significant declines in the latter part of the twentieth century. The metropolitan area continues to grow as well and, at 3.5 million people, is the sixteenth largest metropolitan area in the country.

The “City of Lakes” is known for its economic vitality as the economic hub of the state, which has 5.5 million people. The city is also known for its vibrant cultural scene featuring many theatres, museums, and music venues and for its award-winning park system that includes the city's 13 lakes. The city has become increasingly diverse over the decades. In 2017, approximately 60 percent of the population is white, 20 percent is black or African American, 11 percent is Hispanic or Latino, 6 percent is Asian, and the rest is from other races or of mixed

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races.

The city has an unusual “weak mayor” government structure that is often referred to as a “three-legged stool.” The three legs are the mayor, city council, and city coordinator's office (CCO). The city's diffuse political authority and complex departmental chain of command make achieving consensus on directions and plans a challenge but also mean that power is widely shared.

The mayor has limited formal powers but is the presiding officer of the city council, which is the governing body. The mayor has the power to nominate department heads and make specific appointments, such as the chief of police. The mayor also proposes policy directions and the annual operating and capital budgets.

The city council is the legislative body for the city. Council members are elected by wards, with each representing approximately 32,000 residents. The city adopts local laws and city budgets, provides policy direction, has oversight responsibility of the city's administration, and monitors policy implementation.

The CCO acts as an advisor and consultant to the mayor and city council. The coordinator carries out administrative services, including planning, budgeting, fiscal management, and program monitoring. As part of carrying out these assignments, the coordinator oversees a specific set of “nonstatutory” departments (i.e., IT, human resources, finance and property services, communications, neighborhood and community relations, 311, 911, the Convention Center, intergovernmental relations, and emergency management). The CCO carries out the city's strategic planning and results management efforts. The coordinator is appointed by the mayor for a two-year term with the option of being reappointed.

The city has been engaged in ongoing performance management efforts for some time. It began producing strategic plans on a four-year cycle starting in 2006. We will focus on the process that produced the 2014 strategic plan and how it was implemented. The presentation benefits greatly from a series of student team papers produced as part of my yearly strategic planning class at the Humphrey School and by regular contact with city staff (Andreason et al., 2016; Arbury et al.,

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2014; Christ et al., 2009; Dickens et al., 2015).

The Metropolitan Economic Development Association. The Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA) is a nonprofit organization that was established in 1971 in the aftermath of the civil unrest in Minneapolis in the late 1960s. MEDA's purpose is to help entrepreneurs of color and minority-owned businesses succeed. The founders of MEDA included members of the civic and business elites of the metropolitan area. They believed—and the organization still believes—that supporting minority businesses is “a positive, achievable and market-based approach to create wealth in Minnesota's communities of color and provide equal economic opportunity” (MEDA, 2015, p. 3). We will focus on the process that produced the 2016–2010 strategic plan.

MEDA's mission in 2014 was “helping entrepreneurs of color succeed. And communities grow.” The vision was “thriving communities through equal economic participation.” Values included excellence, customer focus, integrity, and respect.

MEDA offered programs in three categories: business consulting, financial services, and creating market opportunities. In the business consulting area, MEDA provided management consulting and mentoring, help with taking businesses to scale, and specialized support for businesses working in the construction industry. In the finance area, MEDA offered its own loan fund, managed funds for external partners, and partnered with community lenders, commercial banks, and the State of Minnesota to help clients acquire capital. Finally, in terms of market opportunities creation, MEDA had four centers designed to help clients connect with corporate and government contracting opportunities, assist with registrations and certifications, and provide educational and training workshops.

In 2014, MEDA served more than 1,600 clients across its three program areas and throughout the state. Not all of these clients were minority entrepreneurs or minority-owned businesses. MEDA helped its clients secure more than $650 million in contracts. In the Twin Cities metropolitan area, it helped 55 minority-owned firms secure nearly $26 million in financial capital. As a result of these contracts

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and financial capital, approximately 200 new jobs were created with an average wage of $22 per hour.

According to MEDA's 2014 Annual Report, MEDA had total assets of $9,164,604 and total liabilities of $5,260,831 for total net assets of $3,903,773. MEDA's revenue, including lending capital and multiyear operational grant awards, was $4,126,097, and total expenses were $3,279,620 for net assets of $846,477. The total expense that included program services was $3,279,620. There were 28 staff members.

The year included a major leadership transition. Gary Cunningham succeeded Yvonne Cheung Ho, who had served as the president and CEO of MEDA for 15 years. The board of directors selected Cunningham for his passion and strong vision for MEDA's work and asked him to “take MEDA to the next level.” Previously, he held a number of senior management positions, including vice president for operations of the Northwest Area Foundation, head of North Point Health and Wellness Center in Minneapolis, and director of the Office of Planning and Development for Hennepin County, Minnesota (the county that contains Minneapolis).

Although the board wanted a transformation, they did not specify what that meant. Cunningham knew MEDA was a successful organization, but he also wanted to greatly increase its impact. Although he knew a strategic planning process would be necessary, he also wanted to know more about MEDA before he began one. Three weeks after assuming his new position in August 2014, Cunningham and I began coteaching a Fall 2014 course on performance management at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. We focused the class on MEDA and what moving to the next level might mean. Insights the class developed helped clarify a number of issues facing MEDA and helped Cunningham better understand how to push ahead with a formal strategic planning process. That effort began in 2015 with consulting support from the Minneapolis office of Accenture, the global consulting firm. I have served as a strategic planning advisor throughout.

The International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions. The International Organization of Supreme Audit ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Institutions (INTOSAI) is an “autonomous, independent, professional, and nonpolitical organization,” which is legally a nongovernment organization (NGO) (INTOSAI, 2010, p. 2). It was founded in 1953 as the overarching association of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) for the United Nations' member countries. Currently, the organization includes SAIs from 194 countries and five associate members. An SAI is a country-level government agency whose purpose, at least in theory, is to ensure transparency, accountability, and efficiency within the bureaucratic operations of a government. SAIs go by different names in different countries; for example, auditor general, comptroller general, or chief financial controller. The U. S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is the national SAI representing the United States. In addition, there are some associate organizational members such as the World Bank. INTOSAI carries out its work in five official languages—Arabic, English, French, German, and Spanish— and is headquartered in Vienna with the Austrian Court of Audit. The organization has special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations.

INTOSAI's current mission, which is broadened somewhat from the 2011–2016 mission, states that it will “provide mutual support; foster the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and experiences; act as a recognized voice of supreme audit institutions within the international community; provide high quality auditing standards for the public sector; promote good governance; and foster SAI capacity development and continuous performance improvement.” INTOSAI's current vision is to “promote good governance by enabling SAIs to help their respective governments improve performance, enhance transparency, ensure accountability, maintain credibility, fight corruption, promote public trust, and foster the efficient and effective receipt and use of public resources for the benefit of their citizens.” The organization operates on the core values of interdependence, integrity, professionalism, credibility, inclusiveness, cooperation, and innovation. The current strategic plan modifies and elaborates on the goals in the previous strategic plan. The major change is that the plan is meant to guide its SAI members as they support their governments in achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 17 SDGs were adopted by the UN General Assembly in ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

September 2015 and seek to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all as part of a new sustainable development agenda (United Nations Development Program, 2015). The new plan provides a framework for INTOSAI and its member SAIs to follow up and review national sustainable development initiatives in accord with individual SAI mandates, priorities, and capabilities.

The effort to produce INTOSAI's third strategic plan, the 2017–2022 Strategic Plan, is the case reported on here. The new plan was adopted by INTOSAI's governing board, the International Congress of Supreme Audit Institutions, in the United Arab Emirates in December 2016. The head of U.S. GAO, the comptroller general of the United States, chaired the Task Force on Strategic Planning. GAO staff played a central role as a champion and facilitator of the effort. The previous edition of this book was one of the sources for advice on the process that ensued. In addition to publicly available documents, the entries about the case draw heavily on Huff (2017), which grew out of a Humphrey School student team paper that was prepared in cooperation with, and reviewed by, U.S. GAO staff.

COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS These three organizations and their strategic planning efforts offer a number of comparisons and contrasts. Two are Minnesota-based, and one is quite emphatically international. They differ in size, staff, budgets, and legal status. The City of Minneapolis is a unit of local government. MEDA is an independent nonprofit organization. INTOSAI is also formally a nonprofit but is essentially a self-governing network of government organizations served by a network administrative organization located in Vienna, Austria (Provan & Kenis, 2009).

The strategic planning effort for these organizations differed in the extent to which it focused directly on the organization and what it should do or what should happen in the community of which the organization is a part. The Minneapolis process focused on both organizational and community planning. MEDA focused on itself but also highlighted ways of changing the entire ecology of support for

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minority-owned businesses. INTOSAI's effort focused on itself but especially on what the SAIs could do to help their nations' governments achieve goals that involved far more than what governments could do directly. In short, for these organizations, the boundary between what was “inside” and what is “outside” the organization was not always clear.

In addition, the three organizations engaged in strategic planning for different reasons. Minneapolis and INTOSAI both were following a very regular cycle for updating strategic plans, but the circumstances surrounding the updates were quite different. Minneapolis began its process knowing the political leadership of the city would change significantly midway through the process. INTOSAI used the scheduled update to significantly repurpose the plan to focus on helping achieve the UN's SDGs. And MEDA also knew the time had come for a new strategic plan but wasn't sure what transforming the organization—which both the board and the new president and CEO wanted—might mean.

There are similarities among the three cases as well. First, each organization succeeded because it had leaders willing to act as process sponsors to endorse and legitimize the effort. The sponsors were not always particularly active participants, nor were they always at the top of the organizational hierarchy, but they did let it be known that they wanted important decision makers and managers to give the effort a good try. Second, each organization had process champions committed to making the process work. These champions did not have preconceived ideas about what specific issues and answers would emerge from the process, though they may have had some good hunches. They simply believed that the process would result in good answers and pushed until those answers emerged (Bryson & Roering, 1988, 1989).

Third, each organization ultimately developed a fairly clear understanding and agreement among key decision makers about what strategic planning was and what they expected from the process. Fourth, each followed a reasonably structured strategic thinking, acting, and learning process. Fifth, each had a decision-making body to oversee the process. Sixth, each had a strategic planning team to ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

manage the process, collect information and prepare for meetings, engage in serious strategic dialogue, and draft a strategic plan. Seventh, each identified critical issues that required effective action if the organization were to capitalize on important opportunities, avoid being victimized by serious threats, or both. Eighth, each worked hard to develop strategies that created public value and were politically acceptable, technically workable, administratively feasible, and ethically responsible. Ninth, each relied on outside assistance of various kinds to help with the process. And finally, each gained many of the potential benefits of strategic planning outlined above

SUMMARY This chapter has discussed what strategic planning is and why it is important. Its importance stems from its ability to help organizations and communities anticipate and respond to change in wise and effective ways. Not only have the environments of public and nonprofit organizations and communities changed dramatically in the recent past, but more upheaval is likely in the future as well. Continuous progress can hardly be taken for granted. In fact, we should expect periods of stability and small changes that are interrupted by instability and significant change. We should expect uncertainty, ambiguity, and equivocality, happy surprises but also unhappy jolts— and occasional terror. In the past century and into this one, we experienced world wars, big booms, big busts, modernism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, and new major roles for government and nonprofit organizations. Within living memory, the United States experienced the effects of the Korean War; the civil rights movement; the women's movement; the environmental movement; the disastrous war in Vietnam; the antiwar movement; the environmental movement; the collapse of the Soviet Union; dramatic shifts in the dominant political ideology in the United States; the HIV/AIDS crisis; lengthy but inconclusive wars in the Middle East; a rise in terrorism; growing public distrust and cynicism; staggering new technologies; unprecedented economic growth with a continuation of sometimes brutal business cycle downturns; the emergence of the European Union, China, and India as serious economic competitors; a ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

dramatic spread of democracy and some noteworthy retreats from it; and globalization—plus all the other changes noted in the opening paragraphs of this chapter.

It all reminds me of a quotation attributed to Lord Salisbury (Robert Gascoyne-Cecil), three-time British prime minister in the nineteenth century: “Change, change, who needs change? Aren't things bad enough already?” Or this chapter's opening epigram: a handwritten sign on a tip jar in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon: “If you don't like change, leave it here.” If only it were that simple!

Strategic planning is one way to help organizations and communities deal with their changed circumstances. Strategic planning is intended to enhance an organization's ability to think, act, and learn strategically. It can help organizations clarify and resolve the most important issues they face. It can help them build on strengths and take advantage of major opportunities while they overcome or minimize weaknesses and serious challenges. It can help them be much more effective in what seems to be a more hostile world. If it does not do that, it probably was not worth the effort, even though it may have satisfied certain legal mandates or symbolic needs.

The ABCs of Strategic Planning presented in Figure 1.1 showed how strategic planning can help an organization (or other entity) deliberate about how it might get from where it is to where it wants to be. Figure 1.4 shows another way to think about strategic planning that more forcefully demonstrates its importance in terms of purposes and functions—namely, that strategic planning is meant to help public and nonprofit organizations and communities create public value through meeting their mandates and fulfilling their missions. To do so, it must help produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what the organization is, what it does, and why it does it. Producing those decisions and actions requires an interconnected set of activities that organizes effective participation; creates meritorious ideas for mission, goals, strategies, actions, and other strategic interventions; builds a winning coalition; implements strategies; and builds capacity for ongoing implementation, learning, and strategic change.

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Figure 1.4. Purposes and Functions of Strategic Planning and Management.

Source: Adapted from Bryson, 2004, p. 28.

Strategic planning clearly is a leadership and management innovation that is likely to persist because, unlike many other recent innovations, it accepts and builds on the nature of political decision making. Raising and resolving important issues is the heart of political decision making and the heart of strategic planning. Strategic planning seeks to improve on raw political decision making, however, by helping to ensure that issues are raised and resolved in ways that benefit the organization, its key stakeholders, and society.

Chapter 2 presents my preferred approach to strategic planning for governments, public agencies, nonprofit organizations, boundary- crossing collaborations, and communities. Subsequent chapters will discuss how to apply the process to help public and nonprofit organizations, collaborative networks, and communities create public value, fulfill their missions, meet their mandates, and serve their stakeholders effectively, efficiently, and responsibly. The good news in this book is of two sorts: There is lots of good work to do, and strategic planning can help you do it. The bad news is also of two sorts: ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Strategic planning is not necessarily easy, and there is no guarantee of success.

Indeed, it may be helpful to consider the words of Samuel Beckett, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in Worstward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better” (1983). Beckett's words are helpful because often failure of various sorts prompts the strategic thinking, acting, and learning necessary for success (Bryson & Crosby, 2008; Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005). The key is to use a deliberative, disciplined process that allows strategic thinking, acting, and learning to be joined for the ultimate benefit of those involved or affected. The next chapter presents such a process.

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CHAPTER TWO The Strategy Change Cycle: An Effective Strategic Planning and Management Approach for Public and Nonprofit Organizations

No, I can't say as I ever was lost, but once I was bewildered pretty bad for three days.

—Daniel Boone

Make-believe is at the heart of play, and also at the heart of so much that passes for work. Let's make-believe we can shoot a rocket to the moon.

—Diane Ackerman, poet and essayist

This chapter presents my preferred approach to strategic planning and management for public and nonprofit organizations, collaborations of various sorts, and communities. This generic approach, called the Strategy Change Cycle, does what public and nonprofit scholars assert planning should do—if it is to be strategic planning (Bryson, Edwards, & Van Slyke, 2017). Specifically, planning that is strategic will demonstrate:

Close attention to the particulars of context, including the decision- making context, when designing the strategic planning approach

Careful thinking about purposes, goals, and situational requirements (e.g., political, legal, administrative, ethical, and environmental requirements)

An initial focus on a broad agenda and a later move to a more selective action orientation

An emphasis on systems thinking—that is, working to understand the dynamics of the overall system being planned for as it functions, or ideally should function, across space and time, including the interrelationships among constituent subsystems

Careful attention to stakeholders, including elected, appointed, and ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

career officials—in effect making strategic planning an approach to the practical politics of gaining legitimacy, buy-in, and credible commitments; typically, multiple levels of government and multiple sectors are explicitly or implicitly involved in the process of strategy formulation and implementation

A focus on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, as well as competitive and collaborative capabilities and advantages

A focus on the future and how different strategies might be used to influence it, in part by attending to decision making in the present in light of its future consequences

Careful attention to implementation challenges as strategies are formulated; strategy that cannot be operationalized effectively to fit the implementation context is hardly strategic

A clear realization that strategies are both deliberately set in advance and emergent in practice

The Strategy Change Cycle becomes a strategic management process —and not just a strategic planning process—to the extent that it is used to link planning and implementation and to manage an organization in a strategic way on an ongoing basis (see Exhibit 1.1). As Poister and Streib (1999, pp. 311–312) argue, “The overall purpose of strategic management is to develop a continuing commitment to the mission and vision of the organization (both internally and in the authorizing environment), nurture a culture that identifies and supports the mission and vision, and maintains a clear focus on the organization's strategic agenda throughout all its decision processes and activities.” The Strategy Change Cycle draws on a considerable body of research and practical experience, applying it specifically to public and nonprofit organizations. Subsequent chapters will provide detailed guidance on moving through the cycle to make use of its logic in specific situations.

The epigraphs at the beginning of this chapter help make the point that strategic thinking, acting, and learning are more important than any particular approach to strategic planning. Consider the humorous statement in the opening epigraph of Daniel Boone, the famous

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eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American frontiersman (Faragher, 1992, p. 65): When you are lost in the wilderness—bewildered—no fixed plan will do. You must think, act, and learn your way to safety. Boone had a destination of at least a general sort in mind but not a route. He had to wander around reconnoitering, gathering information, assessing directions, trying out options, and in general thinking, acting, and learning his way into where he wanted to be. As Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld (2005, pp. 412–413) put it, he had to “act thinkingly…[knowing] there are truths of the moment that change, develop, and take shape through time” and that “may signal a progression from worse to better.” Ultimately—but not initially or even much before he got to where he was going—Boone was able to establish a clear destination and a route that worked to get him there. Thus, he had a strategy of purposeful wandering, and it is true that he was not exactly lost; rather, he was working at finding himself where he wanted to be. So wandering with a purpose is an important aspect of strategic planning, in which thinking, acting, and learning clearly matter most.

Diane Ackerman's statement makes the point that almost anything is possible with enough imagination, ambition, direction, intelligence, competence, education and training, organization, resources, will, and staying power. A long list, to be sure, but sometimes they can be assembled and the triumph attained: Humans have been to the moon and have sent spacecraft to Mars, Venus, and a host of other places. As citizens of the world, we have won world wars and cold wars, ended depressions and avoided others, seen dramatic reductions in poverty worldwide, virtually eliminated smallpox, unraveled the human genome, watched a reasonably united and integrated Europe emerge and weather various crises, and seen democracy spread—though not without setbacks.

Now let's think about what complementary or collaborative efforts of governments, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and civil society more generally might do to provide good jobs for everyone, adequate food and housing for everyone, fully universal health care coverage at a reasonable cost, drastically reduced crime and incarceration, effective educational systems, secure pensions and retirements, a

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dramatic reduction in greenhouse emissions, the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, the elimination of HIV/AIDS, the realization in practice of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and so on. There is plenty of necessary, good, and exalting work to do, but it will take contributions from all sectors and many different kinds of people to get it done. Committed leaders and followers from all sectors can create institutions, policies, programs, projects, products, and services of lasting public value by drawing on diverse talents—and have done so again and again throughout history (Hacker & Pierson, 2016; Light, 2002). And they can use strategic planning to help think, act, and learn strategically—to figure out what is desirable and why and how to get it. Think of strategic planning as the organization of hope—as what makes hope reasonable.

A 10-STEP STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS Now, with the caution that strategic thinking, acting, and learning matter most, let us proceed to a more detailed exploration of the 10- step Strategy Change Cycle. The process (presented graphically in Figure 2.1) is more orderly, deliberative, and participative than the process followed by an essayist such as Ackerman or a wanderer like Boone. The process is designed to organize effective participation; create meritorious ideas for mission, goals, strategies, actions, and other strategic interventions; build the winning coalition needed to adopt and protect strategies during implementation; provide needed guidance and resources for implementation; and build competence and knowledge to sustain implementation and engage in the next round of strategic planning (see Figure 1.4). The Strategy Change Cycle is now a widely used approach to identifying and responding to challenges in which a leadership group establishes overall purposes of the process, provides important guidance, manages the main activities in the process, and often leaves much of the content of the responses and implementation methods to others. The 10 steps (or occasions for deliberation and decision) are as follows:

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Figure 2.1. The Strategy Change Cycle. Copyright © 1995, 2003, 2011, 2017.

1. Initiate and agree on a strategic planning process

2. Identify organizational mandates

3. Clarify organizational mission and values

4. Assess the external and internal environments to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

5. Identify the strategic issues facing the organization

6. Formulate strategies to manage the issues

7. Review and adopt the strategic plan or plans

8. Establish an effective organizational vision

9. Develop an effective implementation process

10. Reassess strategies and the strategic planning process

These 10 steps should lead deliberatively to actions, results, evaluation, and learning. It must be emphasized that these outcomes ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

should emerge at each step in the process. In other words, implementation and evaluation should not wait until the end of the process but rather should be an integral and ongoing part of it.

The process is applicable to public and nonprofit organizations, collaborations of various sorts, and communities. The only general requirements are a dominant coalition, or at least a coalition of the willing able to sponsor and follow the process, and a process champion or champions willing to push it. For small organizations, well- informed strategic planning teams that are familiar with, believe in, and are committed to the process should be able to complete most of the steps in two or three workdays with an additional workday scheduled three to four weeks later to review the resulting strategic plan. Responsibility for preparing the plan can be delegated to a planner assigned to work with the team, or the organization's chief executive may choose to draft the plan personally. More time may be needed for additional reviews and signoffs by key decision makers or to secure information or advice for specific parts of the plan, especially its recommended strategies.

For large organizations, however, more time and effort are likely to be needed for the process. And when applied to a collaboration or community, the effort is likely to be considerably more time- consuming in order to promote the involvement of substantial numbers of leaders, organizations, and, in a community, citizens, and to develop necessary agreements to proceed.

As you learn more about the steps of the Strategy Change Cycle, note that in practice it bears little resemblance to the caricature of strategic planning occasionally found in the literature as a rigid, formal, overly analytic, and detached process (for example, Ferlie and Ongaro, 2015, pp. 13–23; Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009, pp. 49–84). Instead, the Strategy Change Cycle is intended to enhance strategic thinking, acting, and learning. It does so by engaging key actors with what is and what can be; by engaging with the most important details while abstracting the strategic messages within them; and by linking strategy formulation with implementation in ways that are wise, technically and administratively workable, politically intelligent, and legal, moral, and ethical—and, not least, that create enduring public ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

value.

Step 1: Initiating and Agreeing on a Strategic Planning Process The purpose of the first step is to negotiate agreement among key internal (and perhaps external) decision makers or opinion leaders about the overall strategic planning effort and the key planning steps. The support and commitment of key decision makers are vital if strategic planning in an organization is to succeed. Further, the involvement of key decision makers outside the organization usually is crucial to the success of public and nonprofit programs if implementation will involve multiple parties and organizations (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015; Fernandez & Rainey, 2006; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015).

Obviously, some person or group must initiate the process. One of the initiators' first tasks is to identify who the key decision makers are. The next task is to identify which people, groups, units, or organizations should be involved in the effort. These two steps will require some preliminary stakeholder analysis, which is discussed in more detail below. The initial agreement will be negotiated with at least some of these decision makers, key opinion leaders, groups, units, or organizations. In practice, a series of agreements typically must be struck among various parties as support for the process builds and key stakeholders and decision makers sign on. Strategic planning for a public or nonprofit organization, collaboration, or community is especially likely to work well if an effective policy- and decision- making body is in place to oversee the effort.

The agreement turns a general approach into a specific process design. Creating an effective specific design requires the negotiators of the initial agreement to think strategically about the strategic planning process. The agreement should cover:

The purpose of the effort

A statement of desired outcomes (however sketchy) to be achieved

Preferred steps in the process and the way ongoing feedback and

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learning will be accomplished

The form and timing of reports

The role, functions, and membership of any group or committee empowered to oversee the effort, such as a strategic planning coordinating committee (SPCC)

The role, functions, and membership of the strategic planning team

A general sense of how stakeholders will be engaged over the course of the process (see Resource A)

A general sense of how the information and communication technology (ICT) and social media will be used to help the process along (see Resource B)

The likely requirements for success

Any important limitations or boundaries on the effort

Commitment of resources necessary to proceed with the effort

As noted, at least some stakeholder analysis work will be needed in order to figure out whom to include in the series of initial agreements. A stakeholder is defined as any person, group, or organization that can place a claim on an organization's (or other entity's) attention, resources, or output or that is affected by that output. Examples of a government's stakeholders are citizens, taxpayers, service recipients, the governing body, employees, unions, interest groups, political parties, the financial community, other businesses, and other governments. Examples of a nonprofit organization's stakeholders include members, clients or customers, third-party payers or funders, employees, the board of directors, volunteers, other nonprofit organizations providing complementary services or involved as coventurers in projects, banks holding mortgages or notes, and suppliers.

Attention to stakeholder concerns is crucial: The key to success in public and nonprofit organizations (and communities) is the satisfaction of key stakeholders according to their criteria, or at least ones they can accept (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006; Rainey, 2014). A stakeholder analysis is a way for the organization's decision makers ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

and planning team to immerse themselves in the networks and politics surrounding the organization. An understanding of the relationships— actual or potential—that help define the organization's context can provide invaluable clues to identifying strategic issues and developing effective strategies.

In this regard, note that the stakeholder definition is deliberately quite broad for both practical and ethical reasons. Thinking broadly, at least initially, about who the stakeholders are is a way of opening people's eyes to the various webs of relationships within which the organization exists and of ensuring the organization is alerted to its ethical and democratic accountability responsibilities because they always involve clarifying who and what counts (Lewis & Gilman, 2012).

For many public and nonprofit organizations these days, the label customer will be given to their key stakeholder (Thomas, 2012). The customer label can be useful, particularly for organizations that need to improve their customer service. In other situations, this language actually can be quite problematic. One danger is that focusing on a single customer may lead these organizations inadvertently to ignore other important stakeholder groups. Another danger is that providing public services is typically not a matter of simply buying by the customer and selling by a producer, but of coproduction in which the service recipient is an active participant in the creation of the service (Voorberg, Bekkers, & Tummers, 2015). Another danger is that the customer label can undermine the values and virtues of active citizenship (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015; Thomas, 2012). The public sector is not as simple as the private sector; there typically are many “bottom lines” (Rainey, 2014). Many community-based nonprofit organizations and those relying on government funding also face very complex stakeholder environments.

Resource A at the end of the book provides an overview of a range of stakeholder identification and analysis techniques, and Chapter 3 provides more detail on how to get started. The organizers of the planning effort should count on using several different techniques, including what I call the basic stakeholder analysis technique. This requires the strategic planning team to brainstorm a list of the organization's stakeholders, identify their criteria for judging the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

performance of the organization (that is, their stake in the organization or its output), and assess how well the organization performs against those criteria from the stakeholders' points of view. If there is time, additional steps (perhaps involving additional analysis techniques) should be considered, including understanding how the stakeholders influence the organization, identifying what the organization needs from its various stakeholders (e.g., money, staff, political support), and determining in general how important the various stakeholders are. Looking ahead, a stakeholder analysis will help clarify whether the organization needs to have different missions and perhaps different strategies for different stakeholders, whether it should seek to have its mandates changed, and in general what its strategic issues are.

Step 2: Identifying Organizational Mandates The formal and informal mandates placed on the organization consist of the various “musts” it confronts—that is, the various requirements, restrictions, expectations, pressures, and constraints it faces. Actually, it is surprising how few organizations know precisely what they are (and are not) formally mandated to do. Typically, few members of any organization have ever read, for example, the relevant legislation, policies, ordinances, charters, articles, and contracts that outline the organization's formal mandates. Even if they have read these materials, too many strategic plans do not include explicit reference to many of the applicable formal mandates, so they may be overlooked (Rosenbloom, 2007, 2014). In addition, many organizational members do not understand the informal mandates—typically political in the broadest sense—that the organization faces.

It may not be surprising, then, that most organizations make one or more of three fundamental mistakes. First, by not articulating or knowing what they must do, they are unlikely to do it. Second, they may believe they are more tightly constrained in their actions than they actually are. And third, they may assume that if they are not explicitly told to do something, they are not allowed to do it.

Step 3: Clarifying Organizational Mission and Values ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

An organization's mission, in tandem with its mandates, provides the organization's most obvious raison d'être and social justification for its existence. An organization's mission and mandates also point the way toward the ultimate organizational end of creating public value at reasonable cost. This ultimate end corresponds to Aristotle's final cause, where final comes from the Latin word finis or end, corresponding to the Greek word telos or goal. A final cause thus provides the explanation for change by pointing to the goal (telos) on account of which, or for the sake of which, the changes are undertaken (Vella, 2008, p. 77). The English saying “rally round the cause” captures the idea.

The Strategy Change Cycle thus represents a primarily teleological— meaning goal- or purpose-oriented—theory of change (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995) in which actions are undertaken and justified in terms of their efficacy for achieving goals or purposes (which will often be more intermediate than final because ultimate ends may not be clearly understood at the beginning of the process). Causation in the Aristotelian sense is thus broader than our modern conception: “For Aristotle, a cause is an explanation or a reason why something is the case” (Vella, 2008, p. 48). Deliberations informed by the Strategy Change Cycle are thus guided by the need for choices based on reasons in order to achieve ends. The goal-oriented nature of strategic planning places a premium on ongoing feedback and learning because they provide information necessary to stay on track (or perhaps to revise the goals) (Simon, 1996).

For a government, government agency, or nonprofit organization, this means there must be identifiable social or political demands or needs that the organization seeks to fill. Viewed in this light, organizations must always be seen as a means to an end (finis), not as an end in and of themselves (Rosenbloom, 2015). For a collaborative, it means identifying the collaborative advantage to be gained by working together—that is, what can be gained together that creates public value that cannot be achieved alone (Huxham & Vangen, 2005). Communities, too, must justify their existence based on how well they meet their stakeholders' social, political, economic, and environmental needs—including the stakeholders' need for a sense of community.

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Communities, however, are less likely to think they have a mission; they are more likely to talk about their purposes, values, and identity.

Identifying the mission or purpose of the organization, however, does more than justify the organization's existence. Clarifying purpose can eliminate a great deal of unnecessary conflict in an organization and help channel discussion and activity productively (Thompson, 2014). Agreement on purpose also defines the arenas within which the organization will collaborate or compete and, at least in broad outline, charts the future course of the organization.

Moreover, an important and socially justifiable mission is a source of inspiration and guidance to key stakeholders, particularly employees (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). Indeed, it is doubtful whether any organization ever achieved greatness or excellence without a basic consensus among its key stakeholders on an inspiring mission (Goodsell, 2010; Rainey & Steinbauer, 1999).

I think that some careful stakeholder analysis work should precede development or modification of an existing mission statement so that attention to purpose can be informed by thinking about purpose for whom. The mission statement itself might be very short—perhaps not more than a paragraph or a slogan—but development of the mission statement should grow out of lengthy dialogue about the organization's identity, its abiding purpose, desired responses to key stakeholders, its philosophy and core values, and its ethical standards. These discussions may also provide a basic outline for a description of the organization in the future, or its vision of success, described in Step 8. Considerable intermediate work is necessary, however, before a complete vision of success can be articulated.

Step 4: Assessing the Organization's External and Internal Environments The planning team should explore the environment outside the organization to identify the opportunities and challenges (or threats) the organization faces (Step 4a). It should explore the environment inside the organization to identify strengths and weaknesses (Step 4b). Basically, “outside” factors are those the organization can't control,

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whereas “inside” factors are those it can (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). Opportunities and challenges usually (though not necessarily) are more about the future than the present; strengths and weakness are more about the present than the future (Nutt & Backoff, 1992). Note that communities are more likely to think in terms of assets rather than strengths (McKnight & Block, 2010). The analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges (or threats) will be referred to in this book as a SWOC/T analysis. An instructional guide to performing a very basic SWOC/T analysis can be found at https://www.hubertproject.org/hubert-material/438/.

Monitoring a variety of forces and trends—including political, economic, social, educational, technological, and physical environmental ones—can help planners and decision makers discern opportunities and challenges. Unfortunately, organizations all too often focus only on the negative or threatening aspects of serious challenges and not on the genuine opportunities they may present, so care must be taken to ensure a balanced view (Ackermann & Eden, 2011). In other words, attending to challenges and weaknesses should be seen as an opportunity to build strengths and improve performance (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015).

Other than monitoring trends and events, the strategic planning team also should monitor particularly important external stakeholder groups, especially those that affect resource flows (directly or indirectly). These groups would include customers, clients, payers or funders, dues-paying members, regulators, and relevant policy bodies. The team also should attend to competitors, competitive forces, and possible sources of competitive advantage, as well as to collaborators, collaborative forces, and potential sources of collaborative advantage.

One important technique that can be very useful, especially for government agencies, is policy field analysis. Stone and Sandfort (2009, p. 1056) define a policy field as “an identifiable set of elements in a specific environment that directly shape local public service provision. These elements include the structures created by institutions involved in the delivery of particular substantive programs and the ways in which state and local actors interact with these structures.” And they go on to say, “The policy field framework helps ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

one analyze how actual relationships among major institutions and key stakeholders influence the exertion of power and the flow of resources, such as money, information, and clients. The framework also details how these relationships and networks influence the work of [public and] nonprofit organizations themselves.” The technique allows users to gain a better understanding of the overall system within which they are operating. A brief video overview of policy field analysis can be found at https://www.hubertproject.org/hubert- material/314/.

A policy field analysis also sets the stages for a careful assessment of actual and potential collaborators, as well as the forces that might prompt or inhibit competition or collaboration. Affirmations of existing relationships with other organizations or entities might result but so might an awareness of other possibilities.

The organization might construct various scenarios to explore alternative futures in the external environment, a practice typical of much strategic planning in large business organizations (Marcus, 2009). Scenarios are particularly good at demonstrating how various forces and trends are likely to interact and which are amenable to organizational influence. Scenarios also offer an effective way of challenging the organization's “official future” when necessary. The “official future” is the presumed or taken-for-granted future that makes current strategies sensible. Organizations unwilling to challenge this future are the ones most likely to be blindsided by changes. Communities also may wish to develop scenarios.

Members of an organization's governing body (particularly if they are elected) are often better at identifying and assessing external opportunities and challenges (particularly present ones) than are the organization's employees. This is partly due to a governing board's responsibility for relating an organization to its external environment and vice versa. Unfortunately, neither governing boards nor employees usually do a systematic or effective job of external scanning. As a result, most organizations are often like ships trying to navigate troubled or treacherous waters without benefit of human lookouts, global positioning systems, radar, or sonar. All too often the result is a very unwelcome surprise (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Because of this, both employees and governing board members should consider relying on a somewhat formal external assessment process to supplement their informal efforts. The technology of external assessment is fairly simple and allows organizations to cheaply, pragmatically, and effectively keep tabs on what is happening in the larger world that is likely to have an effect on the organization and the pursuit of its mission. Basically, there are three steps: scanning the environment to identify key trends, analyzing trends to interpret their importance and identify issues, and providing reports that are useful for planning and decision making. RSS (rich site summaries) feeds, listserv queries, monthly or quarterly discussion groups, and periodic retreats, for example, might be used to explore forces and trends and their potential impact. The key, however, is to avoid being captured by existing categories of classification and search because they tend to formalize and routinize the past rather than open one to the surprises of the future (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015).

Attention to opportunities and challenges, along with a stakeholder analysis, can be used to identify the organization's critical success factors (CSFs). These may overlap with mandates in the sense that they are the things the organization must do, or criteria it must meet, in order for it to be successful in the eyes of its key stakeholders, especially those in the external environment. Ideally, the organization will excel in these areas and must do so in order to outperform or stave off competitors. In the private sector, CSFs are often discussed in relation to specific products and services (Johnson, Whittington, Regnér, Scholes, & Angwin, 2017); here, we are using the term more broadly as a category of requirements for success in addition to those that emanate from mission and mandates.

To identify internal strengths and weaknesses, the organization might monitor resources (inputs), present strategy (process), and performance (outputs). Most public and nonprofit organizations, in my experience, have substantial information on many of their inputs, such as salaries, supplies, physical plant, and full-time equivalent (FTE) personnel. Unfortunately, fewer organizations have a very clear idea of their philosophy, core values, distinctive competencies, and culture, a crucial set of inputs both for ensuring stability and

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managing change.

Organizations also tend to have an unclear idea of their present strategy, either overall, by subunit, or by function. And typically they cannot say enough about their outputs, let alone the effects or outcomes, those outputs create for clients, customers, or payers though this, too, is changing. For example, traditionally schools have been able to say how many students they graduate—an output—but most cannot say how educated those students are. National and state requirements for standardized testing at different grade levels are an attempt to measure outcomes in order to remedy this shortcoming. We know tests of this sort are almost always imperfect, but the need to demonstrate accountability for performance to politicians and the citizenry virtually requires that believable testing of some sort be used. As Moynihan (2008) argues, much of the value of performance information is the dialogue that it prompts with stakeholders about performance.

A lack of performance information presents problems both for the organization and for its stakeholders. Stakeholders judge an organization according to the criteria they choose, which are not necessarily the same criteria the organization would choose. For external stakeholders in particular, these criteria typically relate to performance. If an organization cannot effectively meet its stakeholders' performance criteria, then regardless of its “inherent” worth, the stakeholders are likely to withdraw their support. An absence of performance information may also create—or harden— major organizational conflicts. Without performance criteria and information, there is no way to evaluate with reasonable objectivity the relative effectiveness of alternative strategies, resource allocations, organizational designs, and distributions of power. As a result, organizational conflicts are likely to occur more often than they should, serve narrow partisan interests, and be resolved in ways that don't further the organization's mission (Flyvbjerg, 1998; Thompson, 2014).

The difficulties of measuring performance are well-known (Talbot, 2010; Van Dooren, Bouckaert, & Halligan, 2015). But regardless of the difficulties, organizations are continually challenged to demonstrate ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

effective performance to their stakeholders. Employees of government agencies and nonprofit organizations receiving government funds might see the public's desire to limit or decrease taxation and funding as selfishness, which it may be for some. Alternatively, one might interpret these limitations on public expenditure as an unwillingness to support organizations that cannot demonstrate unequivocally effective performance. The desire for demonstrable performance was clearly behind the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 (Public Law 103-62) and the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act (GPRMA) of 2010 (Public Law 111-352), which require all federal agencies to complete a strategic plan based on outcomes rather than inputs or throughputs. The assessment of the effectiveness of these laws is mixed (Moynihan, 2013; Moynihan & Kroll, 2016), but the impulse behind the act will remain. Many states and large numbers of local governments embrace performance management as well (National Performance Advisory Commission, 2010).

A consideration of the organization's strengths and weaknesses can also lead to an identification of its distinctive competencies (Selznick, 1957) or core competencies (Ackermann & Eden, 2011). The precise meanings of these terms differ, but in general, they indicate the organization's strongest abilities that draw on resources (broadly conceived) and underpin effective strategies and actions that allow the organization to routinely perform well. What makes these abilities distinctive is the inability of others to replicate them easily, if at all, because of the way they are interlinked with one another (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2007; Eden & Ackermann, 2010). Finally, a consideration of how inputs, process, and outputs are linked can help the organization more clearly understand what its strategies are and precisely what the value proposition is that the organization offers its stakeholders. In other words, what story does it or can it tell about the logic model (McLaughlin & Jordan, 2015) or public value chain (Alford & Yates, 2014) that the organization pursues to convert inputs into outputs that meet its mandates, fulfill its mission, satisfy its stakeholders, and create public value?

Being clear about what is can be an extraordinarily helpful prelude to

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discerning what ought to be (Weick et al., 2005). For one thing, standing back and understanding what the strategy is in practice can help open people's eyes to what is going on in the environment more generally. As Mintzberg et al. (2009, p. 19) note in reference to strategies' ability to put blinders on people, “the very encouragement of strategy to get on with it—its very role in protecting people in the organization from distraction—impedes their capacity to respond to changes in the environment.” Said more bluntly, sometimes the way organizations are designed and pursue their strategies can unfortunately make them “stupid” (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012). Understanding the current strategy also can sensitize people to the ways in which integrating human resources management, information and communication technology, and financial management might be used to sustain, strengthen, and protect desirable strategies.

Step 5: Identifying the Strategic Issues Facing an Organization Together the first four elements of the process lead to the fifth, the identification of strategic issues. Strategic issues are fundamental policy questions or critical challenges affecting the organization's mandates, mission and values, product or service level and mix, clients, users or payers, costs, financing, organization, or management. Finding the best way to frame these issues typically requires considerable wisdom, dialogue, and deep understanding of organizational operations, stakeholder interests, and external demands and possibilities. The first four steps of the process are designed deliberately to slow things down so that there is enough information and interaction to inform deliberations so that needed wisdom might emerge. More colloquially, the process is designed to increase deliberators' knowledge so as to avoid too much bullshit. As Frankfurt (2005, p. 63) notes, “Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he [or she] is talking about.” The process is designed, in other words, to unfreeze people's thinking so that knowledge exploration, development, and learning might occur (Burke, 2013). This knowledge will be exploited in this and later phases (Crossan, Lane, & White,

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1999; March, 1991).

Strategic planning focuses on achieving the best fit between an organization and its environment. Attention to mandates and the external environment, therefore, can be thought of as planning from the outside in. Attention to mission and organizational values and the internal environment can be considered planning from the inside out. Usually, it is vital that pressing strategic issues be dealt with expeditiously and effectively if the organization is to survive and prosper. An organization that does not respond to a strategic issue can expect undesirable results from a threat, a missed opportunity, or both.

The iterative nature of the strategic planning process often becomes apparent in this step when participants find that information created or discussed in earlier steps presents itself again as part of a strategic issue. For example, many strategic planning teams begin with the belief that they know what their organization's mission is. They often find out in this step, however, that one of the key issues the organization faces is exactly what its mission ought to be. In other words, the organization's present mission is found to be inappropriate given the team members' new understanding of the situation the organization faces, and a new mission must be created. The organization must be repurposed.

Strategic issues, virtually by definition, involve conflicts of one sort or another. The conflicts may involve ends (what); means (how or how much); philosophy (why); location (where); timing (when); and who might be advantaged or disadvantaged by different ways of resolving the issue (who). In order for issues to be raised and resolved effectively, the organization must be prepared to deal with the almost inevitable conflicts that will occur. Conflict, shifts in understanding, and shifts in preferences will all evoke participants' emotions (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). It is therefore in this stage that the importance of emotion will become dramatically apparent, along with the concomitant need for emotional and social intelligence on the part of participants if emotions are to be dealt with effectively (Heifetz, Linsky, & Grashow, 2009).

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A statement of a strategic issue should contain three elements. First, the issue should be described succinctly, preferably in a single paragraph. The issue should be framed as a question that the organization can do something about. If the organization cannot do anything about it, it is best not to think of it as an issue for the organization; it is simply a condition or constraint. An organization's attention is limited enough without wasting it on issues it cannot address effectively. The question also should have more than one answer—as a way of broadening the search for viable strategies. Too often, organizations “jump to solutions” without fully understanding what else might be possible and without learning more about the issue by understanding more about the range of possible answers (Ackermann & Eden, 2011; Nutt, 2002).

Second, the factors that make the issue a fundamental challenge should be listed. In particular, what is it about the organization's mandates, mission, values, or internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and challenges that make this a strategic issue for the organization? Listing these factors will become useful in the next step, strategy development. Every effective strategy builds on strengths and takes advantage of opportunities while minimizing or overcoming weaknesses and challenges. The framing of strategic issues is therefore very important because it will provide much of the basis for the issues' resolution (Bolman & Deal, 2013; Fairhurst, 2010).

Finally, the planning team should prepare a statement of the consequences of failure to address the issue. This will help organizational leaders decide just how strategic, or important, various issues are. If no consequences will ensue from failure to address a particular issue, then it is not a strategic issue. At the other extreme, if the organization will be destroyed or will miss a valuable opportunity by failing to address a particular issue, then the issue is clearly very strategic and is worth attending to immediately. Thus, the step of identifying strategic issues is aimed at focusing organizational attention on what is truly important for the survival, prosperity, and effectiveness of the organization.

Once statements of the issues are prepared, the organization will know ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

what kinds of issues it faces, just how strategic they are, and what some of the important requirements are for their successful resolution. There are several kinds of strategic issues:

Issues that alter the organization and especially its core business and those that do not. Heifetz (1994) refers to the former as adaptive challenges and the latter as technical problems. Adaptive challenges involve a fundamental change in mission (and perhaps mandates), products or services, customers or clients, service or distribution channels, sources of revenue, identity or image, or some other aspect of the organization. They also are issues for which there is no real organizational precedent. In other words, the resolution of these issues may well hinge on clarifying a new vision, mission, set of goals, and accompanying strategies. Deep dialogue almost certainly will be needed to sort these issues out (Scharmer, 2016). Technical issues, on the other hand, involve less ambiguity because most of the aspects of the organization's mission, goals, and overall strategy will not change. Resolving these issues is more likely to require reprogramming strategies, rather than vision, mission, goals, and whole new strategies.

Issues that are on the horizon and are likely to require some action in the future and perhaps some action now. For the most part, these issues can be handled as part of the organization's regular strategic planning cycle.

Issues that require no organizational action at present but that must be continuously monitored.

Issues that require an immediate response and, therefore, cannot be handled in a more routine way.

In Chapter 6, eight basic approaches to the identification of strategic issues will be discussed. The direct approach goes straight from a discussion of mandates, mission, and SWOC/Ts (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges or threats) to the identification of strategic issues. The indirect approach begins with brainstorming several different kinds of options before identifying issues. Each option is put on a separate card or self-adhesive label. The options include actions the organization could take to meet its

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mandates, fulfill its mission, and create public value; to meet stakeholders' performance expectations; to build on strengths, take advantage of opportunities, and minimize or overcome weaknesses and challenges; and to incorporate any other important aspect of background studies. These options are then merged into a single set of potential actions and clustered into potential issue categories. The categories' names highlight the nature of each issue.

The goals approach starts with goals (or CSFs or key performance indicators) and then identifies issues that must be addressed before they can be achieved. And the vision of success approach starts with at least a sketch of a vision of success in order to identify issues that must be dealt with before the vision can be realized. This approach is most likely to be necessary in situations involving adaptive challenges— where fundamental change is needed but the organization lacks a precedent (Nutt, 2001; Patton, 2011). For example, development of a vision is often recommended for organizations about to engage in a serious way in e-government or e-commerce (Lee & Kwak, 2012). In addition, many community strategic planning efforts use a visioning approach to identify issues (Albrechts & Balducci, 2013; Walzer & Hamm, 2012).

The visual strategy mapping approach involves creation of word-and- arrow diagrams in which ideas about actions the organization might take, how it might take them, and why are linked by arrows indicating the cause–effect or influence relationships between them. In other words, the arrows indicate that action A may cause or influence B, which in turn may cause or influence C, and so on; if the organization does A, it can expect to produce outcome B, which in turn may be expected to produce outcome C. These maps can consist of hundreds of interconnected relationships, showing differing areas of interest and their relationships to one another. Important clusters of potential actions may comprise strategic issues. A strategy in response to the issue would consist of the specific choices of actions to undertake in the issue area, how to undertake them, and why (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2014). The approach is particularly useful when participants are having trouble making sense of complex issue areas, time is short, the emphasis must be on action, and commitment on the part of those

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involved is particularly important.

The tensions approach was developed by Nutt and Backoff (1992) and elaborated in Nutt, Backoff, and Hogan (2000). These authors argue that there are always four basic tensions around any strategic issue. These tensions involve human resources, especially equity concerns; innovation and change; maintenance of tradition; productivity improvement; and their various combinations. The authors suggest critiquing the way issues are framed using these tensions separately and in combination in order to find the best way to frame the issue. The critiques may need to run through several cycles before the wisest way to frame the issue is found.

Systems analysis can be used to help discern the best way to frame issues when the system contains complex feedback effects and must be formally modeled in order to understand it (Lusk & Birks, 2014; Mulgan, 2009). Finally, the alignment approach addresses problems of misalignment of the organization's mission, mandates, goals, strategies, actions, and systems—or misalignment of other features or requirements for proper functioning—that are inhibiting success. By stating that there are eight different approaches to the identification of strategic issues, I may raise the hackles of some planning theorists and practitioners who believe you should always start with either issues, goals, vision, or analysis. I argue that what will work best depends on the situation and that the wise planner should choose an approach accordingly. What matters most is simply that those involved have as clear a picture as possible of the challenges facing the organization.

Step 6: Formulating Strategies and Plans to Manage the Issues A strategy is defined as a pattern of purposes, policies, programs, projects, actions, decisions, or resource allocations that define what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it. Strategies can vary by level, function, and time frame and obviously in terms of how well they perform against expectations or requirements. Strategies are developed to deal with the issues identified in the previous step.

This definition is purposely broad in order to focus attention on the

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creation of consistency across rhetoric (what people say), choices (what people decide and are willing to pay for), actions (what people do), and the consequences of those actions. Effective strategy formulation and implementation processes link rhetoric, choices, actions, and consequences into reasonably coherent and consistent patterns across levels, functions, and time (Ackermann & Eden, 2011). They also will be tailored to fit an organization's culture, even if the purpose of the strategy or strategies is to reconfigure that culture in some way (Ferlie & Ongaro, 2015).

The definition makes clear that every organization has strategies in the sense that there is always some sort of pattern across purposes, actions, resource allocations, and so on. But the pattern may not be a very good one. Indeed, most public and nonprofit organizations seem to have issues with misalignment, which is why one of the approaches to strategic issue identification is to discern misalignments. These alignments often become painfully apparent during times of resource shortages.

Draft strategies, and perhaps drafts of formal strategic plans, will be formulated in this step to articulate desired patterns. These may also be reviewed and adopted at the end of this step if the strategic planning process is relatively simple, small scale, and involves a single organization. (Such a process would merge this step and Step 7.)

There are numerous approaches to strategy development (Bryson & Edwards, 2017; Ferlie & Ongaro 2015). I generally favor three approaches. The first is a five-part, fairly speedy process based on the work of the Institute of Cultural Affairs (Spencer, 1996). The second, called visual strategy mapping, can be used if there is a need or desire to articulate more clearly the relationships among multiple options—to show how they fit together causally as part of a pattern. This is the approach I use most frequently. The third is principles-based strategizing and is particularly useful for multiorganizational collaborations trying to figure out how to proceed in novel situations.

A Five-Part Strategy Development Process. The first part of the five-part process begins with identification of practical alternatives and dreams or visions for resolving the strategic issues. Each option

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should be phrased in action terms—that is, it should begin with an imperative, such as “do,” “get,” “buy,” “achieve,” and so forth. Phrasing options in action terms helps make the options seem more “real” to participants.

Next, the planning team should enumerate the barriers or constraints to achieving those alternatives, dreams, or visions (that is, possible goals), and not directly on how to achieve these things. Focusing on barriers at this point is not typical of most strategic planning processes, but doing so is one way of ensuring that any strategies developed deal with implementation difficulties directly rather than haphazardly (Goldratt, 1999).

Once alternatives, dreams, and visions, along with barriers to their realization, are listed, the team develops major proposals for achieving these goals directly, or else indirectly through overcoming the barriers. (In a variant to this step, the team might solicit proposals from key organizational units, various stakeholder groups, task forces, or selected individuals.) For example, a major Midwest city government did not begin to work on strategies to achieve its major ambitions until it had overhauled its outmoded personnel system. That system clearly was a barrier that had to be changed before the city government could have any hope of achieving its more important objectives. As another example, a major West Coast city fire department did not begin strategic planning until many of its employees had visited excellent fire departments elsewhere so that their views were less parochial, their imaginations were enhanced, and their sights were raised about what was possible.

After major proposals are submitted, two final tasks remain in order to develop effective strategies. Actions that must be taken over the next two to three years to implement the major proposals must be identified. And finally, a detailed work program for the next six months to a year must be spelled out to implement the actions. These last two tasks shade over into the work of Step 9 of the Strategy Change Cycle, but that is good because strategies should always be developed with implementation in mind, including necessary resources (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). In some circumstances, Steps 6 and 9 may be merged—for example, when a single organization is ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

planning for itself. In addition, in collaborative or community settings, implementation details must often be worked out first by the various parties before they are willing to commit to shared strategic plans (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015; Huxham & Vangen, 2005). In situations such as these, implementation planning may have to precede strategy or plan adoption.

Visual Strategy Mapping (ViSM). The second method is called visual strategy mapping (ViSM). (In previous editions of the book, I called it action-oriented strategy mapping.) The method involves listing multiple options to address each strategic issue, where each option is written in imperative action terms. The options are then linked by arrows indicating which options cause or influence the achievement of other options. An option can be a part of more than one chain. The result is a “map” of action-to-outcome (cause–effect, means-to-an-end) relationships; those options toward the end of a chain of arrows are possible goals or perhaps even mission statements. Presumably, these goals can be achieved by accomplishing at least some of the actions leading up to them though additional analysis and work on the arrow chains may be necessary to determine and clearly articulate action-to-outcome relationships. The option maps can be reviewed and revised and particular action-to-outcome chains selected as strategies. See Ackermann and Eden (2011); Bryson, Ackermann, and Eden (2014); and Bryson, Ackermann, Eden, and Finn (2004) for more information on how to develop maps of this sort, including many variations on the basic approach. I have produced an instructional video on the basic approach (not all its variations) that may be found at https://www.hubertproject.org/hubert-material/402/.

Principles-Focused Strategizing. Principles-focused strategizing is a very useful approach when facing adaptive challenges in a complex, shared-power system characterized by many feedback effects, the involvement of many organizations, unclear goals, and unproven technologies. In such situations, top-down strategizing clearly doesn't work. Instead, bottom-up adaptive management is required; strategy is emergent based on innovation, rapid prototyping, and ongoing learning. Developmental evaluation is required because

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there is no preexisting model to be implemented with the help of formative or summative evaluations (Patton, 2011). The challenge is to invent the model of what works via a process on ongoing trial and error and built-in learning experiences.

Although there may not be goals, there at least can be principles that can embody values, provide direction, and inform choices. The selection of principles should be informed by experience and judgment and point to desired change process features, consequences, outcomes, and impacts. The principals can serve as standards against which choices and results can be evaluated (Patton, McKegg, & Wehipeihana, 2015). Principles can and should be adapted to unfolding situations as actions are taken and evaluated and learning builds. Establishing principles can be used to set the stage for use of the five-step or visual strategy mapping process or some other method.

In short, strategizing can be messy. Effective strategies typically are less messy, but they can vary greatly in their form depending on the nature of the issues to be addressed, the context of application, the tasks to be performed, and what kind or kinds of organizations are doing the implementing. An effective strategy thus can take many different forms, but ultimately, it should meet several criteria. It should be technically workable and administratively feasible, politically acceptable to key stakeholders, and results-oriented. It also must fit the organization's philosophy and core values even if the purpose is to change them. In addition, it should be ethical, moral, and legal, and it should further the creation of public value. It must also deal with the strategic issue it was supposed to address and create significant public value at reasonable cost.

All too often I have seen strategies that were technically, administratively, politically, morally, ethically, and legally impeccable but did not deal with the issues they were presumed to address, nor did they create much public value. Effective strategies thus meet a rather severe set of tests. Careful, thoughtful deliberation—and often bargaining and negotiation—among key decision makers who have adequate information and are politically astute are usually necessary before strategies can be developed that meet these tests. Some of this work typically must occur in this step; some is likely to occur in the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

next step.

Step 7: Reviewing and Adopting the Strategies and Plan Once strategies have been formulated, the planning team may need to obtain an official decision to adopt them and proceed with their implementation. If the strategies are part of a formal strategic plan, this will almost certainly be needed. This decision will help affirm the desired changes and move the organization toward reorganizing in the new pattern, where the knowledge exploration of the previous steps can be exploited.

When strategies and plans are developed for a single organization, particularly a small one, this step actually may merge with Step 6. But a separate step will likely be necessary when strategic planning is undertaken for a large organization, collaboration, or community. The SPCC will need to approve the resulting strategies or plan, but relevant policy- and decision-making bodies and other implementing groups and organizations are also likely to have to approve the strategies or plan, or at least parts of it, in order for implementation to proceed effectively.

In order to secure passage of any strategy or plan, it will be necessary to continue to pay attention to the goals, concerns, and interests of all key internal and external stakeholders. Finding or creating inducements that can be traded for support can also be useful. But there are numerous ways to defeat any proposal in formal decision- making arenas. So it is important for the plan to be sponsored and championed by actors whose knowledge of how to negotiate the intricacies of the relevant arenas can help ensure passage (Crosby & Bryson, 2005).

Step 8. Establishing an Effective Organizational Vision In this step, the organization develops a description of what it should look like once it has successfully implemented its strategies and achieved its full potential. This description is the organization's vision of success. Few organizations have such a description or vision, yet the importance of these descriptions has long been recognized by well-

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managed companies, organizational psychologists, and management theorists (Kouzes & Posner, 2017; Mulgan, 2009). Such descriptions can include the organization's mission, its values and philosophy, basic strategies, its performance criteria, some important decision rules, and the ethical standards expected of all employees.

The description, to the extent that it is widely circulated and discussed within the organization, allows organization members to know what is expected of them without constant managerial oversight. Members are free to act on their own initiative on the organization's behalf to an extent not otherwise possible. The result should be a mobilization of members' energy toward pursuing the organization's purposes and a reduced need for direct supervision.

Some might question why developing a vision of success comes at this point in the process rather than much earlier. There are two basic answers to this question. First, it does not have to come at this point for all organizations. Some organizations are able to develop a clearly articulated, agreed-upon vision of success much earlier in the process. Communities, in fact, often start with visioning exercises in order to develop enough of a consensus on purposes and values to guide issue identification and strategy formulation efforts (Walzer & Hamm, 2012). Figure 2.1 therefore indicates the many different points at which participants may find it useful to develop some sort of guiding vision. Some processes may start with a visionary statement. Others may use visions to help them figure out what the strategic issues are or to help them develop strategies. And still others may use visions to convince key decision makers to adopt strategies or plans, or to guide implementation efforts. The further along in the process a vision is produced, the more likely it is to be more fully articulated.

Second, most organizations typically will not be able to develop a detailed vision of success until they have gone through several iterations of strategic planning—if they are able to develop a vision at all. A challenging yet achievable vision embodies the tension between what an organization wants and what it can have (Scharmer, 2016; Senge, 2006). Often, several cycles of strategic planning are necessary before organizational members know what they want, what they can have, and what the difference is between the two. A vision that ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

motivates people will be challenging enough to spur action, yet not so impossible to achieve that it demotivates and demoralizes people. Most organizations, in other words, will find that their visions of success are likely to serve more as a guide for strategy implementation than strategy formulation.

Further, for most organizations, development of a vision of success is not necessary in order to produce marked improvements in performance. In my experience, most organizations can demonstrate a substantial improvement in effectiveness if they simply identify and satisfactorily resolve a few strategic issues. Most organizations simply do not address often enough what is truly important; just gathering key decision makers to deal with a few important matters in a timely way can enhance organizational performance substantially. For these reasons, the step is labeled optional in Figure 2.1.

Step 9: Developing an Effective Implementation Process Just creating a strategic plan is not enough. The changes indicated by the adopted strategies must be incorporated throughout the system for them to be brought to life and for real value to be created for the organization and its stakeholders. Thinking strategically about implementation and developing an effective implementation plan are important tasks on the road to realizing the strategies developed in Step 6.

For example, in some circumstances, direct implementation at all sites will be the wisest strategic choice, whereas in other situations, some form of staged implementation may be best (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). In still other situations in which strategy necessarily is emergent, faithfulness to principles meant to guide action, rapid prototyping and experimentation, and further investment in what works is key (Patton, 2011). In all cases, implementation plans should include ways of building capacity for sustained implementation, goal achievement, and ongoing learning and readjustment based on that learning (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). The process should also include building capacity for the next round of strategic planning.

Again, if strategies and an implementation plan have been developed

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for a single organization, particularly a small one, or if the planning is for a collaborative or community, planning aspects of this step may need to be incorporated into Step 6, strategy formulation. On the other hand, in many multiunit or intergovernmental situations, a separate step will be required to ensure that relevant groups and organizations do the action planning necessary for implementation success.

Action plans should detail the following:

Implementation roles and responsibilities of oversight bodies, organizational teams or task forces, and individuals

Expected results and specific objectives, requirements, and milestones; or alternatively, clear principles to guide the effort in situations of high complexity and significant feedback effects

Specific action steps and relevant details

Schedules

Resource requirements and sources

A communication process

Review, monitoring, and midcourse correction procedures to build in capacity for ongoing learning

Accountability procedures

It is important to build in enough sponsors, champions, and other personnel—along with enough time, money, attention, administrative and support services, and other resources—to ensure successful implementation. You must “budget the plan” wisely to ensure that implementation goes well. In collaborative or community situations, it is almost impossible to underestimate the requirements for communications, the nurturance of relationships, and attention to operational detail (Agranoff, 2012; Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2015).

It is also important to work quickly to avoid unnecessary or undesirable competition with new priorities. Whenever significant opportunities to implement strategies and achieve objectives arise, they should be taken. In other words, it is important to be opportunistic as well as deliberate. And it is important to remember

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that what actually happens in practice will always be some blend of what is intended with what emerges along the way (Ferlie & Ongaro, 2015).

In collaborative settings, successfully implemented and institutionalized strategies result in the establishment of a new regime, consisting of a “set of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area” (Krasner, 1983, p. 2; see also Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015; Morgan & Cook, 2014). Regime building is necessary to preserve gains in the face of competing demands. Unfortunately, regimes can outlive their usefulness.

Step 10: Reassessing Strategies and the Strategic Planning Process Once the implementation process has been under way for some time, it is important to review the strategies and the strategic planning process as a prelude to a new round of strategic planning. Much of the work of this phase may occur as part of the ongoing implementation process. However, if the organization has not engaged in strategic planning for a while, this will be a separate phase. Attention should be focused on successful strategies and whether they should be maintained, replaced by other strategies, or terminated for one reason or another. Unsuccessful strategies should be replaced or terminated. The strategic planning process also should be examined, its strengths and weaknesses noted, and modifications suggested to improve the next round of strategic planning.

Effectiveness in this step really does depend on effective organizational learning, which means taking a hard look at what is really happening, being open to new information, wisely assessing the situation, and committing to mindful organizing. Mindful organizing is based on five principles: really trying to understand what might count as failure, reluctance to simplify, sensitivity to operations, commitment to resilience, and deference to expertise (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015).

Learning and mindfulness of this sort also involve capacity building,

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attention to resilience and sustainability, and most important, ongoing learning. Recall that strategic learning was defined as any change in a system which, by better adapting the system to its environment, produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity to pursue its purposes. Viewing strategic planning as a kind of action research or utilization-focused evaluation can help embed learning into the entire process and make sure the kind of information, feedback, dialogue, and deliberation necessary for learning occur (Patton, 2008, 2011).

TAILORING THE PROCESS TO SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES The Strategy Change Cycle is a general approach to strategic planning and management. Like any planning and management process, strategic planning must be tailored carefully to specific situations if it is to be useful (Ferlie & Ongaro, 2015). A number of adaptations— variations on the general theme—are discussed in this section. Before proceeding, however, it is useful to clarify what kind of process the Strategy Change Cycle is and how it might be useful (I am grateful to Michael Barzelay for many ideas in this and the subsequent three paragraphs). As noted, the Strategy Change Cycle is a generic reference approach—and not the specific strategic planning process design that will be negotiated during the initial agreement step. Instead, the cycle presents the central, rather abstract case for what strategic planning is about as a kind of response to challenges. I believe the cycle is the best way of exemplifying the argument, and although the cycle includes quite a few elements and links, that detail is needed to ground the argument in a reasonable way. The detail helps clarify what is important and what requires deliberation. In short, the Strategy Change Cycle provides an idealized conceptual process, and I will make suggestions about how to use it as a reference point in particular circumstances.

The most important thing about the cycle is that it sets up a way of thinking about the logic and requirements of a successful strategy change process. In general, the requirements typically flow from the end of the process toward the beginning and especially the initial

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agreement—meaning that what is required at the end should affect what you do at the beginning. For example, successful strategy implementation requires workable strategies that will be supported by key internal and external stakeholders; this need (among other requirements) should have an influence on the process of negotiating the initial agreement and its content.

More generally, the Strategy Change Cycle's causal logic is as follows: (1) desired outcomes (including creating public value) (2) can be produced or facilitated by actions (for example, issue identification, strategy formulation, and implementation activities), (3) whose production or facilitation in turn is guided by process design features (for example, the design of forums for deliberation, choices regarding stakeholder engagement, guidelines and limits on analysis, connection to decision points, and specific planning steps), (4) which are tailored to process context features (relevant aspects of the internal and external environment). This means that upstream process design—and particularly that which is embodied in the initial agreement to proceed —should be tailored to the context and informed by downstream requirements for success, including those linked directly to achieving desired outcomes.

Thus, there are implications in the Strategy Change Cycle about the basic logic of how to start, what to do next, and why. The logic is always there; it doesn't get weaker as the nature of the situation changes. Situations create challenges that require a response—and responses vary because situations vary. The Strategy Change Cycle as a reference approach can help leaders, managers, and planners think about what might be done in any particular situation to gain the advantages of the cycle's logic. Said differently, there are a variety of ways and degrees of meeting the requirements for a successful strategy change process, but they are still requirements, and the Strategy Change Cycle can be used to help think about what they are and how to meet them.

The Strategy Change Cycle is, therefore, not a recipe, cookbook, computer program, algorithm, or type of auto repair manual. It is more like a guide to collaboratively and deliberatively design a vehicle and the journey you will take using the vehicle, including deciding ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

(ultimately, if not initially) exactly where you want to go. The Strategy Change Cycle is also not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Instead, it is a referent approach (or conceptual artifact as presented in Figure 2.1) that will help you keep in mind the logic of strategic planning so that you can adapt and make use of that logic in specific situations as circumstances demand and warrant. The Strategy Change Cycle as an abstract approach helps you work deliberatively with other people to make change; what the approach means in practice will be worked out via participation and deliberation with others over the course of the process.

Specifically, the Strategy Change Cycle will help remind you of the importance of:

Having a process sponsor(s) and a process champion(s)

Carefully designing and using a series of settings for deliberation— formal and informal forums, arenas, and courts

Emphasizing the development of the initial agreement(s)

Intensely attending to stakeholders via careful analysis and effective engagement

Gaining clarity about mission and mandates and knowing the difference between the two

Understanding the organization's internal and external environments

Focusing on the identification and clarification of strategic issues and knowing there is an array of available approaches for doing so

Seeing strategies as a response to strategic issues and knowing there are many approaches to formulating strategies, including incorporating useful aspects of existing or emerging strategies

Attending to the requirements for successful strategy implementation and evaluation

Building capacity for ongoing implementation, learning, and strategic change

Periodically reassessing strategies and the strategic planning ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

process as a prelude to the next round of strategic planning

Remaining flexible throughout the process while still paying attention to all necessary requirements that must be met along the way and the logic that links them

Sequencing the Steps Although the steps (or occasions for deliberation and decision) are laid out in a linear sequence, it must be emphasized that the Strategy Change Cycle, as its name suggests, is iterative in practice. Participants typically rethink what they have done several times before they reach final decisions. Moreover, the process does not always begin at the beginning. Organizations typically find themselves confronted with a new mandate (Step 2), a pressing strategic issue (Step 5), a failing strategy (Step 6 or 9), or the need to reassess what they have been doing (Step 10), and that leads them to engage in strategic planning. Once engaged, the organization is likely to go back and begin at the beginning, particularly with a reexamination of its mission. (Indeed, in my experience, it does not matter where you start—you always end up back at the mission.)

In addition, implementation usually begins before all of the planning is complete. As soon as useful actions are identified, they are taken as long as they do not jeopardize future actions that might prove valuable. In other words, in a linear, sequential process, the first eight steps of the process would be followed by implementing the planned actions and evaluating the results. However, implementation typically does not, and should not, wait until the eight steps have been completed. For example, if the organization's mission needs to be redrafted, then it should be. If the SWOC/T analysis turns up weaknesses or threats that need to be addressed immediately, they should be. If aspects of a desirable strategy can be implemented without awaiting further developments, they should be. And so on.

As noted earlier, strategic thinking and acting and learning are important, and all of the thinking does not have to occur before any actions are taken. For one thing, often action is necessary so that real learning can occur. Or as Mintzberg et al. (2009, p. 76) note, “Effective

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strategy making connects acting to thinking which in turn connects implementation to formulation. We think in order to act, to be sure, but we also act in order to think. We try things, and the ones that work gradually converge into patterns that become strategies.” Strategic planning's iterative, flexible, action-oriented nature is precisely what often makes it so attractive to public and nonprofit leaders and managers.

Making Use of Vision, Goals, and Issues In the discussion of Step 8, I noted that different organizations and communities may wish to start their process with a vision statement. Such a statement may foster a consensus and provide important inspiration and guidance for the rest of the process, even though it is unlikely to be as detailed as a statement developed later in the process. As indicated in Figure 2.1, there are other points at which it might be possible to develop a vision statement (or statements). Vision thus may be used to prompt the identification of strategic issues, guide the search for and development of strategies, inspire the adoption of strategic plans, or guide implementation efforts. The decision to develop a vision statement should hinge on whether one is needed to provide direction to subsequent efforts; whether people will be able to develop a vision that is meaningful enough, detailed enough, and broadly supported; and whether there will be enough energy left after the visioning effort to push ahead.

Similarly, as indicated in Figure 2.1, it is possible to develop goals in many different places in the process (Borins, 2014; Mulgan, 2009). Some strategic planning processes will begin with the goals of new boards of directors, elected policy bodies, chief executive officers, judges, or other top-level decision makers. These goals embody a reform agenda for the organization (or network, or community). Other strategic planning processes may start with goals that are part of mandates. For example, legislation often requires implementing agencies to develop plans that include results and outcome measures that will show how the intent of the legislation is to be achieved. A starting goal for these agencies, therefore, is to identify results and outcomes they want to be measured against that also are in accord

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with legislative intent. The goal thus helps these agencies identify an important strategic issue—namely, what the results and outcomes should be. Subsequent strategic planning efforts are then likely to start with the desired outcomes the organization thinks are important.

Still other strategic planning processes will articulate goals to guide strategy formulation in response to specific issues or to guide implementation of specific strategies. Goals developed at these later stages of the process are likely to be more detailed and specific than those developed earlier in the process. Goals may be developed any time they would be useful to guide subsequent efforts in the process and when they will have sufficient support among key parties to produce desired action.

In my experience, however, strategic planning processes often start neither with vision nor with goals. In part, this is because strategic planning rarely starts with Step 1. Instead, people sense something is not right about the current situation—they face strategic issues of one sort or another or they are pursuing a strategy that is failing or about to fail—and they want to know what to do (Ackermann & Eden, 2011; Borins, 2014). One of the crucial features of issue-driven planning (and political decision making in general) is that you do not have to agree on goals to agree on next steps (Innes & Booher, 2010; Patton, 2011). You simply need to agree on a strategy that will address the issue and further the interests of the organization (or collaborative or community) and its key stakeholders. Goals are likely to be developed once viable strategies have been developed to address the issues. The goals typically will be strategy-specific.

Articulating goals or describing a vision may help provide a better feeling for where a strategy or interconnected set of strategies should lead (Lusk & Birks, 2014; Mulgan, 2009). Goals and vision are thus more likely to come toward the end of the process than the beginning. There are clear exceptions—and process designers should think carefully about why, when, and how—if at all—to bring goals and vision into the process.

Applying the Process across Organizational Subunits, Levels, and Functions on an Ongoing Basis ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Strategic thinking, acting, and learning depend on getting key people together; getting them to focus wisely, creatively, and deliberatively on what is really important; and getting them to do something about it. At its most basic, the technology of strategic planning thus involves deliberations, decisions, and actions. The steps in the Strategy Change Cycle help make the process reasonably orderly to increase the likelihood that what is important is actually recognized and addressed and to allow more people to participate in the process. When the process is applied to an organization as a whole on an ongoing basis (rather than as a one-shot deal), or at least to significant parts of it, usually it is necessary to construct a strategic management system (see Exhibit 1.1). The system allows the various parts of the process to be integrated in appropriate ways and engages the organization in strategic management, not just strategic planning. In the best circumstances, the system will include the actors and knowledge necessary to act wisely, foster systems thinking, and prompt quick and effective action, given that inclusion, systems thinking, and speed are increasingly required of public and nonprofit organizations (e.g., Behn, 2008; Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015; Mulgan, 2009).

The process might be applied across subunits, levels, and functions in an organization as outlined in Figure 2.2. The application is based on an integrated units of management (or layered or stacked units of management) system used by many corporations. The system's first cycle consists of “bottom-up” development of strategic plans within a framework established at the top, followed by reviews and reconciliation at each succeeding level. In the second cycle, operating plans are developed to implement the strategic plans. Depending on the situation, decisions at the top of the organizational hierarchy may or may not require policy board approval (which is why the line depicting the process flow diverges at the top). The system may be supported by a set of performance indicators and strategies. (See Chapter 10 for more detail.)

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Figure 2.2. Strategic Planning System for Integrated Units of Management.

Strategic planning systems for public and nonprofit organizations usually are not as formalized and integrated as the one outlined in Figure 2.2 (though in some circumstances, that may be changing). More typical is a strategic issues management system, which attempts to manage specific strategic issues without seeking integration of the resultant strategies across all subunits, levels, and functions (Mulgan, 2009). Tight integration is not necessary because most issues do not affect all parts of the organization, are subject to different politics, and ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

are on their own time frame.

Baltimore, Maryland; Minneapolis, Minnesota; the State of Virginia; and a number of other cities and states have institutionalized strategic issues management through use of a CitiStat or PerformanceStat system (Behn, 2008). In these systems, typically a central analysis staff uses data (often geographically coded) to spot trends, events, and issues that need to be addressed by line departments. The heads of the relevant units meet regularly with the mayor and his or her key advisers, including the heads of finance, human resources, and information technology, to examine the data and address the issues face to face. Actions and follow-up procedures are agreed upon on the spot. Notable successes have occurred that produced better outcomes, saved money, and enhanced teamwork and competence, or all three.

Other common public and nonprofit strategic planning systems include contract models, portfolio management approaches, collaboration models, goal or benchmark models, and hybrid models combining two or more of the above approaches. These will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 10.

If the organization is fairly large, then specific linkages will be necessary in order to join the process to different functions and levels in the organization so that it can proceed in a reasonably orderly and integrated manner. One effective way to achieve such a linkage is to appoint the heads of all major units to the strategic planning team. All unit heads can then be sure that their units' information and interests are represented in strategy formulation and can oversee implementation in their units.

Indeed, key decision makers might wish to form themselves into a permanent strategic planning committee or cabinet. I certainly would recommend this approach, if it appears workable for the organization, as it emphasizes the role of line managers as strategic planners and the role of strategic planners as facilitators of decision making by the line managers. Pragmatic and effective strategies and plans are likely to result. Temporary task forces, strategic planning committees, or a cabinet can work; but whatever the arrangement, there is no substitute for the direct involvement of key decision makers in the process

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(Borins, 2014; Mulgan, 2009).

Applying the Process to Functions That Cross Organizational Boundaries, Collaborations, and Communities When applied to a function or collaboration that crosses organizational boundaries, or to a community, the process probably will need to be sponsored by a committee or task force of key decision makers, opinion leaders, “influentials,” or “notables” representing important stakeholder groups. Additional working groups or task forces probably will need to be organized at various times to deal with specific strategic issues or to oversee the implementation of specific strategies. Special efforts will be needed to engage traditionally underrepresented groups (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015). Because so many more people and groups will need to be involved, and because implementation will have to rely more on consent than authority, the process is likely to be much more time-consuming and iterative than strategic planning applied to an organization. On the other hand, more time spent on exploring issues and reaching agreement may be made up later through speedy implementation (Deyle & Weidenman, 2014; Innes & Booher, 2010). Strategic planning in an organization typically involves a mixture of lateral collaboration and vertical hierarchy. In interorganizational collaborations, lateral collaborative processes overshadow hierarchy, yet attention to the hierarchical structure and power differences that exist within the collaboration and in its participating organizations will be vital in developing and implementing a strategic plan (Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2015).

In addition, when a community is involved, special efforts will be necessary to make sure that important connections are made, and incompatibilities resolved, between strategic plans and the community's comprehensive plan and the various devices used to implement it, such as the government's capital improvements program, subdivision controls, zoning ordinance, and official map. The fact that these connections should be made, however, should not unduly hamper the process. Strategic planning and comprehensive planning can be complementary, and efforts should be made to ensure

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that they are if the community's best interests and those of its various stakeholders are to be advanced (Albrechts, Balducci, & Hillier, 2016; Burby, 2003).

Roles for Planners, Decision Makers, Implementers, and Citizens Planners can play many different roles in a strategic planning process. In many cases, the planners are not people with the job title of planner but are in fact policymakers or line managers (Mintzberg et al., 2009). The people with the title of planner often act primarily as facilitators of decision making by policymakers or line managers, as technical experts in substantive areas, or both. In other cases, planners operate in a variety of different roles. Sometimes the planner is an “expert on experts” who eases different people with different expertise in and out of the process for different purposes at different times. At still other times, they are finders of strategy, who do their job by interpreting existing actions and recognizing important patterns in the organization and its environment; analysts of existing or potential strategies; catalysts for promoting strategic thought and action; or, finally, strategists themselves (Mintzberg, 1994, pp. 361–396).

Because the most important thing about strategic planning is the development of strategic thought, action, and learning, it may not matter much which person does what. However, it does seem that the strategic planning most likely to be implemented is that done by policymakers, line managers, or both. (Line managers in government are not usually charged with making important political trade-offs— politicians are. Therefore, an effective government strategic planning process probably needs participation by both line managers and policymakers.)

Public organizations involved in strategic planning—including as part of multiorganizational collaborative efforts—often have little citizen participation in the planning process other than that of elected or appointed policy board members though clearly there are exceptions (e.g., Albrechts et al. 2016; Epstein, Coates, Wray, & Swain, 2005). One reason may be that the organization may already possess the necessary knowledge and expertise in-house; therefore, citizen ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

involvement may be redundant and excessively time-consuming. In addition, insiders typically are the chief implementers of strategies; thus, their ownership of the process and resultant decisions may be what is most crucial. Further, citizen participation may not be necessary to legitimize the process because an elected or appointed policy board already is directly involved in keeping with the idea that the United States is a representative, rather than direct, democracy. The absence of participation by ordinary outsiders would parallel much of corporate planning practice.

However, it is easy to be wrong about how much one knows, or needs to know, and how much perceived legitimacy the process needs. Interviews, focus groups, and surveys of outsiders, including citizens, and external sounding boards of various sorts, often are worth their weight in gold when they open insiders' eyes to information they have missed, add legitimacy to the effort, and keep them from reaching the wrong conclusions or making the wrong decisions. So a word of caution is in order: Remember, as the Greeks believed, that nemesis always walks in the footsteps of hubris!

Program-focused strategic planning—including multiorganizational collaborative efforts—appears to be much more likely to involve citizens, particularly in their capacity as “customers” or “coproducers.” Citizen involvement in program planning thus is roughly analogous to extensive consumer involvement in private sector marketing research and development projects. For example, transportation planning typically involves a great deal of citizen participation. Citizens may provide information concerning travel needs and desires, reactions to various transportation system design alternatives, and advice on ways to resolve conflicts that arise during the process. Planning for individual parks also typically involves substantial citizen participation. Unfortunately, because the use of transportation systems or parks by citizens is generally broad-based, users and citizens at large are often equated. This is hardly ever justified, however, as it masks the great variety in stakeholder concerns about and contributions to the process. A careful stakeholder analysis can help keep the various citizen interests and contributions analytically separate.

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Finally, planning on behalf of a community almost always involves substantial citizen participation. Unfortunately, community-focused strategic plans often treat all citizens alike and assume that all citizens are interested in the community as a whole—two assumptions at odds with most studies of political participation (e.g., Jacobs, Cook, & Delli Carpini, 2009). Application of the stakeholder concept to community strategic planning would help avoid some of these errors. Beyond that, broad citizen involvement usually results in better plans and implementation processes (e.g., Bryson & Schively Slotterback, 2016; Burby, 2003).

SUMMARY This chapter has outlined a process called the Strategy Change Cycle for promoting strategic thinking, acting, and learning in governments, public agencies, nonprofit organizations, networks, communities, or other entities. Although the process is presented in a fairly linear, sequential fashion for pedagogical reasons, it proceeds iteratively as groups continuously rethink connections among the various elements of the process, take action, and learn on their way to formulating effective strategies. In addition, the process often does not start with Step 1 but instead starts elsewhere and then cycles back to Step 1. The steps also are not steps precisely but occasions for deliberation, decisions, and actions as part of a continuous flow of strategic thinking, acting, and learning; knowledge exploration and exploitation; and strategy formulation and implementation. Mintzberg et al. (2009, p. 204) assert that “all real strategic behavior has to combine deliberate control with emergent learning.” The Strategy Change Cycle is designed to promote just this kind of strategic behavior.

Figure 2.3 shows how the Strategy Change Cycle is designed to help create the desired outcomes noted in Figure 1.4 by helping orchestrate the major categories of action (or functions) needed to accomplish the outcomes. Figure 2.3 also helps demonstrate graphically the likely iterative nature of the process as advocates work to organize participation, create ideas of strategic significance, build a winning

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coalition, implement the ideas so that the organization meets its mandates, fulfill the organization's mission, create real public value, and build the knowledge and competence for ongoing implementation and the next round of strategic planning.

Figure 2.3. Strategic Planning and Management Outcomes, Actions, Design Features, and Context.

At first glance, Figures 2.1 and 2.3 may make the Strategy Change Cycle seem overwhelming. But let me assure you that you have been doing strategic planning—at least on an individual level—most of your life, so you already know much of what you need to know and understand. For example, for much of your life, you have engaged in thinking, acting, and learning about:

Your situation, purpose, and things you must do

Your strengths and competencies, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges or threats

The big issues you face and what might be done about them

What strategies have worked for you and which have not

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What success might mean for you

My purpose in this book is to scale that kind of thinking up to the group, organizational, collaborative, and community level to help you understand more about what works and why and how to make things work better for you, your colleagues, and the people you serve. I want to add to your understanding by bringing to bear a common language and some of what social science has to offer, along with what I take from my own practical experience. With this approach, the tension between science and practice lessens; they move closer together (Mulgan, 2009; Romme, 2003). The book and the Strategy Change Cycle are meant to help people deliberate with others using a common language and orienting framework to guide a strategic planning and strategy change journey.

As previously mentioned, my colleague Farnum Alston and I have prepared a strategic planning workbook designed to help individuals, teams, groups, and organizations work through the process and, in particular, work on developing a strategic plan (Bryson & Alston, 2011). The workbook should not be used without this book, however, because the process typically requires careful tailoring to specific circumstances. Owing to space limitations, the workbook contains little advice on how to adapt the process to different situations, whereas this book offers a great deal of the advice and guidance necessary to design and manage a successful process. In addition, my colleague Sharon Anderson and I, along with Farnum, have developed a workbook to help organizations sustain implementation of their strategies (Bryson, Anderson, & Alston, 2011). And my colleagues Fran Ackermann and Colin Eden and I have developed a new workbook meant to facilitate visual strategy mapping, the most powerful single technique I know of for developing clarity about mission, goals, strategies, and actions (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2014). An Internet-based instructional guide may be found at https://www.hubertproject.org/hubert-material/402/.

In Chapter 3, I will discuss how to negotiate an initial agreement among key internal (and perhaps external) decision makers or opinion leaders on the purpose and process of a strategic planning effort. The agreement will shape the nature and direction of deliberations, ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

decisions, and actions designed to deal with what is truly important to the organization or community.

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PART TWO KEY STEPS IN THINKING, ACTING, AND LEARNING STRATEGICALLY The 10-step strategic planning process is presented in detail in Part Two. It is a reasonably orderly, deliberative, and participative approach to facilitating strategic thought, action, and learning by key decision makers. (Note that in Chapter 2, I will say that the steps are not really steps but instead are more like occasions for dialogue and deliberation around an agenda summarized by the “step's” name.)

Chapter 3 covers the initial agreement phase, the plan for planning. Chapter 4 focuses on clarifying organization mandates and mission. Chapter 5 describes how to assess an organization's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and challenges it faces. Chapter 6 discusses strategic issues—what they are, how they can be identified, and how to critique them. Chapter 7 is devoted to formulating and adopting effective strategies and plans.

The final three chapters in Part Two move from planning to management. Chapter 8 covers development of the organization's vision of success, a description of what the organization should look like as it fulfills its mission, meets its mandates, and achieves its full potential for creating public value. Chapter 9 focuses on implementing strategies and plans and Chapter 10 on reassessing them.

An organization that completes this Strategy Change Cycle should be well on its way toward improving and maintaining its effectiveness, pursuing its mission, meeting its mandates, creating genuine public value, and building its capacity for continuing to do so in the future. It should be clearly focused on satisfying key stakeholders in ways that are politically acceptable, technically and administratively workable, and legally and ethically defensible.

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CHAPTER THREE Initiating and Agreeing on a Strategic Planning Process

The beginning is the most important part of the work. —Plato, The Republic

The purpose of the first step in the Strategy Change Cycle is to develop an initial agreement about the overall strategic planning effort and main planning steps among key internal decision makers or opinion leaders (and, if their support is necessary for the success of the effort, key external leaders as well). This agreement represents a plan for planning—or specific process design—intended to point the way toward the ultimate end of creating significant and enduring public value. As Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon (1996, p. 111) says, “Everyone designs who devises a course of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”

The support and commitment of key decision makers are vital if strategic planning and change in an organization are to succeed. They also supply information vital to the planning effort: who should be involved, when key decision points will occur, key requirements for a successful process, and what arguments are likely to be persuasive at various points in the process. And they can provide critical resources: legitimacy, staff assignments, a budget, and meeting space.

Every strategic planning effort is in effect a drama that must have the correct setting; themes; plots and subplots; actors; scenes; beginning, middle, and ending; and interpretation (Bryant, 2015). Only key decision makers will have access to enough information and resources to allow for the effective development and direction of such a drama. But unlike a normal play, the end is not known to anyone in advance. The end may well be as much “emergent” as it is intentional. Indeed, strategic planning and management at their best involve “real learning [that] takes place at the interface of thought and action, as actors reflect on what they have done; in other words, strategic learning must ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

combine reflection with result….[They] involve crafting the subtle relationships between thought and action, control and learning, stability and change” (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009, pp. 205–217).

PLANNING FOCUS AND DESIRED IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES The initial agreement will outline the important design features of the planning process. Ideally, the step will produce agreement on several issues:

1. The purpose(s) and worth of the strategic planning effort

2. Project organization, including who the sponsors and champions are

3. The organizations, units, groups, or persons who should be engaged and in what ways

4. The specific steps to be followed, how information and communication technologies and social media will be used, and the way ongoing feedback and learning will occur

5. The form and timing of reports

6. Resource commitments to begin the effort

7. Key requirements for a successful effort

Finally, a strategic planning coordinating committee and a strategic planning team probably should be formed and given a charge statement or charter.

As a general rule, the strategic planning effort should focus on that part of the organization (or function, program, collaboration, or community) controlled, overseen, or strongly influenced by the key decision makers interested in engaging in strategic planning. In other words, only under unusual circumstances would it make sense to develop strategic plans for organizations or parts of organizations over which the key decision makers involved in the effort have no control or for which they have no responsibility. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

The exception to this rule is externally initiated reform programs designed to demonstrate how an organization might conduct itself if it took the reformers' aims seriously. For example, candidates running for elective office often include in their campaign platforms proposed new strategies for the governments they wish to lead. Editorial and opinion pages of newspapers, public affairs books and magazines, and think tank reports also often include what are in effect reformers' strategic plans for public or nonprofit organizations.

The agreement also should make clear what the “givens” are at the beginning of the process. In other words, what is it about the organization's history, arrangements, and practices that will be off- limits, at least for the time being, and what is open for revision? On the one hand, if everything is a candidate for far-reaching change, potential participants may be scared off and resistance to change within the organization may harden. On the other hand, if everything is sacred, then there is no reason for strategic planning. There should be enough tension to prompt change and make it worth the effort but not so much that it paralyzes potential participants with fear and anxiety.

The process of reaching an initial agreement is straightforward in concept but often rather circuitous in practice. It usually proceeds through the following stages:

1. Advocating for a strategic planning process

2. Developing an understanding among key actors about what it can mean in practice

3. Thinking through in additional detail some of its more important implications in terms of necessary commitments and other requirements for success

4. Developing a commitment to strategic planning

5. Reaching an actual agreement

The more numerous the decision makers who must be involved and the less they know about (or the worse their experience with) strategic planning, the more time-consuming the process will be and the more indirect the route to agreement. Indeed, typically a series of ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

agreements must be reached before the strategic planning process can begin in earnest.

DESIRED LONGER-TERM OUTCOMES A number of significant longer-term outcomes flow from a good initial agreement. They involve laying the groundwork for what Innes and Booher (2010, pp. 36–39) call “system adaptations”—changes that help the organization or collaboration create a better fit with its environment, including the possibility of changing the environments in important ways. The first is simply that the purpose and worth of the strategic planning effort are likely to be widely recognized by the affected parties, leading to broad sponsorship and legitimacy. Broad sponsorship dispels any suspicion that the effort is a power play by a small group. And it ensures that the results of the efforts are likely to be seen as objective (that is, not manipulated to serve narrow partisan interests). Broad sponsorship also is a source of psychological safety that can help people address what otherwise might be highly threatening, anxiety- or guilt-producing prospects for change (Heifetz, Linsky, & Grashow, 2009).

Legitimacy justifies the occasions, content, and timing of the discussions and ensuing actions in the next stages of the planning process. Such discussions—particularly when they involve key decision makers across functions, levels, and organizational boundaries of various sorts—are unlikely to occur without prompting. And they are unlikely to be prompted without authorization.

Authorization of such discussions is an enormous resource to the planners who organize them because they gain considerable control over the forums in which they occur, the agenda, the information provided, and the framework for discussion. And because the deliberations are typically cross-functional rather than under the control of any unit or department, planners gain leverage as the facilitators of these deliberations. Control of this sort is not manipulative in a partisan sense; instead, it ensures that the organization is looked at and discussed as a whole rather than its separate parts only (Crosby & Bryson, 2005).

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A well-articulated initial agreement also provides a clear definition of the network to be involved and the process by which it is to be maintained. A good network management process will provide involved or affected stakeholders with a sense of procedural justice— that is, with the sense that both the procedures used to reach decisions and the decisions themselves are fair (Page, Stone, Bryson, & Crosby, 2015).

For example, adopting a doctrine of no surprises can be a good idea when developing a network and moving toward major decisions. Major stakeholders are at least kept informed of progress, events, and impending decisions and are perhaps even consulted or involved in decision making. Nothing is dropped on them “out of the blue.” This appears to be particularly necessary when the need for cooperation and the risks of failure are high (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). The doctrine of no surprises may be best in other situations as well—even when there seem to be good reasons for keeping certain stakeholders in the dark. In an era when a basic characteristic of information seems to be that it leaks, full and prompt disclosure may be advisable. As Benjamin Franklin used to say, “Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” Or consider Elvis Presley's view: “The truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.”

A good initial agreement also includes an outline of the general sequence of steps in the strategic planning effort, the way information and communication technologies and social media will be used to facilitate the process, and the way in which ongoing feedback and learning will be incorporated. Ongoing feedback and learning are indispensable means of keeping the process on track in pursuit of desired purposes. As management guru Ken Blanchard famously said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”

The sequence should contribute to stakeholders' sense that the process is procedurally rational. This means that the process steps cohere and relate to prior and future steps. The work of each step is reasonably thorough without being too hurried and, importantly, allows for cognitive and emotional commitment (Ackermann & Eden, 2011; Page et al., 2015). As a result, any decisions made are seen to be the outcome of appropriate deliberation (Page et al., 2015). To be ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

effective, the sequence of steps must ensure that the process is tied to key decision-making points in arenas such as budget decisions, elections, and the rhythm of the legislative cycle. Time in organizations is partly chronological, but key junctures also matter (Albert, 2013). And the most important junctions are decision points.

To return to our drama metaphor, a good initial agreement names the actors and their roles, describes the general character of the story and themes to be followed, spells out as much of the plot as is possible to know in advance, specifies the way the drama will be broken into acts and scenes, states how interactions among the actors will be designed and governed, designates the stage on which it will be played, and clarifies who the audience is. Thus, the initial agreement step is important because what follows depends significantly on the specifics of the beginning. The opening epigraph captures the fatefulness embodied in this early work, particularly in systems prone to unpredictable or at least partly chaotic behavior (Kingdon, 2010; Patton, McKegg, & Wehipeihana, 2015).

Moreover, as noted earlier, the agreement should specify exactly what is to be taken as given—at least at the start. For example, an organization's existing legal commitments, mandates, personnel complements, organizational designs, mission statements, resource allocations, job descriptions, or crucial cultural aspects may need to be taken as given in order to gain agreement. If what is off-limits for the exercise is unclear from the start, several key decision makers are unlikely to participate. With too much up for grabs, the process will be too threatening or dangerous, result in unconstructive or downright damaging conflict, or produce a strategic plan that is useless because it lacks adequate support. On the other hand, the more that must be taken as given, the less useful strategic planning is likely to be (Scharmer, 2016). It is important, therefore, to find the right tension between given-ness and possibility.

A good agreement also provides mechanisms, such as a strategic planning task force or coordinating committee, for deliberation, buffering, consultation, negotiation, or problem solving among units, groups, or people involved in or affected by the effort. Without these mechanisms, conflicts are likely to stymie or even destroy the effort. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

These mechanisms also will allow errors to be detected and corrected throughout the process. A strategic planning task force or coordinating committee can make needed midcourse corrections. A task force also will be a valuable sounding board for ideas. An important function of such a group will be to keep attention focused on strategic concerns while referring operational matters to appropriate groups and individuals.

A good initial agreement also guarantees necessary resources. Money typically is not the most needed resource for strategic planning; the time and attention of key decision makers are more important. Staff time will also be needed to gather information and provide logistical and clerical support (probably one part-time staff person in a small organization, several people in a larger organization).

A good agreement should provide useful preparation for any major changes that may be forthcoming. For example, if initiators envision pursuing a big win of some sort—ultimately, if not initially—rather than a series of small wins, the groundwork will probably need to be laid in this phase. A big win may mean changing the conceptual frame underpinning current strategy, dramatically changing goals or guiding visions, changing basic technologies, altering dominant coalitions, or some other fundamental change. Needed groundwork may involve having people other than the “usual suspects” on the planning committee or planning team; highlighting or separating off the planning effort in such a way that its power and influence are increased; gaining authorization for a range of background studies, such as benchmarking analyses, reengineering studies, or system analyses; arranging for visits to, and interviews at, innovative organizations; and so forth. Such groundwork can lead to undesirable fear and rigidity among stakeholders, so how it is undertaken must be thought through carefully.

Finally, a good initial agreement signifies the political support of key decision makers or opinion leaders at several levels in the organization, and it helps maintain that support at different points in the process. For strategic planning to work, a coalition must develop that is large enough and strong enough to formulate and implement strategies that deal effectively with key strategic issues. Such coalitions ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

typically do not develop quickly (particularly in interorganizational or community planning efforts; see Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015). Instead, they coalesce around the important strategic ideas that emerge from the sequence of deliberations, consultations, mutual education, and reconceptualization that are at the heart of any strategic planning effort (Jenkins-Smith, Nohrstedt, Weible, & Sabatier, 2014).

GETTING CLEAR ABOUT THE PURPOSE One of the most important principles of leadership and management in general, and of strategic planning in particular, is to let purpose be your guide. But what should your purpose be? An important technique for discovering the answer to this question is purpose mapping. Purpose maps are statement-and-arrow diagrams that indicate what actions might lead to (result in, cause, or produce) what outcomes. In other words, they are abbreviated versions of the strategy maps discussed in Chapter 2. The technique is adapted from Ackermann and Eden (2011). Guidelines for using the technique are found in Exhibit 3.1.

Exhibit 3.1. Purpose Mapping Technique Guidelines. Purpose mapping is a very useful technique for helping groups figure out what they are really trying to accomplish—in other words, what the mission, goals, purposes, aspirations, or overarching reasons for doing something are.

Purpose maps are causal maps consisting of statements phrased as actions beginning with a verb (get, buy, create, do, provide, etc.) linked by arrows in which the arrow goes from a cause to its likely effect. An arrow from A → B indicates that if you do A, the result might be B. The map thus shows the connections between actions and outcomes, means and ends, or influences and results.

Purpose maps will typically have 10 to 25 statements linked by

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arrows. The maps typically show a network of statements because the same statement may have more than one arrow leading into or out of it. The real or overarching purposes are likely to be found near the ends of the chains of arrows. The group using the technique will have to use dialogue and deliberation to decide what the most important purposes are.

Supplies:

Flip chart pad

Flip chart marker for each participant

Sharpened pencil with an eraser for each group member (or a mechanical pencil with an eraser)

Sticky notes that are from 2.5″ × 2.5″ to 3″ × 5″ in size

Colored stick-on dots

A room big enough to include everyone you'd like involved

A wall space large enough to accommodate an uninterrupted mapping surface consisting of two rows of flip chart sheets two to three sheets wide

Masking tape

Participants:

Assemble the appropriate stakeholders into groups of five to seven.

If a large organization is involved, participants should come from different departments and/or levels to enhance a clear understanding of relevant perspectives.

Consider involving external stakeholders as well.

Process:

Before the session, consider having participants watch the purpose mapping instructional video found on the Hubert Project website, www.hubertproject.com.

Before the session, create a purpose mapping surface on a wall

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that consists of two rows of flip chart sheets two or three flip chart sheets wide.

Gather the group and give them general instructions for the process.

Give each person a pad of sticky notes, a flip chart marker, and a pencil.

Ask participants to brainstorm what they think the initiative's purposes/goals/aspirations/desired outcomes might be. For example, in the initial agreement phase of a strategic planning process, ask participants what the possible purposes of the process might be.

Engage the group in deciding how the various purposes are causally connected to one another. The facilitator can ask the group to help him or her create the resulting purpose network, or else the group can make the connections. Draw the links in with a pencil.

To work down a chain of arrows, keep asking: “How would I do that?” or “What would it take to do that?” The arrows should lead from how you would do something to “what” you want to accomplish.

To work up a chain of arrows, keep asking: “What would happen if I did that?” or “What would the consequences be if I did that?” The arrows should go from “what” you might do to the consequences of doing it.

Have the group explore the network of statements to determine what the real purpose(s) of the initiative is (are). The conversation often can be advanced by having participants as individuals, not as a group, place colored stick-on dots on the three to five statements they think capture the most important purposes of the initiative. Sometimes it makes sense to first remove statements that are not relevant or geared toward the group's discussion.

Finalize the map by drawing over the pencil arrows with a flip chart marker.

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Take a picture of the final map and share it with the group.

The facilitator or a volunteer from the group should then transfer the finalized map into an electronic version that can be shared with others.

An example of a purpose map is presented in Figure 3.1, which shows the purpose map for a potential strategic planning effort aimed at addressing the challenges posed by the wave of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa into Europe and, in particular, into the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands. The map draws on Geuijen's (2016) study of the Utrecht response and is featured in an online instructional video about purpose mapping, which can be found at www.hubertproject.com.

Figure 3.1. Possible Purposes to Be Served by the City of Utrecht in Addressing the Challenges of Housing and Integrating Asylum Seekers.

Strategic planning in the Utrecht case is prompted by the need to manage conflicts among competing public values and political interests with the major logistical complications of accommodating

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large numbers of mostly non-Dutch-speaking immigrants. The overarching purpose of the strategic planning effort is the statement at the top of the map: “Establish better security and well-being.” This combines several different streams of cause–effect relations. One stream on the right side of the map involves the need to “Strengthen crime prevention,” which is a concern of many native Dutch people and of the asylum seekers themselves. Another stream that starts on the right side just below the crime prevention stream is “Improve daily life at Asylum Seeker Centers (ASCs).” ASCs are often crowded and located at a distance from population centers. Conditions often border on inhumane and hardly help asylum seekers integrate into Dutch society. A third stream on the left side of the diagram aims to “Integrate asylum seekers with the local Dutch environment.” And a fourth stream is in the middle and involves efforts to “Stimulate economy.” This would be beneficial in that it would provide jobs for asylum seekers and reduce opposition to asylum seekers stemming from the belief they would take away jobs from native Dutch people. In the lower right-hand corner in a box is a premise guiding the planners' work: “Make asylum seekers' lives better than ‘sober but humane,’” in which “sober but humane” is a statement the Dutch parliament made about their hopes for ASCs.

Purpose mapping is particularly useful for ensuring espoused purposes actually are the ends to be served and not just the means to some unarticulated (and perhaps not great) end. In my experience, the mistaking of means for ends occurs quite often. The purpose mapping technique therefore can and should be used when it is important to clarify purposes to be served.

DEVELOPING AN INITIAL AGREEMENT So far we have covered the purpose and desired short- and longer- term outcomes of this first step in the strategic planning. Now we can go into greater depth on specific aspects of the process of developing an initial agreement.

Whose Process Is It, and Who Should Be Involved?

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Important process design considerations include deciding who owns the process and who should be involved. Obviously, some individual or group must initiate and champion the process and make this initial decision—knowing the decision may change later. If the strategic planning process is going to affect the entire organization, then the organization's key decision makers (and perhaps representatives of some of the external stakeholders) should be involved.

Indeed, many strategic planning processes take a multitiered approach to involvement. For example, in a reasonably large nonprofit membership organization, the first tier might consist of the executive director and board. The second tier would be the strategic planning team and perhaps have some board representation. The third tier would consist of the board and staff as a whole entity that engages in a strategic planning retreat. And the fourth tier would include task forces of organizational insiders and outsiders to look at different strategic issue areas. Finally, the organization's membership would be informed of the process and asked for their ideas. The board would be the final decision-making body, as it is legally responsible for the organization, but it also would have chosen to consult widely as a way of informing its decisions and building buy-in and commitment from important constituencies.

For organizations, it may be advisable to involve insiders from three levels of the organization as well as key outsiders. (Note that elected or appointed policy board members can be outsiders as well as insiders.) These include top policy and decision makers, middle management, and technical core or frontline personnel (Scott & Davis, 2006), who should be involved for several reasons. First, they are formally charged with relating the organization to its domain. Second, because of their responsibilities, they are often highly effective boundary spanners with links to many organizations and people both inside and outside the organization. Third, they are often among the first to perceive mismatches between the organization and its environment and therefore the most responsive to external threats and opportunities affecting the organization (Kettl, 2015b). Finally, they control the resources necessary to carry out the strategic planning effort and implement the recommendations that grow out of it. It is simply very

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difficult to plan around these people, so they should be included from the start when possible (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006).

In governments and public agencies, this initial group is likely to include members of an elected or appointed board as well as high-level executives. In council-manager cities, for example, the initial agreement typically is negotiated among council members, the city manager, and key department heads.

Middle management personnel should be included for their vital role in translating policies and decisions into operations. Further, they are likely to bear the brunt of any managerial changes that result and therefore should be involved to reduce unnecessary resistance and to make transitions smoother (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006).

Technical core or frontline personnel also may need to help fashion an initial agreement. Again, there are several reasons to consider involving them or their representatives (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). First, they are in charge of the day-to-day use of the core technologies contributing to, or affected by, strategic change. As a result, they are likely to be the most knowledgeable about how the organization's basic technologies work in practice, and they are also most likely to be immediately helped or hurt by change. Their early involvement may be necessary to ensure that needed changes are understood, wise changes implemented, and resistance to change minimized. Second, technical or frontline personnel are likely to be asked for their opinions by key decision makers anyway, so anything that can make them receptive to strategic change is a plus. Finally, because of their technical knowledge or their daily contact with customers, clients, or users, these personnel can severely hamper strategic changes they do not support. In extreme cases, they might undermine or even sabotage change efforts. Coopting these groups early on can be an important key to strategic planning success.

An important caveat is in order. If it is clear from the start that strategic planning will result in the elimination of certain positions, work groups, or departments—such as in major reengineering efforts— then it may be both unnecessary and downright harmful to involve people in those positions. The effective and humane approach may be

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to involve these people in planning for their transition to new jobs, including retraining, placement, and severance arrangements (Nutt & Hogan, 2008).

Finding the Right People Typically, some initial stakeholder analysis work needs to be done before the “right” group of people can be found to forge an effective initial agreement. The purpose of such an analysis at this point is to help process sponsors decide who should be involved in negotiating an initial agreement because either they have information that cannot be gained otherwise or their support is necessary to ensure successful implementation of initiatives built on the analyses.

But a prior strategic question involves first figuring out who should be involved in doing the stakeholder analyses and how. Fortunately, the choice can be approached as a sequence of choices in which an individual or small planning group begins the effort and then others are added later as the advisability of doing so becomes apparent (Bryson, 2004).

One way to approach the task is as a five-step process in which a decision can be made to stop any time after the first step (see Exhibit 3.2). Stopping might be advisable because enough information and support to proceed has been gained, timelines are short, or the analyses are too sensitive or for some other good reason.

Exhibit 3.2. Choosing the Right Stakeholders. A five-step process can be used to identify the right stakeholders. If necessary or desirable a decision can be made to stop any time after the first step. The steps are as follows:

1. An individual or a small planning group needs to initiate the process by doing a preliminary stakeholder analysis using, for example, the Basic Analysis Technique (discussed in Chapter 4), Power Versus Interest Grid, Stakeholder Influence Diagram,

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Bases of Power–Directions of Interest Diagram, or Participation Planning Matrix (discussed in Resource A). This step is useful in helping sponsors and champions of the change effort think strategically about how to create the ideas and coalitions needed for a successful conclusion. This step typically is “back room” work. Necessary informational inputs may be garnered through interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, or other targeted information-gathering techniques in this and subsequent steps or in conjunction with the other techniques outlined in Resource A.

2. After reviewing the results of this analysis, a larger group of stakeholders can be assembled. This meeting can be viewed as the more public beginning of the change effort. The assembled group should brainstorm the list of stakeholders who might need to be involved in the change effort. Again, the Basic Analysis Technique, Power Versus Interest Grid, Stakeholder Influence Diagram, Bases of Power–Directions of Interest Diagram, and Participation Planning Matrix might be used as a starting point.

3. After this analysis has been completed, the group should be encouraged to think carefully about who is not at the meeting but should be at subsequent meetings. They should consider actual or potential stakeholder power, legitimacy, and urgency (defined as a composite of the stakeholder's time sensitivity to an organizational response and the importance of the claim or relationship to the stakeholder) (Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997). The group should carefully think through the positive and negative consequences of involving—or not involving—other stakeholders or their representatives and in what ways to do so.

4. After these conversations have been completed, the “full” group should be assembled—including everyone who should be involved in the stakeholder analyses. The previous analyses may need to be repeated, at least in part, with the full group present to correct or modify any prior analyses, as necessary, and get everyone on board and committed to moving forward.

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5. Finally, after the full group has met, it should be possible to finalize the various groups who will have some role to play in the change effort: sponsors and champions, the coordinating group, the planning team, and various advisory or support groups. Fill out a Participation Planning Matrix (found in Resource A).

Sources: Bryson, 2004; Bryson, Patton, and Bowman, 2011.

Note that this staged process embodies a kind of technical, political, administrative, and ethical rationality. The process is designed to gain needed information; build political acceptance; ensure appropriate administrative concerns are taken into account; and address at least some concerns about legitimacy, representation, and credibility of the process. Stakeholders are included when there are good and prudent reasons to do so but not when their involvement is impractical, unnecessary, or imprudent. A certain amount of collective wisdom is used to inform these choices. Clearly, the choices of whom to include, how, and when are freighted with questions of value—and are perhaps fraught as well—but there is no way of escaping the need for wise and ethical judgments if an organization's or collaboration's mission and the common good are to be advanced.

An Opening Retreat For an organization, often the best way to reach initial agreement is to hold a retreat. Begin with an introduction to the nature, purpose, and process of the proposed strategic planning effort. Often key decision makers need such an introduction before they are fully willing to endorse a strategic planning effort. Orientation and training methods might include a lecture and discussion; presentations by representatives of organizations that have used strategic planning, followed by group discussion; analysis by key decision makers of written case studies, followed by group discussion; circulation of reading materials; strategy films; and so on. The discussions can help people reach a common agreement on what the process might mean in practice for the organization and a common language with which to discuss it. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

A possible format for the first day of a strategic planning retreat is:

Morning. Presentation and discussion about the nature, purpose, and process of the strategic planning effort.

Lunch. Presentation from a representative of a similar organization that engages in strategic planning, highlighting the benefits and liabilities of the process.

Afternoon. Analysis and discussion of a written case study, as well as instruction in any special techniques necessary for successful strategic planning, such as brainstorming, the snow card technique (see Chapter 5), or the use of visual strategy mapping process (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2014).

By the end of the first day, it should be clear whether the key decision makers wish to proceed. If so, the second day might be organized as follows:

Morning. Purpose mapping, basic stakeholder analysis, power versus interest grid, and stakeholder interest diagram (see Resource A), review of mandates, review of the existing mission statement, or development of a draft mission statement.

Lunch. A speaker presents another case study.

Afternoon. SWOC/T analysis, preliminary identification of strategic issues, and next steps.

Organizations that lack experience with strategic planning, but are committed to it nonetheless, may skip the activities outlined for the afternoon of the first day and begin the second day's activities earlier. Organizations that have used strategic planning before may spend much of the first morning identifying the strengths of their previous processes and modifications that would have improve them. They also should consider developing a purpose map for the process. They would then begin the second day's activities in the afternoon of the first day.

The retreat may conclude at the end of the second day, after next steps have been consensually mapped out, or it may continue for a third day.

The morning of the third day can be devoted to further identifying and discussing strategic issues, establishing priorities among them, and ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

developing possible strategies for addressing them. The afternoon can carry this discussion further and outline possible next steps in the process. The retreat should not end until agreement is reached on what the next steps in the process will be and who will be responsible for each step. (Unfortunately, it is increasingly hard to get any group of participants to commit one or two, let alone three, continuous days to any process. The difficulty seems to have two parts: People simply do not think they can delay the urgent to attend to the important nor do they find it easy to justify the cost of retreats that are held off-site, no matter how important they know them to be.)

If a group can reach quick agreement at each point, fewer than three days might be sufficient. If quick agreement is not possible, more time may be necessary to complete the various tasks, and sessions may have to be spread out over several weeks. For one thing, it takes time to do needed analyses of the organization and its situation and what can be done about it. Beyond that, quick agreement is particularly unlikely if the strategic issues imply the need for a major change. It takes a group time to cope with the anxiety, fear, anger, and denial that may accompany profound change, particularly if it senses that its culture and basic beliefs about the world are being threatened (Scharmer, 2016; Schein, 2016).

A retreat (that might be called something else) also might be helpful for a network or community engaged in strategic planning to help decision makers reach agreement about the nature of the planning effort. However, this might be very difficult to organize. More groundwork is probably necessary to build trust and to gain agreement from decision makers on the purposes, timing, and length of the retreat. The retreat itself would almost certainly be fewer than three days, and postretreat logistics, coordination, and follow-through would probably take more time and effort. Nonetheless, a retreat can provide an important signal and symbol that the network community is about to address its most important issues and concerns; can provoke desirable media attention and pressure to continue; and can prompt other stakeholders, who might have been lukewarm about the process, to participate (Innes & Booher, 2010).

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How Many “Initial” Agreements? Sequential agreements among successively larger groups of key decision makers may be necessary before everyone is on board. Strategic planning in collaborative settings will almost certainly require a series of initial agreements (Agranoff, 2012; Innes & Booher, 2010). Indeed, it is worth keeping in mind that forging agreements of various sorts will go on throughout the Strategy Change Cycle. Coalitions are built incrementally by agreement, and strategies and plans also are typically adopted and implemented incrementally through various agreements. These agreements may be signaled by various means, including handshakes, letters or memoranda of agreement, contracts, formal votes, and celebrations. Exhibits 3.3 3.4, and 3.5 describe the ways in which agreements were reached on how to proceed with a strategic planning process by, respectively, the City of Minneapolis, the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA), and the International Association of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI).

Exhibit 3.3. City of Minneapolis's Initial Agreement Process for Its 2014–2017 Strategic Plan. The City of Minneapolis is pursuing an evolving and increasingly integrated results management cycle, which consists of four overlapping phases: strategic planning, business and resource planning, performance monitoring, and continuous improvement. In July 2013, the City Coordinators Office (CCO) began preparing for the 2014 strategic planning process, building upon what they learned from the 2006 and 2010 processes. In addition, the processes of other well-managed and well-governed cities and counties were examined, as was the fourth edition of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations (2011). In September 2013, the city hired a professional consultant to help facilitate the process because the CCO believed it was important to

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have a neutral facilitation.

The initial agreement called for creation of a statement of vision, values, goals, and strategic directions for the city. This part of the initial agreement was not controversial. What was controversial was the decision to initiate the process knowing that the political situation would change with the November 2013 citywide elections. The 12-year incumbent mayor, R. T. Rybak, was not running for reelection, and about half of the city council would be new as well. Ultimately, it was decided that it was best to begin the process prior to the election because delay would upset the results management process, including the timing of business planning and budgeting, and could substantially delay implementation. In addition, there was a belief that departments should be given an opportunity to provide their independent input. The new mayor and council would have major opportunities to review and alter the work prior to their formally adopting it (Arbury, Durden, Harens, & Wiedenfeld, 2014).

Key stakeholders for the process included the COO, all 21 department heads, the mayor and city council members. After the November election, the new mayor and city council members would replace their predecessors as key stakeholders. Only the heads of departments, not lower-level employees, were formally included in the process. In addition, about 35 organizations or agencies, referred to as “system partners,” were invited to participate. Partners included, for example, officials from Hennepin County (the county that contains Minneapolis), the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to the arts and the environment.

Facilitated planning sessions would include department heads and system partners as a way of increasing departmental ownership of city goals and better linkage of departmental business plans to city- wide goals and individual department employee assignments. Few department heads had much prior experience with strategic planning. Getting them (and their employees) to think about what the city does or should do at a strategic rather than an operational

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level would require a culture change. Engaging department heads together and with system partners was seen as a way of stimulating that.

There would be no direct engagement of the community as a whole, though a survey of city residents had taken place in 2012. The decision was based on a desire to save time and keep the Results Minneapolis process on its normal time cycle, with the assumption being that as a result of the campaign, the mayor and city council members would be well versed on what citizens and residents wanted. In other words, the approach to engagement with the public would rely on representative rather than participative democracy (Quick & Bryson, 2016). After the election, it turned out that the new mayor, Betsy Hodges, and the council, who were sworn in on January 6, 2014, would require more direct engagement with the citizens and residents as an integral part of the process.

Exhibit 3.4. Metropolitan Economic Development Association's Initial Agreement Process for Its 2016–2017 Strategic Plan. The “initial” agreement involved Gary Cunningham and his board before he was officially hired. It was clear that MEDA needed a new strategic plan in 2015, and the board was looking for a transformational change when they hired Cunningham. For his part, Cunningham saw working with MEDA as a way of advancing his lifelong interest in addressing issues of racial and economic disparities. He understood that MEDA would have to grow and increase its effectiveness if it were to have a significant impact on those disparities. Both Cunningham and the board understood that some sort of strategic planning process was needed, but Cunningham wanted to hold off on initiating a formal process until

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he learned more about MEDA, its context, and the possibilities for transformational change.

An opportunity to speed up the learning process occurred quickly. Three weeks after assuming his new position in August 2014, Gary Cunningham and John Bryson were to begin coteaching a Fall 2014 course on performance management at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Bryson suggested focusing the class on MEDA and trying to figure out what moving to the next level might mean.

The class helped clarify what the business models that underpinned MEDA's various programs were (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2014). The class also helped develop a systems model of MEDA's situation that explained why MEDA would be limited to its historic pattern of modest incremental growth unless something major was done to eliminate the constraints on that growth. The model showed that the actions that MEDA took that were positively reinforcing and should have led to major growth, were “balanced” by other factors that dampened the possibilities for growth (Senge, 2006). The constraints included a shortage of available consulting talent to help entrepreneurs of color, a shortage of debt and equity capital to help finance entrepreneurs, and competition for funding among minority-business-support organizations, such as MEDA, to cover their own operating and program costs.

By early 2015, Cunningham had a good, basic understanding of MEDA's situation and the way forward. Then, partly as a result of suggestions by a MEDA board member and follow-up by Cunningham, the Minneapolis office of Accenture, the global consulting firm, volunteered to provide pro bono consulting advice to inform MEDA's strategic planning effort. Cunningham wanted to use Accenture for several reasons. First, they had the needed expertise to do a comprehensive strategic analysis. Second, they brought fresh eyes to the challenge of figuring out what transforming MEDA might mean. Third, their findings would have instant credibility with the board. And finally, MEDA didn't have the staff capacity to do the needed analyses.

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With the board's blessing, the formal strategic planning effort began in early 2015, with consulting support for Cunningham and a strategic planning committee of the board created to oversee the effort coming from Accenture.

Accenture undertook a comprehensive analysis of MEDA's situation. They were asked to: assess MEDA's internal and external environments, help affirm or redefine MEDA's mission, identify leading practices in the field of business support, assess implementation gaps, recommend a future business model, and outline a strategic roadmap. The analysis was to be carried out through five complementary work streams focused on the competitive landscape, program effectiveness, client needs, stakeholder needs, and technology possibilities. Work began in February 2015 and was to be completed later in the year.

Exhibit 3.5. Intosai'S Initial Agreement Process for Its 2017–2022 Strategic Plan. Strategic planning in collaborative settings can be quite time consuming as each individual organization tries to figure out what committing to a shared mission, goals, and strategies means for itself (Clarke & Fuller, 2010; Spee & Jarzabkowski, 2017). Indeed, the process typically moves through several stages as collaborators work toward increased understanding over what their initial agreement might mean for them in practice. The process of reaching an initial agreement to guide the creation of the 2017– 2022 strategic plan for INTOSAI was no exception.

The challenges flowed in part from the way INTOSAI is organized. Its governing body is the International Congress of Supreme Audit Organizations (INCOSAI), which consists of all 194 members and the associate members and meets every three years. INTOSAI's 17- member governing board meets annually and is chaired by the head of the SAI that hosted the last congress. The other members are the INTOSAI vice chair and second vice chair, representatives

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of the organization's seven regional organizations, the chairs of the committees overseeing the organization's four strategic goals, the secretary general, and representatives of the organization's official journal, a separate INTOSAI organizational body headquartered in Norway that works directly on strengthening developing country SAIs. INTOSAI carries out much of its work through four standing committees, one for each of its strategic goals: the professional standards committee; the capacity building committee; the knowledge sharing committee; and the policy, finance, and administration committee (PFAC).

The development of INTOSAI strategic plans is the responsibility of the Task Force on Strategic Planning (TFSP). The task force operates under the guidance of the PFAC and ceases to exist once the strategic plan is adopted. Responsibility for implementing the plan is then transferred to the PFAC and shared with the other committees and the secretary general. The TFSP for the 2017– 2022 strategic plan consisted of 21 members broadly representative of the organization's leadership, including all members of the PFAC, the chairs of the four standing committees, and representatives of the seven regions, among others. The TFSP was chaired by the U.S. GAO's comptroller general and supported by GAO staff, the INTOSAI director of strategic planning, and the staff from other offices that were members of the task force.

The strategic planning process was formally kicked off at the INCOSAI meeting in Beijing in October 2013, but it really began with a meeting of the PFAC in Washington, DC, in May 2013. Participants at the May meeting discussed documents reviewing prior INTOSAI experience with, and recommendations for, strategic planning, and helped prepare for a kickoff meeting for the full TFSP in July 2013. As a result of the July meeting, the TFSP was charged with creating an open and inclusive process, reaching out to external stakeholders, conducting an internal and external environmental scan, and a careful review of current INTOSAI activities, governing documents, and agreements. A timeline was needed that would allow for a draft strategic plan to be thoroughly reviewed and a consensus reached so that it was ready for adoption

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at the next INCOSAI in the United Arab Emirates in December 2016. A formal “plan for planning” was prepared for review and adoption at the October 2013 INCOSAI. The strategic planning process, in other words, took a little more three years from the time of its formal kickoff until the plan's adoption at the December 2016 INCOSAI.

It is important for sponsors and champions to keep in mind that throughout a Strategy Change Cycle, there are a number of tangible and intangible, process- and content-oriented outcomes that are likely to be needed if the process is to succeed. Figure 3.2 classifies outcomes according to these dimensions. The process versus content dimension is probably quite familiar—at least in a negative way—for example, when people complain that “process is getting in the way of substance.” Less obvious, because it is less frequently discussed, is the distinction between tangible and intangible outcomes (Friend & Hickling, 2005, p. 100).

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Figure 3.2. Outcomes Likely to Be Needed If the Strategic Planning Process Is to Succeed.

Here I have subcategorized the dimensions according to my interpretation of Schein's three levels of culture (2016). The most obvious aspects of culture are what we can see—namely artifacts, plans, documents, or other symbolic representations of the less visible values, beliefs, and interpretive schemes that shape them. Even less obvious, but in many ways the most important, are the basic

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assumptions and worldviews that underpin the values, beliefs, and interpretive schemes. They are the (almost) invisible platform on which the rest is built (Fairhurst, 2010). Strategic planning and management grow out of organizational or community culture; thus, any outcomes produced must tap into that culture, even if the purpose is—as usual—to change the culture in some ways, including some of its basic assumptions (Scharmer, 2016; Schein, 2016).

The entries in Figure 3.2 show that the most obvious outcome—but in some ways the least important one—is the tangible, content-oriented outcome represented by a strategic plan. Recall that I said the purpose of strategic planning is to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it—and not to produce a strategic plan. A strategic plan can often help, but it will sit on the shelf (or in cyberspace) if it is not based on positive outcomes in the other three quadrants of the figure.

The initial agreement is primarily about developing tangible, process- oriented outcomes, specifically a commitment—probably in the form of a written agreement—to project organization; process steps, procedures, and requirements; a general work program for carrying out those steps; stakeholder involvement processes; and requirements for success. The initial agreement will be meaningless, however, unless it is based on some intangible, process-oriented outcomes. These would include some appreciation of stakeholders and stakeholder relationships, how to work together productively, effective approaches to conflict management, organizational culture, uncertainties surrounding the process and the organization, and requirements for perceived rationality and legitimacy. If these appreciations are not deepened and widened over the course of the process, the process will fail. If they are enriched and spread throughout relevant networks, then crucial intangible, content-oriented outcomes will be produced. These include a widespread appreciation of and commitment to—on the part of senior leadership, major employee groups, and other key stakeholders—the organization's mission, mandates, vision, philosophy, core values, goals, strategies, and other key elements of a successful change effort.

If these last outcomes are in place, then the strategic plan will basically ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

implement itself when a small organization is involved; even in the case of a larger organization, collaboration, or community, implementation will be far easier than it would be otherwise. The plan will simply record the changes that have already occurred in the hearts and minds of key stakeholders. Said differently, if the intangible elements are in place, then the tangible outcomes will follow. So sponsors, champions, and facilitators must pay very careful attention to the production of those intangible but highly consequential outcomes; if they do not, the plan will be mostly worthless. It may satisfy certain mandates or reporting requirements, but it certainly will not be a living document.

What Should the Initial Agreement Contain? The initial agreement should cover the immediate desired outcomes listed at the beginning of this chapter: agreement on the purpose of the effort (including by implication what it will not achieve) and its worth; project organization, including sponsors and champions; the organizations, units, groups, or persons who should be involved, and how; a shared understanding about the nature and sequence of the steps in the process and how the Internet and information and communication technology will be used to facilitate the process; agreement on the form and timing of reports; commitment of necessary resources to begin; and articulation of key requirements for a successful process.

Next, a committee or task force probably should be established to oversee the strategic planning effort. The committee should be headed by someone with enough standing and credibility in the organization to ensure that the effort is given visibility and legitimacy. Ideally, this person will be trusted by all or most factions in the organization so that the effort will not be seen as a narrow partisan affair. The committee can be an existing group, such as a board of directors or city council, that adds strategic planning oversight to its responsibilities or it can be a committee or task force established for that specific purpose. The oversight committee probably will be the body with whom the initial agreement is formulated though it may be necessary to work out agreements first with various groups and

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factions who then send representatives to sit on the oversight body.

Next, a team to carry out the staff work probably will be necessary. The team should include planners and change advocates, and also helpful critics, to make sure that difficulties arising over the course of the process are recognized and constructively addressed (Nutt, 2002).

The necessary resources to begin the endeavor must be committed. Obtaining needed financial resources may not be difficult as they will be relatively minor in comparison with an organization's overall budget. The more important—and typically scarce—resources needed for a successful effort are the attention and involvement of key decision makers (Mulgan, 2009). Depending on the scale of the effort, strategic planning may demand from five to 25 days of attention from an organization's key decision makers over the course of a year—in other words, as much as 10 percent of ordinary work time. Is this too much? Not for what is truly important for the organization. If there is not enough time for everything, then something else—not strategic planning—should go. Recall the great German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's admonition: “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”

Finally, there should be an understanding of the likely requirements for success. Consider starting with purpose mapping to gain as much clarity as possible at this early stage about what the purposes of the strategic planning effort are. Then start listing requirements by first asking: Who has to say yes to this process and the resulting plan? Who —as best we know at present—has to say yes to implementing approved strategies? And what would it take for these people, groups, or organizations to say yes? Beyond that, there are almost certainly additional administrative, financial, legal, ethical, and political considerations to be taken into account. Being clear about likely requirements is not the same as accepting the list as rigid and nonnegotiable constraints. Instead, it is a way of helping to clarify what specific process design features and activities may be necessary as a response to requirements to ensure overall success.

The end of this first step typically is the first major decision point in the process if the organization is large, the situation is complex, or

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many people need to be involved. (If the organization is small, few people are involved, and the situation is simple, the first major decision point will come later, though precisely when will depend on the particular details.) If agreement is reached on the various content items, then it makes sense to go ahead with the process.

If agreement is not reached, then either the effort can go on anyway— with little likelihood of success—or this step should be repeated until an effective agreement can be worked out. It usually makes sense to repeat the step or to scale down the effort to focus on a smaller area where agreement is possible. Part of the scaled-down effort might be to develop effective strategies to involve the other parts later.

PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES The following process design guidelines may be helpful in developing an initial agreement:

1. Some person or group must initiate and champion the process. Strategic planning does not just happen—involved, courageous, and committed people make it happen. In each of our illustrative cases, the process worked in large part because there were people involved—usually key decision makers and leaders—who acted as process champions (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). These people believed in the process and were committed to it—but not to any preconceived solutions. They may have had good hunches about what might emerge, but their main belief was that following the process would produce good answers. Indeed, the champions were willing to be surprised by the answers that emerged. In Minneapolis, it was the City Coordinator's Office, and especially Jay Stroebel, who served as the champion. In MEDA's case, it was Gary Cunningham, who was also an important sponsor, and the consultants from Accenture. In the INTOSAI case, it was Chris Mihm and his staff at the U.S. GAO.

2. It may be desirable for the initiators to do a quick assessment of the “readiness” of the organization to engage in strategic planning. The assessment should cover the organization's current mission; its budget, financial management, human resources,

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information technology, and communications systems; leadership and management capabilities; expected costs and benefits of a strategic planning process; and how to overcome any anticipated barriers. Based on the assessment, the initiators may decide to push ahead, focus on improving the organization's readiness, or drop the effort. Readiness assessment worksheets can be found in Bryson and Alston (2011).

3. Some person or group must sponsor the process to give it legitimacy. Sponsoring a strategic planning process is different from championing it—even though sponsors and champions may be the same people. Sponsorship is necessary to provide legitimacy to the process; championing the process provides the energy and commitment to follow through. The strategic planning coordinating committee or task force (discussed in guideline 6) often serves as the legitimizing, sponsoring body.

4. Some initial stakeholder analysis work is likely to be needed before the “right” group of people can be found to forge an effective initial agreement. The purpose of a stakeholder analysis at this point is to help process sponsors decide who should be involved in negotiating an initial agreement either because they have information that cannot be gained otherwise or their support is necessary to ensure successful implementation of initiatives built on the analyses. The five-step process outlined previously is a useful way to figure out who should be involved.

5. Decide whether a detailed, jointly negotiated initial agreement is needed. An informal understanding may suffice when the organization is small, few people need to be involved in the process, and the situation faced is relatively straightforward. Conversely, a detailed, jointly negotiated initial agreement is likely to be needed if the organization is large, many people need to be involved, and the situation is complex or if a strategic plan for a collaboration or community is to be developed. A formal contract is probably unnecessary (except, of course, contracts with outside consultants), but someone should prepare a written memorandum that outlines the content of the agreement.

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The agreement might be summarized in a chart and distributed to all planning team members. Two examples outlining the basics of an initial agreement are presented in Exhibits 3.6 and 3.7. Exhibit 3.6 outlines the process followed by a small, community-based development organization in St. Paul called North End Area Revitalization (NEAR). Exhibit 3.7 shows the initial agreement used to organize the strategic planning effort of a large human service organization. The process is considerably lengthier and more involved than NEAR's process because many more people need to be involved in various ways.

Exhibit 3.6. Near's Strategic Planning Process.

Steps Responsible By When

1. Select a steering group. (The board's executive committee and executive director will serve in this role.)

Board chair, executive director

Feb. 1

2. Select a consultant to assist in design and facilitation of the process.

Steering group

Feb. 15

3. Get agreement on the planning steps, responsibilities, and resources required.

Steering group, consultant

Feb. 25

4. Gather information via a questionnaire of board members, staff, other neighborhood representatives, and others familiar with NEAR—regarding image, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and critical issues or choices. Also conduct focus group discussions with staff, the Neighborhood Housing Agenda Committee, and Community Building

Consultant, staff, steering group

March 20

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Initiative Committee about their hopes for the future and issues that need attention in the planning process. Summarize this information.

5. At a six-hour planning retreat with board and staff:

Review NEAR's history and accomplishments since inception; note when participants got involved and what lessons they've learned. Use timeline.

Review progress toward our mission and goals over the past year.

Review summary of questionnaire responses and information on neighborhood changes. In small groups, identify key issues or choices for NEAR.

Determine NEAR's future direction.

Review steps to complete the strategic plan.

Participants, consultant

April 1

6. Summarize the retreat. Consultant, executive director

April 12

7. At two follow-up meetings (approximately two hours each), develop a draft of the strategic plan. The executive director will develop the initial draft for discussion and refinement with the steering group.

Steering group, consultant as needed

May 15

8. Review the draft with staff, board, other community representatives, and a key funder. Make needed revisions

Steering group, consultant as

June 10

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based on these reviews. needed 9. Approve the plan. Board June

25 10. Implement the plan. Those

indicated July 1

11. Monitor progress at six months and update the plan yearly.

Steering group

Feb. 1

Meeting Time Required Approximately 18 to 20 hours for Steps 1 through 8 plus staff work in preparing for the retreat and drafting the plan.

Source: Adapted from Barry, 1997/2013, p. 30.

Exhibit 3.7. Longer Planning Process of a Large Human Service Organization.

Steps Responsible By When

1. Get agreement on planning steps, responsibilities, and timelines. Review the planning process with the board and staff.

Executive director, board chair

Feb. 1

2. Meet informally with neighborhood groups, user groups, other nonprofits, public officials, funders, and others to solicit ideas on how our organization might better serve this community. Summarize this information.

Executive director, designated staff

May 1

3. In preparation for the board/management planning retreat, summarize information on: (1) the

Executive director with staff support

July 1

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organization's mission, success, and limitations over the past 20 years; (2) human service and community trends; and (3) several options and scenarios for how the organization might have the greatest impact in coming years.

4. At a two-day board/management retreat, review and discuss the summarized information and determine the organization's future focus and emphasis. Use a scenario approach. Invite two resource people with knowledge of these issues to participate in the retreat.

Participants, guests, facilitator

Aug. 1

5. Summarize the retreat, develop a proposed focus statement for the organization, and discuss implications with staff.

Executive director, management staff

Sept. 15

6. Review implications and approve the focus statement.

Board Oct. 15

7. Draft strategic plans for each of the organization's three divisions describing how they will implement the new focus over the next five years. Involve potential partner groups in developing these plans.

Executive director, management staff

Jan. 1

8. Review division plans. Note any recommended changes in areas that require coordination across the organization and implications for administrative support services.

Executive director, management staff

Jan. 15

9. Draft overall strategic plan for the organization.

Executive director

March 1

10. Review draft plan with staff, the board, and six to eight community

Executive director

April 1

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representatives. Make revisions based on these reviews.

11. Approve strategic plan. Board May 1 12. Implement the plan. Review progress

and update the plan yearly. Executive director, those indicated

Meeting Time Required Sixty to 65 hours for Steps 1 through 10 (includes strategic planning for each division) plus staff time for informal meetings with community representatives, development of background materials for the retreat, and drafting the plan.

Source: Adapted from Barry, 1997/2013, p. 31.

6. Form a strategic planning coordinating committee or task force if one is needed. Again, if the organization is small, and the situation is easy to comprehend, few people need to be involved, and such a task force or committee probably won't be needed. But if the organization is large, many people need to be involved, and the situation is complex, then a task force or committee should probably be appointed.

Such a group should not be formed too early, however. It is easier to include someone later, after the committee is formed, than it is to drop a troublesome participant who is already a member. Consult with trusted advisers before inviting people to participate. Also keep in mind that there is a big difference between giving people a seat on a committee and consulting with them as part of the process. People can supply a great deal of information and advice—and legitimacy for the process—without actually having a vote on a committee. Unless membership in the committee is limited, it may balloon in size and become unmanageable and unproductive.

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If an organization is the focus of attention, the coordinating committee might include top-level decision makers, midlevel managers, technical and professional opinion leaders, outside resource persons, representatives of key stakeholder groups, process experts, and critics. Remember, however, that there may be a trade-off between having a broadly representative committee (which may be very large) and an effective one (which probably should number no more than nine). Two groups may in fact be necessary: a large representative and legitimizing body and a small executive committee that engages in the most extensive discussions and makes recommendations to the larger group. For a collaboration or community, a large representative legitimizing body could coordinate the process and smaller representative bodies could attend to specific issue areas.

7. If a coordinating committee is formed, use it as a mechanism for deliberation, consultation, negotiation, problem solving, or buffering among organizations, units, groups, or people involved. The committee is likely to be the body that officially legitimizes the initial agreement and makes subsequent decisions though the committee also may serve in an advisory body to the “official” decision makers.

Committee decisions should be recorded in writing and probably should be circulated to key stakeholder groups. It is possible that the committee should include more than one representative from each key stakeholder group so that a clearer picture can emerge of stakeholder preferences, interests, and concerns. Also, if the group is to be a standing committee that oversees annual strategic planning efforts, it probably is wise to rotate membership to keep new ideas flowing and widen involvement in the process.

You will not necessarily be asking for a major commitment of time from committee members, but depending on the size of the organization, they should expect to spend from five to 25 days on strategic planning over the course of a year. And that time must be “quality” time. The group should focus its attention on strategic concerns and refer operational matters to appropriate individuals and groups.

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8. The process is likely to flow more smoothly and effectively if the coordinating committee and any other policy boards involved are effective policymaking bodies. Recall that strategic planning has been defined as a deliberative, disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why it does it. It is hard to produce those decisions unless the process is overseen by effective policymaking bodies. In other words, the work of strategic planning forums, no matter how good, will not be worth much unless it is linked to arenas in which effective policies and strategies can be adopted and decisions made. Also note that a strategic issue in many cases is how to foster more effective policy making and decision making; the process thus must be a design for improving policy making and embody it as well.

Effective policy-making bodies (Carver, 2006; Chait, Ryan, & Taylor, 2004; Cornforth, 2004):

Discipline themselves to focus most of their attention on their policy-making role

Have a mission statement that clearly states their purposes as a policy-making body

Establish a set of policy objectives for the organization, function, collaboration, or community that they oversee

Concentrate their resources to be more effective as policy makers

Control managers primarily through the questions they ask. The general form of these questions is, “How does this recommendation [whether a proposal, strategy, or budget] serve our purposes, values, or policies?”

Have staff help them become better policy makers

Rely on various media (press releases, newsletters, television, websites, and so forth) to transmit information to key stakeholders and the general public

Hold periodic retreats to foster learning and to develop

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strategic plans and work programs for subsequent years

Monitor appropriate performance data in appropriate ways and deliberate wisely on its meaning and what to do in response

Unfortunately, many public or nonprofit organizations, collaborations, and communities are not governed by effective policy-making bodies. A strategic issue that often arises, therefore, is how to increase the governing body's effectiveness. Indeed, in many of the strategic planning efforts in which I have served as a consultant, an important purpose has been to improve governance capabilities.

9. Form a strategic planning team if one is needed. In theory, a team would be assigned the task of facilitating decision making by the strategic planning committee. The team would gather information and advice and produce recommendations for committee action. The committee would help legitimize the process, provide guidance to the team, and make decisions on team-produced recommendations. In practice, a team may or may not be formed and may or may not serve as facilitator of decision making by the coordinating committee. Often, there is an overlap between strategic planning committees and teams.

A team may not be needed if the organization or community is small, few people need to be involved in the effort, and the situation is relatively easy to handle. In these cases, a single planner, perhaps with the assistance of an outside consultant, will probably suffice. However, if the organization is large, many people need to be involved, and the situation is complex, a team will probably be necessary. Most of the team members probably will not need to work full-time on the effort, except for brief periods. But formation of a team will allow many different skills to be brought forward at important times. The team should be headed by an organizational diplomat and should include members skilled in boundary spanning, process facilitation, technical analysis, synthesis of diverse views, advocacy, and self-criticism. Such a team will almost certainly be needed for a large community effort.

Whether the team actually does much of the strategic planning itself or facilitates strategic planning by key decision makers will

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depend on a number of factors. On the one hand, if team members actually possess most of the information needed to prepare the plan, and if they hold positions of substantial power, then they may go ahead and prepare the plan themselves. In this situation, the planners themselves are the key decision makers. On the other hand, if there are a number of key decision makers who already possess much of the necessary information, and if the planners are not themselves powerful by virtue of their position or person, then the planners will need to serve primarily as facilitators of the process.

In my experience, planners typically find that they can be of greatest service by serving as facilitators of cross-functional, cross- level, and deliberative planning, policy making, and decision making by key decision makers (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). Nevertheless, they typically must have at least some substantive knowledge of the topic areas under discussion to be good facilitators. Thus, a blend of process skill and content knowledge is typically required of strategic planners and strategic planning teams; however, the specific proportions vary by situation.

Once you have decided that a strategic planning team is needed, you can turn your attention to procedures that will make the team more effective. First, to recruit skilled, committed team members, you may need to use special personnel hiring, transfer, or compensation procedures. People must see how their careers could be helped by joining the team or they are not likely to join voluntarily. If the assignment is to be temporary, people must be assured that they can return to their old jobs—or better ones— when the effort is completed. Second, clear and positive working relationships need to be negotiated among team members and supervisors. Third, the team should meet frequently and communicate effectively to foster sharing of information and joint learning.

In the case of strategic planning for a community, the team(s) may have many volunteer members. Personnel hiring, transfer, and compensation procedures may not be an issue for volunteers, but clear and positive working relationships and effective

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communication are likely to be very important.

10. Key decision makers may need orientation and training about the nature, purpose, and process of strategic planning before they can negotiate an initial agreement.

11. A sequence of “initial” agreements among a successively expanding group of key decision makers may be necessary before a full-scale strategic planning effort can proceed. In expanding the circle, sponsors, champions, planners, and facilitators need to be attentive to the need for a (typically slow) process of building trust among involved stakeholders (Huxham & Vangen, 2005; Spee & Jarzabkowski, 2017). They also need to be attentive to the range of tangible and intangible content and process outcomes that are necessary for a successful effort (see Figure 3.2). Remember that the outcomes that are not visible are considerably more important than those that are.

12. Recognize that things will change over the course of the Strategy Change Cycle. Note, for example, what Berger and Vasile (2002, p. 25) concluded about the strategic planning efforts of the many nonprofit organizations they studied: “Decisions regarding plan breadth and detail, the mechanics of how it would be written, and the look of its final form were made as the process unfolded.”

13. Keep in mind that a good initial agreement should provide useful preparation for any major changes that may be forthcoming. For a strategic planning process to be successful, the process itself must be thought about strategically. The initiators of the planning process should play out various scenarios about how it might unfold and then use them to understand the requirements to which the initial process design must respond. (This same kind of strategic thinking about the process itself should occur throughout the process.) For example, if a major transformation of some kind is envisioned, a successful process is likely to be different from a process meant to produce a series of incremental changes (see Chapter 7; Scharmer, 2016). Similarly, if major data collection and analysis efforts are likely to be needed, the groundwork should be laid in this step. Try to be as clear as possible about the

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requirements for success—and be open to the possibility that those requirements will change as the process unfolds.

14. In complex situations, development of an initial agreement will culminate in the first big decision point. If an effective agreement cannot be reached among key decision makers, then the effort should not proceed. The initiators may want to try again or focus on areas in which key decision makers can reach agreement. In relatively simple situations, the first major decision points are likely to be reached later in the process though precisely when will depend on the particular situation.

HAVE REALISTIC HOPES FOR THE PROCESS The initiation of strategic planning primarily involves a series of three simple activities for many organizations: (1) gathering key actors (preferably key decision makers); (2) working through a strategic thinking, acting, and learning process; and (3) getting people to do something practical about what is truly important for the organization. Although these activities may be simple in concept, they are quite difficult to implement because strategic planning is a process deliberately designed to produce change.

Organizations prefer to program, routinize, and systematize as much as they can (Bolman & Deal, 2013). Strategic planning, however, is designed to question the current routines, along with the treaties that have been negotiated among stakeholders to form a coalition large enough and strong enough to govern the organization. The process therefore is inherently prone to fail because it is deliberately disruptive (though not necessarily ungraciously, undiplomatically, or nastily so). Only strong sponsors, champions, skillful planners and facilitators; a supportive coalition; and a clear view of the potential benefits it can bring can make the process succeed. Even then, the best efforts can be derailed by unexpected events, changes, crises, or intractable conflicts. Initiating strategic planning can be worth the effort, but the process will not necessarily be a smooth or successful one.

Potential sponsors and champions, therefore, should go into it with ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

their eyes open (Bryson & Roering, 1988; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). You can choose to work hard to make good things happen, which is the approach I advocate; you can step aside and just watch what happens; or you can really be out of touch and then wonder what happened. You and your colleagues must choose: The easy choice—at least in the short term—is to do nothing. As the famous British businessman Sir John Harvey-Jones allegedly said, “The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.”

In short, I think no one should expect that the process will succeed automatically. One way to develop reasonable hopes for the process is to have the sponsoring group and planning team explicitly discuss together or separately their hopes and concerns (or fears) for the process. The hopes can be a source of purposes for the process (and perhaps goals) for the organization or community, and the process can be designed in such a way that it deals effectively with the concerns and fears.

SUMMARY The initial agreement is essentially an understanding among key internal (and perhaps external) decision makers or opinion leaders concerning the overall strategic planning effort. The agreement should cover the purpose and worth of the effort; project organization, including who the sponsors and champions are; the people, units, groups, or organizations to be involved; steps to be followed; the form and timing of reports; the role, functions, and membership of strategic planning committee members if such a committee is formed; the role, functions, and membership of strategic planning team members if one is formed; the commitment of necessary resources to begin the effort; and key requirements for success.

The importance of an initial agreement is highlighted by viewing every strategic planning effort as a drama in which the most important questions the organization faces are raised and resolved. For the drama to have a successful ending, the agreement needs to sketch out the setting, the actors, their roles, and how the actors' interactions will

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be designed and governed; the themes, perhaps the plots and subplots, the acts and scenes; and the beginning, the climax, and the desired conclusion. As the tale itself unfolds, content and detail will be added to this sketch, along with surprise twists and turns, making it a rich, instructive, and emotional drama that is lived by the actors. In the absence of such an agreement, the story may never reach a climax or conclusion. Instead, it might be what Macbeth called “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 5, scene 5)—or it could just be wasteful and boring theatre of the absurd.

An effective initial agreement ultimately helps leaders, managers, and planners raise and resolve key issues. Deliberation concerning these issues helps effective political coalitions coalesce (Mulgan, 2009). Otherwise, issues and answers are likely to flow somewhat randomly through the organization disconnected from the resources and decisions necessary for effective action (Kingdon, 2010). Organizational survival, let alone effectiveness, will itself become random, and key decision makers will have abdicated their responsibility to focus on organizational purposes and their pursuit (Hill & Lynn, 2009).

In the next chapter, we will move to Steps 2 and 3 in the Strategy Change Cycle: the identification of mandates and the clarification of mission and values. Together, these two steps stipulate the organizational purposes to be strategically pursued.

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CHAPTER FOUR Clarifying Organizational Mandates and Mission

Three outstanding attitudes—obliviousness to the growing disaffection of constituents, primacy of self-aggrandizement, and the illusion of invulnerable status—are persistent aspects of folly.

—Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly

This chapter covers Steps 2 and 3 of the Strategy Change Cycle, identifying mandates and clarifying mission and values. Together, mandates, mission, and values indicate broadly the public value the organization will create and provide the social justification and legitimacy on which the organization's existence depends.

Public and nonprofit organizations are externally justified. This means that they are chartered by the state to pursue certain public purposes (Rainey, 2014) and their legitimacy is conferred by the broader society (Suddaby, Bitektine, & Haack, 2017). These organizations must find ways to show that their operations do indeed create public value or they risk losing the social justification for their existence, their legitimacy, and any tax-exempt status they have.

Democratic governments can create public value through a number of overlapping activities, some of which are more appropriate to one level or type of government than another (Bozeman & Johnson, 2015; Bryson, Crosby & Bloomberg, 2015a, 2015b; Moore, 2013; Weimer & Vining, 2010). These activities include:

Providing a constitutional framework of laws and supporting the rule of law—not least by the government itself

Creating an open, transparent government

Fostering and relying on the democratic process, including making sure that mechanisms for articulating and aggregating values function in a democratic way

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Protecting civil and human rights, human dignity, and the core of subsistence; and beyond that, providing ways to ensure social mobility and progressive opportunity

Ensuring that a long-term, holistic view is taken and that stewardship of the public interest and the common good are seen as crucial functions of government, albeit shared with other actors and usually subject to contest

Inspiring and mobilizing the government itself and other key entities and actors to undertake individual and collective action in pursuit of the common good (Crosby & Bryson, 2005), as well as catalyzing active citizenship in which diverse groups of citizens create programs, projects, products, or services of lasting public value (Boyte, 2004)

Maintaining a stable economy with reasonable levels of growth, unemployment, inflation, debt, savings, investment, and balance of payment figures

Relying on markets when they can be expected to work, including correcting market imperfections and freeing, facilitating, and stimulating markets, and not relying on markets when they cannot be expected to work (Weimer & Vining, 2010). Serving this purpose might include:

Providing needed public goods that private markets will not provide on their own or else will provide badly (for example, defense, large infrastructure projects, common spaces, free parks) and ensuring that the benefits of publicly provided goods and services are not inappropriately captured by some subset of the population for whom they are not solely intended (for example, unnecessarily restricting public access to public lands)

Subsidizing activities with positive spillover effects for the general public (for example, K–12 and higher education, basic research, certain economic development activities, block clubs)

Taxing or regulating activities with actual or potential negative spillover effects for the general public (for example, commercial and investment banking, food and drug production and

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distribution, building construction, automobile operation)

Addressing problems created by asymmetries in information availability, distribution, or use (for example, licensing or certification programs, product labeling requirements)

Addressing problems of loss and uncertainty (for example, governmentally organized or subsidized insurance schemes, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve)

Making sure that conservation of resources is emphasized rather than assuming substitutable resources will be found or invented (for example, conserving oil and fossil fuels)

Protecting a common heritage when it otherwise might be lost (for example, historic and architectural preservation programs, protecting areas of outstanding natural beauty, memorials to outstanding public service)

Providing public goods and services in a cost-effective way (for example, transportation infrastructure and systems, health and social services, police and criminal justice services). This often means engaging in cocreation and coproduction with citizens and others (Voorberg, Bekkers, & Tummers, 2015) and cross-sector collaboration (Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2015; Kettl, 2015a, 2015c)

Using information, scientific research, and a variety of public value-oriented analyses that are as objective as possible to inform public decisions (Moore, 2013)

Making use of civic-minded public servants and professional expertise (Frederickson, 1997)

Nonprofit organizations in the United States can create public value by a number of means. The array of types of nonprofit organizations and their specific purposes is extraordinary. Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service code contains the largest number of tax- exempt organizations. They are granted tax concessions because they are presumed to create public value when they:

Express the First Amendment right of assembly

Promote public welfare directly rather than privately, as in the case ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

of firms, or of a definable subgroup, as in the case of associations

Promote public welfare in a manner that goes beyond government, as in the case of religion, or in a way that substitutes for government, as in the cases of housing and health

Serve public purposes at a cost less than government would incur and, therefore, create tax savings

Serve public purposes in a charitable way so that public or community welfare rather than individual welfare is served (Bryce, 1999, pp. 32, 40)

There are three tests that an organization must pass to be granted 501(c)(3) status (Bryce, 1999, pp. 40–41, 49–50; see also Hopkins and Gross, 2016). The organizational test requires that the nonprofit be organized to improve public welfare, rather than to benefit individuals or owners, by pursuing one or more of eight specific purposes: educational, religious, charitable, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering certain national or international sports competitions, or preventing cruelty to children or to animals. The political test requires that the organization's charter forbid the nonprofit from participating in any political campaign on behalf of a candidate. And the asset test requires that the charter prohibit any distribution of assets or income to benefit individuals as owners or managers, except for fair compensation of services rendered, and must forbid the use of the organization for the personal benefit of founders, supporters, managers, their relatives, or associates.

Nonprofit organizations also can fail in a variety of ways; thus, public value can be created by working to avoid the failures. Salamon (1995, pp. 44–48) identifies four categories of voluntary failure:

1. Philanthropic insufficiency or the sector's “inability to generate resources on a scale that is both adequate enough and reliable enough to cope with the human service problems of an advanced industrial society” (p. 45)

2. Philanthropic particularism, which refers to “the tendency of voluntary organizations and their benefactors to focus on particular subgroups of the population….As a result, serious gaps

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can occur in the coverage of subgroups by the existing voluntary organizations” (pp. 45–46)

3. Philanthropic paternalism, in which the “nature of the sector comes to be shaped by the preferences not of the community as a whole, but of its wealthy members” (p. 47)

4. Philanthropic amateurism, in which care that requires professional training and expertise is “entrusted to well-meaning amateurs” (p. 48)

Communities can create public value by promoting a sense of individual and collective identity, belonging, recognition, and security; by providing people a place to live, work, learn, enjoy, and express themselves; by building and maintaining physical, human, intellectual, social, and cultural capital of various sorts; and by fostering a civically engaged, egalitarian, trusting, and tolerant democratic society. Social capital in particular has been shown to have a broad range of positive effects on health, education, welfare, safety, and civic activism (Putnam, Feldstein, & Cohen, 2004). Communities are necessary for our existence as human beings, and serving communities provides a justification for our existence as humans (see, for example, Block, 2009; McKnight & Block, 2010).

As public problems have increasingly been defined in such a way that they are beyond the competence of single organizations or sectors to solve, collaboration has been looked to as a way to pool competence to mount an effective response. Cross-sector collaboration specifically is seen as a way to systematically harness each sector's unique strengths, while minimizing or overcoming its characteristic weaknesses, to ensure the joint response to challenges is competent to successfully do the job at hand (Bryson et al., 2015; Bryson, Crosby, & Bloomberg, 2015a, 2015b).

MANDATES Although Step 2 (clarifying organizational mandates) is usually less time consuming than Step 3 (clarifying mission), it is no less important. Before an organization can define its mission and values, it

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should know exactly what it is formally and informally required to do (and not do) by external authorities. Formal requirements are likely to be codified in laws, regulations, ordinances, articles of incorporation, charters, and so forth, and therefore may be easier to uncover and clarify than the organization's mission.

In addition, organizations typically must meet a variety of informal mandates that may be embodied in norms or the expectations of key stakeholders, such as the electorate or duly elected representatives. These informal mandates may be no less binding. For example, newly elected officials often talk about the “mandate” they have received from voters—and if the mandate is real and strong, woe unto those who ignore it. Real clarity, however, about these informal mandates may have to await a stakeholder analysis, discussed in a subsequent section.

Purpose and Immediate Desired Outcomes The purpose of Step 2 is to identify and clarify the nature and meaning of the externally imposed mandates, both formal and informal, affecting the organization. Four outcomes should be sought from this step:

1. Identification of the organization's formal and informal mandates, including who is mandating what and with what force

2. Interpretation of what is required as a result of the mandates (leading perhaps to explicit goals or performance indicators)

3. Clarification of what is forbidden by the mandates (which also might lead to explicit goals or performance indicators)

4. Clarification of what is not ruled out by the mandates (that is, the rough boundaries of the unconstrained field of action)

It is very important to clarify what is explicitly required, explicitly forbidden, and not explicitly ruled out. Attending to the first two can alert organizational members to what they must or must not do, the key elements of what Simons (1995, p. 6) defines as an organization's “boundary system” meant to set limits on behavior tied to defined sanctions and credible threat of punishment. In a time of constrained

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resources and competing demands, choices no doubt must be made about which mandates to emphasize and which to downplay or try to change, but doing either is not without risk.

By considering what the organization might or should do, organizational members and other key stakeholders can engage in valuable discussions about which mandates are useful in that they allow for the responsible exercise of discretion (Hill & Hupe, 2014) and “allow desirable creativity within defined limits of freedom” (Simons, 1995, p. 178); which mandates may need to be changed; and what the organization's mission ought to be. Too many organizations think they are more constrained than they actually are and, indeed, make the fundamental error of assuming that their mandates and mission are the same. This might be the case, but leaders and planners should not start out with that assumption.

Desired Longer-Term Outcomes and Process Design and Action Guidelines There are two potential longer-term desired outcomes of Step 2. First, clarity about what is mandated—what must be done and not done— will increase the likelihood that mandates will actually be met and public value created (Nelson & French, 2002; Rosenbloom, 2007, 2015). Research on goal setting indicates that one of the most important determinants of goal achievement is the clarity of the goals themselves. The more specific the goal, the more likely it will be achieved (Chun & Rainey, 2005; Jung, 2014; Latham, Borgogni, & Petitta, 2008). Second, the possibility of developing a mission that is not limited to mandates is enhanced. It helps people examine the potential purposes of organizational action for creating public value if they know what is not explicitly forbidden.

The process guidelines for this step are straightforward:

1. Have someone compile the formal and informal mandates faced by the organization. A straightforward summary in plain English should be produced. If the organization is governmental in nature, it is important not to forget the democratic-constitutional values that legislatures and the courts have been trying to enforce for

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decades, such as representation, participation, transparency, and individual rights (Hill & Lynn, 2009; Rosenbloom, 2007).

2. Review the mandates in order to clarify what is required, what is forbidden, and what is allowed. Part of this exercise may include gaining clarity about who is mandating what and with what force. This can provide a major clarification of organizational goals or performance indicators. These goals can then be used, along with goals that might be derived from stakeholder analyses and the mission statement, to identify issues.

3. Regularly remind organizational members what the organization is required to do, and forbidden to do, as a way of ensuring conformity with the mandates. In other words, institutionalize attention to the mandates. Certainly strategic plans, annual reports, staff retreats, and orientation sessions for new employees should include a section (perhaps a very brief one) on mandates. Other methods might prove useful as well. Failure to do so can diminish public value and undermine legitimacy. For example, research on federal annual performance plans required by the Government Performance and Results Act has indicated a disturbing failure of those plans to attend to some important mandates, specifically requirements under the Freedom of Information Act. This leads one to wonder if other important mandated elements of creating public value are being ignored (Rosenbloom, 2007).

4. Undertake a regular review of the mandates and discuss which seem to be current, which may need to be revised, and which should be dropped. In a review of state-imposed mandates in Minnesota, local government respondents saw a need for dialogue with the state to ensure mandates are reasonable, flexible, adequately funded, and less burdensome in terms of their cumulative impact (Grossback, 2002).

MISSION Yogi Berra, the famous New York Yankees baseball player and manager, once said, “You've got to be very careful if you don't know ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

where you're going, because you might not get there.” His maxim emphasizes that without a sense of purpose, we are quite literally lost. Mission provides that sense of purpose.

It can be very helpful (though not always necessary or possible) to expand an organization's mission into an early vision of success, which may then guide subsequent efforts at issue identification and strategy development (see Figure 2.1). Without a vision of success, organizational members may not know enough about or see enough how to fulfill the mission.

Communities, in particular, may find it useful to develop a guiding vision that embodies important purposes and values. They are unlikely to have a mission statement as such, but a guiding vision can provide the sense of purpose, values, and common ground that enables disparate and essentially independent groups and organizations to strive together for the common good (Walzer & Hamm, 2012).

Exhibit 4.1. The Vision, Mission, and Values of the Metropolitan Economic Development Association, 2011–2015 and 2016–2020.

2011–2015 Vision: Thriving communities through equal economic participation

Mission: Helping minority entrepreneurs SUCCEED. And communities GROW.

Values: Excellence, customer focus, integrity, respect Source: MEDA 2011–2015 Strategic Plan.

2016–2020 Vision: Thriving communities through equal economic

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participation

Mission: Helping minority entrepreneurs SUCCEED

Values: Excellence, customer focus, integrity, respect Source: MEDA 2016–2020 Strategic Plan.

Mission, in other words, clarifies an organization's purpose or why it should be doing what it does; vision clarifies what the organization should look like and how it should behave in fulfilling its mission. Chapter 8 discusses constructing a vision of success; for now, it is enough to note simply that the foundation of any good vision of success is an organization's mission statement or a community's statement of purpose and values.

Exhibits 4.1 and 4.2 present the mission and vision statements respectively of the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA) and the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). Note that the mission of MEDA changed in a significant way in the current 2016–2020 strategic plan. The new statement drops the sentence “And communities GROW.” The change resulted from a decision to sharpen the organization's focus on helping minority entrepreneurs and businesses. Minneapolis's mission and vision statements will be found in Exhibit 7.1.

Note the contrast between Yogi Berra's maxim and J.R.R. Tolkien's observation in The Fellowship of the Ring (1965, p. 182), “Not all those who wander are lost.” Tolkien was speaking of people who may look like they are wandering but actually do have a clear sense of purpose. Purposeful wandering is quite different from the mindless wandering to which Yogi Berra alludes. Purposeful wandering also is what Daniel Boone is alluding to in the epigraph opening of Chapter 2.

The statement from Barbara Tuchman (1984) quoted as the epigraph of this chapter makes a different point: Any organization that becomes an end in itself is doomed to failure. Perhaps the preeminent example of such failure in the last half-century is the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Clearly, self-aggrandizement, illusions of invulnerability, and disregard for constituents' desires can lead to

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disaster for those leaders not paying attention to what people actually need and want. Indeed, most planning disasters probably meet Tuchman's criteria for folly (Hall, 1980; Nutt, 2002).

Exhibit 4.2. International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions' Mission and Vision Statements, 2017–2022.

Mission INTOSAI is an autonomous, independent, professional, and nonpolitical organization established to provide mutual support; foster the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and experiences; act as a recognized voice of SAIs within the international community; provide high quality auditing standards for the public sector; promote good governance; and foster SAI capacity development and continuous performance improvement.

Vision INTOSAI promotes good governance by enabling SAIs to help their respective governments improve performance, enhance transparency, ensure accountability, maintain credibility, fight corruption, promote public trust, and foster the efficient and effective receipt and use of public resources for the benefit of their citizens.

Source: INTOSAI 2017–2022 Strategic Plan.

Purpose and Immediate Desired Outcomes Ultimately, strategic planning is about purpose, meaning, values, and virtue. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the clarification of mission and the subsequent development of a vision of success. The aim is to specify the purposes of the organization and the philosophy ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

and values that guide it. Unless the purposes focus on socially useful and justifiable ends, and unless the philosophy and values are themselves virtuous, the organization cannot hope to command indefinitely the resources needed to survive, including high-quality, loyal, committed employees (Goodsell, 2010; Rainey, 2014).

Step 3 has two main immediate desired outcomes: a stakeholder analysis (if one has not been completed already) and a mission statement. The former provides useful information and valuable preparation for the latter. Agreement on the stakeholder analysis and mission statement by key decision makers should clarify the organization's arenas of action, many of the basic rules of the game within these arenas, the implicit if not explicit goals of the organization, and possible performance indicators.

In addition, the agreement on mission—particularly if it is consensual —will itself be a source of power for the organization that can have positive effects on performance (Pfeffer, 2010). Much of the power comes from framing and communicating the mission (often through measurable goals) in such a way that employees and other actors can commit to and identify with the organization and its mission (Moynihan, Pandey, & Wright, 2013). The mission in this case provides a deep source of meaning and motivation to those who pursue it (Wright, 2007). Finally, agreement on an organizational mission that embraces socially desirable and justified purposes should produce legitimacy internally and externally for the organization (Suddaby et al., 2017), as well as enthusiasm, and even excitement, among organizational members (Kouzes & Posner, 2017).

Longer-Term Desired Outcomes A number of additional desirable outcomes flow from clarifying and agreeing on the organization's mission. Perhaps the most important is simply that agreement helps foster a habit of focusing deliberations on what is truly important. Too often, key decision makers in a public or nonprofit organization never come together to discuss cross-functional issues or, more important, the organization as a whole.

Even when they do—for example, at a staff meeting—most of their

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time is often taken up with announcements or discussion of relatively trivial matters. Although such discussions may serve to introduce key decision makers to one another and even provide some of the social glue necessary to hold any organization together, they are relatively useless and may be a colossal waste of everyone's time.

When important issues are not being addressed, it is important to know why. Participants simply may not know how to do so, particularly if serious conflicts might be involved, in which case targeted training might help. Or they may not be comfortable with one another—for example, they may be unsure of one another's motives— and therefore fearful of the consequences of raising difficult issues. Team building might be used to build trust and address these fears. Or avoiding real issues can be a way for senior decision makers to control the agenda and enhance their own power. In this last case, senior personnel might be persuaded of the benefits of more participatory decision making or else somehow be persuaded to leave. As Scharmer (2016, p. 415) observes, “The underlying principle here is that energy follows attention [italics in original]. This means that the biggest leverage we have is what we pay attention to and how we attend to a situation.” To be blunt: If you are not paying attention to what is important, what good are you as a leader or follower?

The second important longer-term desired outcome, of course, is the clarification of organizational (or community) purpose or its strategic intent (Ackermann & Eden, 2011). Depending on how this is done, the performance payoffs can be significant. For example, quantitative evidence from public schools in Michigan demonstrates that the existence of a mission statement that is focused and activist and that emphasizes a commitment to measurable achievement is linked to a measurable positive effect on students' math and reading achievements (Weiss & Piderit, 1999). Because defining the mission may be thought of as the central function of leadership, more effective leadership is yet another outcome (Goodsell, 2010).

Clarity of organizational purpose helps leaders in other ways as well. In particular, it helps articulate the purpose of organizational structures and systems, including the resource allocation system. Leaders will be helped to guide internal conflict so that it furthers ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

organizational ends. Leaders are required to guide the play of the game within the structure of the rules, but they also need to change the rules on occasion. Clarity of purpose provides a valuable basis for guiding conflict productively and for understanding which rules help and which need to be changed (Schein, 2016).

A key point about managing conflict is that organizational conflicts typically are about something other than what is nominally in dispute. For that reason, their resolution requires the conflict to be reframed at a higher level of abstraction. Robert Terry (l993, 2001), for example, describes a hierarchy of human action. Fulfillment is at the top and is the embodiment of all that is underneath. Then comes meaning, or why people act; then mission, which guides one in a meaningful direction; then power; then structures and systems; then resources; and finally, the givens of existence. He argues that disputes at any level in this hierarchy are usually really about what is at the next level up. Thus, power struggles in general are usually about the purposes the power is to serve. Arguments about organizational structures and systems are really about who is empowered or disempowered by different designs. Disputes over resources are typically about how they should be regulated in structures and systems. Conflicts over givens are about what counts as a resource and what is to be discounted, devalued, or ignored. A focus on the purpose and ultimate meaning of organizational efforts—to the extent that there is agreement on them— therefore can frame most of these conflicts in such a way that they facilitate the pursuit and fulfillment of organizational ends.

Agreement on purpose can also help the parties in a conflict to disconnect ends from means and thus be clear about what goals are to be pursued, or problems to be addressed, prior to exploring solutions. The advantage of doing so is that most conflicts are about solutions; that is, there usually is no agreement or clear understanding about what problems the solutions are to meant to solve (Bryant, 2015; Nutt, 2002). Further, the organization cannot really know what problems it ought to address without some sense of the purpose it serves. Once an organization understands its purpose, it can define the problems it is meant to solve and can better understand how to choose among competing solutions. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler based their best-

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selling book Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector (1992) in part on this very point: If governments stick to steering—as noted in Chapter 1, the word government comes from the Latin for steering, which means focusing on purpose (and problem definition)—then they are less likely to be a captive of any one approach to rowing (i.e., solutions) (see also Hill & Hupe, 2014; Osborne & Hutchinson, 2004).

Agreement on purpose, therefore, gets the organization to pursue what is often a normatively preferable sequence of conflict resolution activities: to agree on purposes, identify problems or issues, and then explore and agree on solutions. The likelihood that successful solutions will be found increases because the sequence narrows the focus to fulfillment of the mission but broadens the search for acceptable solutions to include all that would further it. The dangers of jumping to solutions and thereby producing a blunder or debacle are minimized (Nutt, 2002).

Agreement on purpose provides a very powerful means of social control. To the extent that the purposes are socially justified and virtuous, agreement will inform organizational discussions and actions with a moral quality that can constrain self-serving and organizationally destructive behavior on the part of organizational members. Said differently, agreement on purpose can lead to a mobilization of organizational energies based on pursuit of a morally justifiable mission beyond self-interest (Lewis & Gilman, 2012).

Another desired outcome of this step is the explicit attention given to philosophy, values, and culture. Organizations rarely discuss these matters directly. As a result, they are likely to misread their strengths and weaknesses and thus make mistakes in the internal assessment step to come. Also, without understanding their philosophy, values, and culture, organizations are likely to make serious errors in the strategy formulation step. They may choose strategies that are not consonant with their philosophy, values, and culture and that, therefore, are doomed to fail unless a well-conceived strategy for culture change is pursued as well (Johnson, Whittington, Regnér, Scholes, & Angwin, 2017; Schein, 2016).

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Finally, as a result of answering the six mission-development questions that come after the next section on stakeholder analyses, the organization will be well on its way to developing a clear vision of success. Indeed, answers to these questions may provide organizational members with the conception that must precede any actual perceptions of success. In other words, it is conceiving and believing that make seeing possible (Weick, 1995).

STAKEHOLDER ANALYSES A stakeholder analysis is a valuable prelude to a mission statement, a SWOC/T analysis, and effective strategies. Indeed, I usually argue that if an organization has time to do only one thing when it comes to strategic planning, it ought to be a stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder analyses are critical because the key to success in the public and nonprofit sectors—and the private sector, too, for that matter—is the satisfaction of key stakeholders. If an organization does not know who its stakeholders are, what criteria they use to judge the organization, and how the organization is performing against those criteria, there is little likelihood that the organization (or community) will know what it should do to satisfy its key stakeholders (Rainey, 2014).

An example may prove instructive at this point. The example shows how a misreading of who the key stakeholders are can cause serious trouble for an organization, how a better reading can improve things dramatically, and how building on a series of stakeholder analyses can lead to far greater fulfillment of the mission. The story plays out over almost 30 years and comes from the Division of Fish and Wildlife of the Department of Natural Resources in a Midwestern state. The department (as the state's agent) is one of the major landowners in the United States. It manages a vast area, including water, forests, mineral and land resources, and huge populations of fish and wildlife. The fish and wildlife resources are important to in-state and out-of-state anglers and hunters and to the large recreational and tourist industries that depend on them. A large fraction of the state's people identify themselves as anglers and hunters, and a large number of others enter the state each year to fish and hunt.

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As such, one might think that the Division of Fish and Wildlife would be one of the most protected and supported units of this state's government, that legions of interest groups—from the National Rifle Association to resort-industry groups to recreational equipment dealer associations—would be continually lobbying state legislators and the governor to maintain, if not increase, public financial support for the division. When our story begins, however, such was emphatically not the case. Indeed, quite the opposite. The division had been under frequent attack from some key stakeholders—hunters and anglers. They argued that the division saw itself primarily as a regulator and naysayer to these stakeholders. They felt it was completely uninterested in their satisfaction.

The division decided to engage in strategic planning to turn around an increasingly bad situation. One of the first steps was a stakeholder analysis. The most important piece of information to emerge from that analysis was that the professionals in the division operated under the mistaken assumption that, in effect, the prime stakeholders were fish and deer. They felt their job was to regulate anglers and hunters so that the state's fish and wildlife resources could be protected and managed over the long term.

There would have been little problem with this view if the fish and deer could vote, spend money, and pay taxes. But they cannot—and anglers, hunters, and their families do, along with the owners of resorts and sporting goods establishments. Although the division's maintenance of fish and wildlife resources was obviously one criterion that anglers and hunters used to judge its performance, there were many more as well (such as its ability to provide enjoyable recreational opportunities), and the division was failing in many instances. The result was hostility on the part of these stakeholders and attempts in the legislature to cut the division's budget and curtail its powers. As a result of insights gained from the stakeholder analysis, the division began pursuing several strategies to manage fish and wildlife resources effectively in the long term while increasing the satisfaction of hunters and anglers (and not alienating environmentalists!). The division has, in fact, dramatically increased support from the sports groups.

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But the division and its encompassing department did not stop there. They embraced strategic planning and began to work at issues that mattered to the department's key stakeholders and developed a synthesis of divisional missions and mandates. By taking a bigger- picture view, the department developed a new mission focused on what is now called ecosystem-based management, including working with citizens to protect and manage the state's natural resources (not just those that are state-owned), to provide outdoor recreation opportunities and to provide for commercial uses of natural resources in a way that creates a sustainable quality of life. The new mission has the support of all the major stakeholders (though they certainly do not all support the department on every issue) because it took their interests into account. The mission and the strategies used to pursue it have won the department accolades nationally and internationally for innovative approaches to involving the public and to pursuing the common good. And it all began—at least in part—with a simple stakeholder analysis almost 30 years ago.

The compatibility of strategic planning with many newer governance and management approaches is directly related to the emphasis on addressing key stakeholder needs, including those who might be termed “customers.” For example, a hallmark of government reinvention, reengineering, and continuous quality improvement in both public and nonprofit sectors is their emphasis on meeting customer expectations (Cohen, Eimicke, & Heikkila, 2013). In contrast, approaches emphasizing cocreation and coproduction of goods, services, and indeed governance typically do not use the customer language. Nonetheless, attention to stakeholders is crucial for cocreation and coproduction to succeed (Osborne, Radnor, Vidal, and Kinder, 2014; Voorberg et al., 2015).

Resource A presents a variety of stakeholder analyses. In general, the three that are most useful for developing a mission statement are the Basic Analysis Technique, Power Versus Interest Grid, and Stakeholder Influence Diagram. These analyses may have been produced as part of developing an initial agreement, in which case they should be revisited. If these analyses have not been conducted, then now is the time. Here we present them in brief.

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The Basic Analysis Technique consists of a minimum of three steps. The first step is to identify exactly who the organization's stakeholders are. Figure 4.1 presents a typical stakeholder map for a government. The stakeholders are numerous (though many organizations have even more).

Figure 4.1. Stakeholder Map for a Government.

Five additional points should be made about this figure. First, the diagram makes clear that any organization (and especially a government), network, or collaboration is an arena in which individuals and groups contest for control of its attention, resources, and output (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Weber & Waeger, 2017). A major purpose of a stakeholder analysis is to get a more precise picture of the players in the arena.

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Second, it is important to identify stakeholders at the right level of aggregation. For example, it is certainly true that citizens are a key stakeholder of governments, but saying so does not help much because the citizenry really consists of a host of different stakeholders with different stakes or interests in what the government does or does not do. There is an art to knowing what level of aggregation to pick, and the choice can influence subsequent analyses about how well the organization is doing with its stakeholders and what it needs from specific stakeholders. In general, stakeholders should be differentiated if doing so would make a difference in expectations placed on the organization and the responses it might make (Ackermann & Eden, 2011).

Third, special note should be made of future generations. I believe strongly that organizations (and especially governments) have an obligation to leave the world in as good shape as they found it, if not better. It is important to keep this public trust in mind in this era of special interest groups and a strong lurch to the far political right that seems to devalue the stewardship function of government and public institutions. As Theodore Roosevelt said, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

Fourth, it is very important for key employee groups to be explicitly identified. Not all employees are the same. There are different groups with different roles to play who will use different criteria to judge organizational performance. Clarity about these groups is necessary to ensure that organizational responses are sufficiently differentiated.

I worked with a public library that presents an interesting example in this regard. It took considerable encouragement on my part to get the librarians to identify themselves as key stakeholders. Their self- effacing and altruistic view of themselves as public servants was admirable but misplaced. By definition, they are key stakeholders of the organization, and their own satisfaction is important to the success of their services. Indeed, one of the issues driving the strategic planning process for the library was the fact that the librarians were experiencing increased stress and even “burnout” as a result of heightened demands on their services. Something had to be done to alleviate the stress. Furthermore, several of the key criteria they use to ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

judge organizational performance relate to the professional standards the library does or does not meet (including, for example, guaranteeing First Amendment protections). In other words, it is usually the professional librarians themselves, not other stakeholders, who hold the organization to exacting professional standards of service.

Fifth, some key stakeholders for many organizations and communities are likely to be quite distant physically; nonetheless, they must be considered carefully. For example, federal and state governments and distant corporate headquarters of local establishments typically have a significant impact on local communities.

The second step in the analysis is to specify the criteria the stakeholders use to assess the organization's performance. There are two approaches to this task. One is to guess what the criteria are; the second is to ask the stakeholders themselves. The strategic planning team should always make its own guesses, but at some point, it may prove instructive and politically useful to ask stakeholders (for example, through surveys, interviews, or group discussions) to profess their criteria.

Why should the team always make its own guesses? First, it is faster. Second, the stakeholders may not be completely honest. In the case of city council members, for example, city employees usually say a key criterion is whether the performance of city departments enhances their reelection prospects. Council members are unlikely to declare this criterion in public even though it is indeed important to them. On the other hand, asking stakeholders what their criteria are can be instructive because the team's own guesses can be wrong (Thomas, Poister, & Su, 2015).

The third step in the process is to make a judgment about how well the organization performs against the stakeholders' criteria. The judgments need not be very sophisticated. Simply noting whether the organization does poorly, okay, or very well against the criteria is enough to prompt a very useful discussion. Additional topics of discussion should include areas of organizational strength and weakness; overlaps, gaps, conflicts, and contradictions among the

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criteria; and opportunities and challenges or threats posed by the organization's current performance.

These three steps should help set the stage for a discussion of the organization's mission (or a community's purposes and values). In particular, a stakeholder analysis forces team members to place themselves in the shoes of others—especially outsiders—and make a rather dispassionate assessment of the organization's performance from the outsiders' points of view. Such activity is one of the best possible ways to avoid the attributes of folly that Tuchman describes. It is also likely to be a necessary precursor of ethical action (Lewis & Gilman, 2012). In addition, the stakeholder analysis provides a valuable prelude to the SWOC/T analysis (Step 4), strategic issue identification (Step 5), and strategy development (Step 6).

If time permits, or circumstances demand, three additional steps may be advisable. In the fourth, the strategic planning team may wish to discuss exactly how the various stakeholders influence the organization. Many members of the team may not know precisely how the organization is influenced, and the discussion may also highlight the really important stakeholders. The Power Versus Interest Grid and Stakeholder Influence Diagram techniques can help move this discussion forward.

Fifth, the strategic planning team may wish to discuss what the organization needs from each stakeholder group. I have emphasized the need for the organization to satisfy key stakeholder groups, but it may also be very important to focus attention directly on what the organization needs to survive and prosper. The usual assumption is that if the organization satisfies key stakeholders, it can survive and prosper. But that may not be true, especially when there is a difference between funders and service recipients (as is often the case for public and nonprofit organizations). A direct focus on what the organization needs to survive may reveal an important strategic issue to address: How can the organization secure the resources necessary to continue pursuit of its mission when it does not already receive those resources from the key stakeholders?

Finally, the team may wish to establish a rough ordering among the

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stakeholders according to their importance to the organization. The order, of course, might vary with different issues, but the rough ordering will give the team an idea of which stakeholders demand the most attention.

A Power Versus Interest Grid arrays stakeholders according to their power to place a claim on the organization's attention, resources, or output and according to their interest in the organization's attention, resources, or output. Four categories of stakeholders result: Those with high power and high interest are called players. Those with high power and low interest are called context setters because their power helps set the context but they are not interested enough to be players. Those with high interest and lower power are called subjects as they are subject to the power of others. And those with low interest and low power form the crowd (Ackermann & Eden, 2011). The mission certainly must take the players and context setters into account in some way, even if the organization's ultimate purpose is to serve the subjects or crowd (Bryson, Cunningham, & Lokkesmoe, 2002).

A Stakeholder Influence Diagram begins with a Power Versus Interest Grid. Once stakeholders are located on the grid, arrows can be drawn in to show which stakeholders influence whom. (In tandem, a Power Versus Interest Grid and Stakeholder Influence Diagram can be used to help facilitate and formalize completion of the three final steps in the Basic Analysis Technique.)

The team has to decide whether to circulate the stakeholder analysis (or analyses) outside the strategic planning team. It is primarily just an input to other steps in the process (mission statement, SWOC/T analysis, strategic issue identification, strategy development, implementation), so there may be no good reason for more public discussion (especially if a major purpose of the strategic planning effort is to change the power, interest, influence, or other aspects of the organization's current stakeholders).

THE MISSION STATEMENT A mission statement is a declaration of organizational purpose. Mission statements vary in length depending on their intended use, ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

but they are typically short—no more than a page—and often not more than a punchy slogan. They should also be targeted, activist in tone, and inspiring. And they should lead to measures that will indicate whether the mission is being achieved.

The actual statement should grow out of discussions aimed at answering six questions. The statement should at least touch on most answers though for some purposes it may be distilled into a slogan. Answers to the six questions (outlined below) will provide the basis for developing a vision of success later in the process.

Developing the answers is a valuable but very demanding process. Several hours (and in some cases days) of discussion by the strategic planning team may be required to reach consensus on the answers, and perhaps additional time for reflection may be necessary. Sometimes the discussions may seem too philosophical or academic to be of much use. If discussions start to get bogged down in grand abstractions or minutiae, by all means move ahead. Assign someone the task of writing up what has been covered so far, including points of agreement and disagreement, and come back for further discussions when the time seems right or when decisions must be reached. Strategic planning should not be allowed to get in the way of useful action. However, it is important to remember that strategic planning is ultimately about purpose, meaning, value, and virtue and, therefore, is philosophical at its base. To paraphrase management guru Peter Drucker, strategic planning involves responding to a series of Socratic questions. The six questions that follow structure one of the most important parts of that Socratic dialogue:

1. Who are we? If your organization were walking down the street and someone asked it who it was, what would the answer be? The question is one of identity, defined as what organizational members believe is distinct, central, and enduring about their organization (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Rughase, 2007). The answer certainly may need to be more than just what appears on the organization's letterhead as the name there may not mean much. Clarity about identity is crucial because often the most effective way to influence a person is not to tell them what to do but to communicate who he or she is. So, too, with organizations.

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Because of the strong cultures, traditions, and reputations, to say that we are the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or the United States Marine Corps carries a great deal of meaning and implies a great deal about what we can and ultimately will do. Public and nonprofit organizations that achieve excellence and endurance are guided by a combination of a guiding purpose and fundamental values. They also have a willingness to change and adapt yet still maintain their core (Goodsell, 2010).

It is also important to ask a question about identity in order to help the organization draw a distinction between what it is and what it does. Too many organizations make a fundamental mistake when they assume they are what they do, meaning they conflate mission and strategy. Although it can be hard to know what something is without seeing what it does, it is still important not to assume that something is only what it appears to do. If that mistake is made, important avenues of strategic response to environmental conditions can be unwittingly sealed off. At best, the organization fails to create as much public value as it can; at worst, it becomes irrelevant.

Finally, if collaboration is important to the organization, it is also important to note that the organization's identity may well change at least some as collaborative relationships and the identity of the collaboration itself develop. This is to be expected and should be acknowledged as part of the process (Clarke & Fuller, 2010). The fact that cycles of identity change typically occur in collaborative relationships underscores the need for the partners to value change in the pursuit of their missions. It also emphasizes the need to honor the previous identity while partially estranging people from it—in keeping with the idea that if you want change, you should also emphasize stability (Cameron & Quinn, 2011).

2. What are the basic social and political needs we exist to meet or what are the basic social or political problems we exist to address? The answer to this question, along with the organization's mandates, provides the basic social justification for the organization's existence and much of the source of its legitimacy. The purpose of the organization is to meet the needs or address the

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problems. The organization can then be seen as a means to an end and not as an end in itself; the real end is to create public value in areas that need it. This question may need to be asked stakeholder by stakeholder.

3. In general, what do we do to recognize, anticipate, and respond to these needs or problems? This question prompts the organization to actively stay in touch with the needs it is supposed to fill, or the problems it is supposed to address, typically through continuing informal and formal research. Left to their own devices, organizations generally will talk primarily to themselves, not to outsiders (Wilson, 1989). When we see individuals talking mainly to themselves in the absence of a smartphone with ear buds, we often suspect mental illness. When we see organizations talking primarily to themselves, we should suspect some sort of pathology as well. In order to remain “healthy,” organizations must be encouraged to stay in touch with the outside world that justifies their existence and provides the resources to sustain them.

Furthermore, constant attention to external needs or problems is likely to prompt the necessary adjustments to the organization's mission (though these would probably be rare), mandates, or product or service level and mix, costs, financing, management, and structure necessary for it to remain effective. Successful innovations typically are a response to real needs or problems; mere technological feasibility is not enough (Borins, 2014; Van de Ven, Polley, Garud, & Venkataraman, 1999). Moreover, much or most of the information critical to the creation of innovations usually comes from outside the organization. The more people in the organization as a whole who attend to external needs and problems, the more likely a climate conducive to innovation and effectiveness will prevail and the easier it will be to justify desirable innovations to internal audiences (Rainey, 2014). Finally, people often need to be reassured that they will not be punished for returning from the outside world with bad news. We all have seen messengers shot down because key decision makers didn't like the message. An explicit endorsement of contact with the outside world is likely to make the organization a safer haven for

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messengers who carry bad news that needs to be heard.

4. How should we respond to our key stakeholders? This question asks the organization to decide what relations it wishes to establish with its key stakeholders and what values it seeks to promote through those relations. For example, it almost always pays to be open to what people have to say, to listen, and to engage in constructive dialogue (Scharmer, 2016). This question also focuses on what the stakeholders value and what the organization does to provide that. Obviously, a more detailed discussion of what the organization could do may have to wait until Step 6, but discussions of this sort can be pursued usefully throughout the process. In this step, it is particularly important to encourage people to talk and think in terms of creating public value.

5. What are our philosophy, values, and culture? The importance of reflecting on and clarifying an organization's philosophy, core values, and culture becomes most apparent in the strategy development step. Only strategies that are consonant with the philosophy, core values, and culture are likely to succeed; strategies that are not are likely to fail unless culture change is a key part of the strategy (Cameron & Quinn, 2011; Schein, 2016). Clarity about philosophy and values in advance of strategy development is one way to avoid leaving out attention to needed culture change.

Perhaps even more important, however, is that clarity about philosophy, core values, and culture will help an organization maintain its integrity. If an organization is clear about its philosophy and core values, it is able to more easily refuse any proposals or actions that are likely to damage its integrity and accept those that maintain or enhance its integrity. In a time when public confidence in most institutions is low, maintaining organizational integrity is vital. Once it is damaged, it is very difficult to reestablish public confidence in the organization as the 2014 scandal (and its aftermath) besetting the Veterans Administration over treatment of veterans shows. The VA case clearly demonstrates how important it is for government organizations (and their political masters) to explicitly embrace

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virtuous philosophy, core values, and culture and how much effort must be expended on building and maintaining an organization that reflects them (Goodsell, 2010).

A caution is in order at this point, however. It might be argued that relatively open discussion of philosophy, values, and culture could actually damage an organization's effectiveness in some cases. Because only publicly acceptable aspects of philosophies, values, and culture are likely to be discussed in public, an organization whose success depends in part on pursuit of values not favored by significant parts of the public could suffer. For example, a local economic development agency may in effect further the ends of wealthy land developers as part of its strategy of encouraging private development and investment to boost the local economy. No matter how beneficial such a strategy ultimately is to the community, it is probably unacceptable in most parts of the country for a government agency to say publicly that as a byproduct of successful pursuit of its mission, it helps the rich get richer. Public discussion of the agency's philosophy and values, therefore, might require the agency to change its strategy and, as a result, perhaps become less effective. At the very least, the agency may need to engage in some public education about the virtues of private markets and the fact that there is no guarantee that private developers and investors will survive in those markets.

Key decision makers have to decide whether to go public with a discussion of the organization's philosophy, values, and culture. Those interested in “reform” are likely to favor public discussion; those against are not. The point to be made, of course, is that any discussion of philosophy, values, and culture, whether public or not, will have political consequences (Stone, 2011).

6. What makes us distinctive or unique? There was a time not so very long ago when it seemed public organizations were, in Herbert Kaufman's term (1976), immortal. Not anymore. Cutback management or downsizing are now terms familiar to most public managers, many public organizations or parts of organizations have disappeared, and the number of public functions that are being carried out by private or nonprofit organizations has

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increased. Privatization is here to stay, and its domain may increase (Bozeman, 2010; Kettl, 2015a, 2015c). Public organizations must be quite clear about what makes them or the functions they perform distinctive or unique or they will be likely candidates for privatization. Indeed, if there is nothing distinctive or unique about a public organization or function, then perhaps it should be privatized. Nonprofit organizations need to be clear about what makes them distinctive or unique or they, too, may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage (Bryson, Gibbons, & Shaye, 2001). The world has become increasingly competitive, and those organizations that can't point to some distinct contribution they make may lose out.

Some Examples Some examples can help illustrate how these mission questions might be answered or at least touched upon. Earlier, the mission statements for MEDA and INTOSAI were presented (see Exhibits 4.1 and 4.2). Although both are relatively short, each grew out of extensive discussions, emphasizes important purposes to be served, and articulates what many employees would see as a calling worthy of their commitment (Goodsell, 2010).

Note that MEDA's mission changed between its 2011–2015 and 2016– 2020 strategic plans. The reasons behind this change are discussed further in Chapter 5. The main reason is simply that MEDA desired to focus on its core business, helping minority entrepreneurs and business, and decided to deemphasize what it could do much less about, namely, helping communities grow.

Another example comes from the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, a large nonprofit operating foundation located in St. Paul, Minnesota. It provides a wide range of effective and often quite innovative social services and programs. The mission statement, presented in Exhibit 4.3, is somewhat lengthy, but it clearly authorizes and prompts the foundation to seek the biggest impact it can in its chosen domain. Wilder has been guided by virtually the same mission for well over 100 years. The foundation has added what they call an impact statement that provides for a more targeted statement of purpose within the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

broader mission.

Exhibit 4.3. Mission and Focus of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation.

Mission Statement (from Articles of Incorporation–1974) The mission of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation is to promote the social welfare of persons resident or located in the greater Saint Paul metropolitan area by all appropriate means including:

Relief of the poor

Care of the sick and aged

Care and nurture of children

Aid of the disadvantaged and otherwise needy

Promotion of physical and mental health

Support of rehabilitation and corrections

Provision of needed housing and social services

Operation of residences and facilities for the aged, the infirm and those requiring special care

And, in general, the conservation of human resources by the provision of human services responsive to the welfare needs of the community, all without regard to, or discrimination on account of, nationality, sex, color, religious scruples or prejudices.

Impact Wilder provides services that build hope and resiliency for children and families through mental health, education, housing, social adjustment, early childhood and aging programs. We build community capacity through leadership development programs,

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community initiatives and collaborations that bring people together to solve complex social challenges. Wilder Research studies evidence and provides applied and practical research in the field of human services.

Source: Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, https://www.wilder.org, accessed July 27, 2017; https://www.wilder.org/AboutUs/Impact/Pages/default.aspx; accessed June 3, 2017.

PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES Several process guidelines should be kept in mind as a strategic planning group works at clarifying mission and mandates:

1. Someone should be put in charge of compiling the organization's formal and informal mandates. The group should then review and discuss this list and make any appropriate modifications. The group should pay particular attention to what is required and what is not ruled out and what mandates the organization should try to change.

2. The group should complete a stakeholder analysis using the worksheets found in Bryson and Alston (2011). (The worksheets take the group through the Basic Analysis Technique and Power Versus Interest Grid; other techniques are discussed in Resource A.) Public and nonprofit organizations typically consist of shifting coalitions involving networks of internal and external stakeholders. Organizational purpose should be crafted at least in part out of a consideration of these stakeholders' interests. Otherwise, successful agreement on organizational purposes is unlikely (Fisher & Ury, 2011; Spee & Jarzabkowski, 2017; Thompson, 2014).

3. After completing the stakeholder analysis, the group should fill out the mission statement worksheets also found in Bryson and Alston (2011). The worksheets make use of the six questions outlined on pp. 134–138. Group members should fill them out as individuals first and then discuss their answers as a group. Extra time must be reserved for a “culture audit,” which is necessary to identify organizational philosophy, values, and culture. (Guidelines

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for performing a culture audit can be found in Cameron & Quinn, 2011; Johnson et al., 2017; Khademian, 2002; and Schein, 2016.)

4. After answering the questions and discussing the answers, the group should turn the task of developing a draft mission statement (and perhaps a separate values statement) over to an individual. It is very important to allow sufficient time for deliberation about the draft mission statement, particularly if any changes in mission are contemplated for the draft. Quick agreement may occur but should not be expected. For organizations facing simple or complicated situations, ideally the mission should be directly measurable or else indirectly measurable through closely associated measurable goals or performance indicators. Otherwise, the mission may well be a “mission impossible” and the satisfaction of employees and other key stakeholders may suffer (Poister, Aristigueta, & Hall, 2015; Wright & Davis, 2003). For organizations facing complex situations, the mission is more likely to draw attention to those principles best thought to guide action. These should be phrased in such as way they lend themselves to ongoing assessments of their effectiveness.

Sawhill and Williamson (2001) found that the nonprofit organizations they studied had the most success with the indirect measurement approach though the direct approach could work as well. The best of the measurable missions or goals “(1) set the bar high, (2) helped focus the organization on high-leverage strategies, (3) mobilized the staff and donors, and (4) served multiple purposes, such as setting the larger public agenda about a certain issue” (p. 383). Further, organizations found that it was best to keep measures simple and easy to communicate, that the measures and performance against them made the organization “marketable” to boards of directors and donors interested in effectiveness and accountability and that the measures made management easier (pp. 384–385).

After an agreed-upon mission statement is developed, the group also may wish to brainstorm a slogan that captures the essence of the mission or run a contest among organizational members or

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stakeholders for an appropriate slogan. For example, a public library with which I worked came up with the wonderful slogan —“Mind of the City”—which emphasizes intelligence, learning, information and information technology, community, and wholeness rather than an older view of libraries as book warehouses.

5. It is important not to get stalled by development of a mission statement. If the group hits a snag, record areas of agreement and disagreement, then move on to the next steps. Return later to discuss the mission based on any additional information or solutions that turn up in future steps.

6. Strategic planning teams should expect to have to reexamine their draft mission statement as they move through the process, either to reaffirm the statement or to redraft it in light of additional information or reflection. Steps 4 through 6 provide additional opportunities to discuss the mission. As the process continues, more detail may be added to the mission statement in terms of types of programs, products, services, or relationships that will be offered to stakeholders, particularly those who are customers.

7. Once agreement is reached on a mission statement, it should be kept before the strategic planning group as it moves through the planning process. The group should refer to the statement as it seeks to formulate goals, identify strategic issues, develop effective strategies, prepare a vision of success, and in general resolve conflicts among the team. The organization's mission provides a basis for resolving conflicts based on purposes and interests, not positions (Fisher & Ury, 2011).

8. Once general agreement is reached, the mission should be visible to all organizational members. It should be referred to in preambles to official organizational actions and posted on walls and in offices; it should become a physical presence in the organization. Otherwise, it is likely to be forgotten at the very times it is most needed. Explicit reference to the mission should be the standard first step in resolving conflicts. The organization that forgets its mission will drift, and opportunism and the loss of

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integrity are likely to spread and perhaps become rampant. Organizational survival itself—or at least the survival of its leadership—will then be in serious question (Kouzes & Posner, 2017; Selznick, 1957).

9. Adoption of the organization's mission should mark an important decision point. Agreement may not occur at the end of this step, however, as the draft mission may be revised over the course of the strategic planning process. Formal agreement on the organization's mission definitely should be reached by the end of the strategy development step or review and adoption step.

10. Organizations not engaged in a full-blown strategic planning process may still want to hold mission retreats periodically to reaffirm and/or revisit and modify their mission. Retreats that prompt organizational members to focus on mission (and vision) may be helpful during the organization's formative period and at multiyear intervals after that. The dialogue at such retreats may bring to light the need for some organizational tinkering that can be dealt with promptly or perhaps highlight a strategic issue to be addressed later.

SUMMARY This chapter discussed identifying mandates an organization faces and clarifying the mission it wishes to pursue. Mandates are typically imposed from the outside and may be considered the “musts” that the organization is required to pursue (though it may want to do them as well). Mission is typically developed more from the inside; it identifies the organization's purposes. Mission may be considered what the organization “wants” to do. Rarely is an organization so boxed in by mandates that its mission is totally limited to meeting the mandates. Mandates and mission jointly frame the domain within which the organization seeks to create public value. Jointly they articulate the boundaries for desirable search and action in pursuit of organizational purposes on the one hand, and the territory of prohibited actions on the other hand (Hill & Hupe, 2014; Simons, 1995). Creating lasting public value requires that the enduring benefits of what the

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organization does and does not do must significantly outweigh the costs.

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CHAPTER FIVE Assessing the Environment to Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Challenges

You wouldn't think that something as complexly busy as life would be so easy to overlook.

—Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

So it is said that if you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others, but do know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

To respond effectively to changes in their environments, public and nonprofit organizations (collaborations and communities) must understand the external and internal contexts within which they find themselves so that they can develop strategies to link the two in such a way that significant and long-lasting public value is created. The word context comes from the Latin for weave together, and that is exactly what well-done external and internal environmental assessments help organizations do: weave together their understandings and actions in a sensible way so that organizational performance is enhanced. In his classic book on sensemaking, Karl Weick (1995, p. 104) observes, “Sensemaking is about context. Wholes and cues, documents and meanings, figures and ground, periphery and center, all define one another. Sensibleness derives from relationships, not parts.” Sensemaking is needed to weave hindsight, foresight, and insight into sensible action. More prosaically, knowledge of context is needed to help avoid doing stupid things—something organizations do all too often (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012).

The sheer pace of change in the world at large heightens the need for

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effective assessments. It seems as if the future is hurtling toward us more quickly, dramatically, and disruptively than ever—and this can be alternately confusing, pleasing, and downright scary. There are disputes about whether the pace of change is accelerating; regardless, there is enough change all around that wise organizational leaders should feel compelled to pay attention. In part, this is because change so often occurs where, when, how, and in a form that is least expected —which, of course, is exactly what you should expect in a complex, richly interconnected world (Scharmer, 2016). In other words, the pace of change may or may not have increased, but the complexity of the systems that make up the world almost certainly has. As a result, change anywhere can result in unpredictable results elsewhere as the behavior of complex systems often demonstrates a sensitive and unpredictable dependence on initial conditions (Patton, 2011; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015).

Some of these changes might be what Taleb (2007) calls Black Swan events, where the term black swan refers to exceedingly rare events in a world where it is assumed all swans must be white. Black Swan events are high-impact events that are both unusual—statistically extreme outliers—and highly consequential. Taleb cites World War I, the rise of the personal computer, the Internet, and the events of September 11, 2001, as examples. More recently, we might add the global financial meltdown of 2007–2009; the choice by voters in the United Kingdom to exit the European Union (aka the Brexit vote), and the election of Donald Trump when virtually every poll and betting market indicated he would lose. Some may dispute the unpredictability of these occurrences, but the fact is that most people were taken by surprise as much of their world changed dramatically around them, temporarily in some cases and profoundly in others. Not all of this is new, of course. Around 400 BCE, Plato observed in the dialogue Cratylus, “Everything changes and nothing remains still” (Paragraph 402, Section a, Line 8) (Jewitt, 2003). But the sheer scope and scale of hard-to-predict changes emanating from unexpected sources probably is new.

PURPOSE ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

The purpose of Step 4 in the strategic planning process, therefore, is to provide information on the strengths and weaknesses of the organization in relation to the opportunities and challenges or threats it faces. This information can be used to create ideas for strategic interventions that would shape and guide organizational decisions and actions designed to create public value. Strengths and weaknesses are usually internal and refer to the present capacity of the organization, whereas opportunities and challenges are typically external and refer to future potentials for good or ill. The distinctions, however, between internal and external and present and future orientations are fluid, and people should not worry too much about whether they have drawn them properly.

In addition, collaborations and communities may wish to focus not on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges but rather on their hopes and concerns. The reason is that what is internal and external for groups and organizations who will be key implementers is not the same as what is internal and external for the collaboration or jurisdiction.

Beyond that, attention to hopes and fears is more likely to elicit value concerns, which may be more central to collaboration or community- oriented strategic planning than to strategic planning for organizations (Agranoff, 2012; Bryson, Crosby & Bloomberg, 2014). (Interestingly, delineation of hopes often may lead directly to the articulation of goals and strategic issues; enumerating fears helps identify strategic issues that must be addressed in order to achieve the goals, in part by avoiding what have been called negative-avoidance goals, or serious outcomes to be avoided; see Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2016. The desire to avoid negative outcomes can be and often is more motivating than the desire to achieve more positive outcomes; see Van Quaquebeke, Graf, Kerschreiter, Schuh, & van Dick 2014).

The approach to external and internal environmental assessments outlined in this chapter will set the stage for the identification of strategic issues in Step 5. It will also provide valuable information for use in the following step, strategy development. Strategic issues typically concern how the organization (what is inside) relates to the larger environment it inhabits (what is outside). Every effective ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

strategy takes advantage of strengths and opportunities at the same time it minimizes or overcomes weaknesses and challenges, and it links inside and outside.

Chapter 1 highlighted several major trends and events that are currently forcing often drastic changes on governments, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Unfortunately, for various reasons, public and nonprofit organizations typically are not very savvy about perceiving such changes quickly enough to respond effectively. Instead, a crisis often has to develop before organizations respond (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). This may open up significant opportunity spaces, but for the unprepared organization, many useful avenues of response typically will be closed off by the time a crisis emerges (Kapucu & Özerdem 2011). Also, in crisis situations, people typically stereotype, withdraw, project, rationalize, oversimplify, and otherwise make errors likely to produce unwise decisions (Kahneman, 2013). The result can be colossal errors and debacles (Nutt, 2002). A major purpose of any strategic planning exercise, therefore, is to alert an organization to the various external or future-oriented threats and challenges that may prompt or require an organizational response in the foreseeable future.

In other words, a major purpose of strategic planning is to instill the kind of “mindfulness” and support for sensemaking that prompts timely learning and action and prepares an organization to respond effectively to the outside world—either before a crisis emerges or when one cannot be avoided (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). Even in a crisis, however, organizations can use many of the concepts, procedures, and tools of strategic planning to help them think and act strategically (Kapucu & Özerdem 2011).

But any effective response to potential challenges or opportunities must be based on an intimate knowledge of the organization's competencies and the strengths and weaknesses they entail. Strategic planning, in other words, is concerned with finding the best or most advantageous fit between an organization and its larger environment based on an intimate understanding of both. Finding it may involve changing the organization, affecting the environment, or both.

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DESIRED IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES Step 4 produces documented lists of external or future-oriented organizational opportunities and challenges or threats and internal or present strengths and weaknesses. Ordered differently, these four lists comprise a SWOC/T analysis, a popular strategic planning tool. An example from the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) case is presented in Exhibit 5.1.

Exhibit 5.1. The 2014 SWOT Analysis of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions. In 2014, INTOSAI's Task Force on Strategic Planning engaged in internal and external scans as part of their strategic planning process, the first they had ever done. Results of the scans would directly inform the drafting of the 2017–2022 strategic plan. The results of the SWOT analysis are summarized below.

Strengths

International Standards for Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) and auditing guidelines help members audit in a more uniform way

INTOSAI fostered knowledge sharing

INTOSAI Development Initiative (DI) assists with capacity building

Fosters diverse membership

Connects SAIs with international donors

Weaknesses

Communication challenges (technology, long-distance meetings, different time zones)

Gaps between developed and developing country members

INTOSAI slow to react to rapid-changing issues

More capacity building and trainings requested from SAIs

Difficulty to access

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INTOSAI has strong connections with United Nations actors

INTOSAI, as organization, a role model for transparency and accountability

resources on website

Although INTOSAI is good at setting standards, it has yet to find an effective way of implementing or enforcing them

The organizational structure needs to be clarified so donors clearly understand organization governance

Opportunities

Align strategic plan with SDGs

INTOSAI could have a major role in setting global standards for auditing

INTOSAI could make a name for itself and lead by example

Increased networking opportunities

Threats

Issues of independence of certain country members

Funding constraints

Environmental issues and climate change

Corruption issues

Possible economic declines

Shifting technology

INTOSAI may face challenges in order to showing each unique member why INTOSAI is relevant to them

Normal text = information from internal scan; italic text = information from external scan.

As part of the internal scan, the Task Force on Strategic Planning gathered information from the member countries' SAIs on their views of the organization's SWOTs, as well as feedback on INTOSAI's then strategic goals. The internal scan involved an electronic questionnaire translated into seven languages that went

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to all 194 SAIs and five associate members and resulted in a 63 percent response rate. The survey was not anonymous, which could have affected results. In addition to the survey, interviews were conducted with current and former INTOSAI leaders. There was, in general, strong support for the existing strategic goals but also suggestions for some changes in them.

In addition to conducting an internal scan, the Task Force on Strategic Planning also conducted an external scan involving interviews with more than 20 organizations, including donors, associate members, and other entities separate from, but with a relationship to, INTOSAI. Respondents were asked to identify what they thought was the most pressing governance issue facing SAIs. Five main issues emerged from interviews: the transparency and accountability of public participation in budgeting processes and/or combating government corruption; the independence of SAIs with appreciation for the variations between countries and the impact of this on SAI operating model; the capacity of SAIs to conduct their work and the need for INTOSAI to help leverage resources to increase capacity through technical training support; the influence of illicit financial inputs to governments in both developed and developing countries; and the need to solidify INTOSAI's role as a global leader in legitimate government auditing practices. External interviewees were also asked about INTOSAI's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

There are several commonalities between the internal and external scan. These include the suggestion that standards should be more clearly stated; that INTOSAI's website and Internet-based communication tools should be improved; that the organization should strengthen partnerships and networks to build capacity and to bring awareness to INTOSAI initiatives; and that organization's structure needs to be clarified. Both internal and external sources foresaw similar emerging challenges: countries not seeing continued relevance of the organization, unstable funding, and ongoing concerns about finding a balance between SAI independence while also enforcing and monitoring countries' compliance with INTOSAI's standards.

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Source: P. Huff, (2017). Review and analysis of the INTOSAI 2017–2022 strategic plan. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

Note that traditionally, challenges have been called threats, but experience and research indicate that talking about threats may be too threatening to many strategic planning participants. Characterizing things as threats can lead to rigidity in thinking or, alternatively, excessively risky behavior in response to the threat (see, for example, Chattopadhyay, Glick, & Huber, 2001). My own experience and that of other consultants with whom I work indicates that the more neutral label challenges seems to open people up more to considering a range of possible futures and actions. If the threat category alone is used, the SWOC/T analysis becomes a SWOT analysis, a more commonly used term (Bryson & Edwards, 2017).

The SWOC/T analysis, in conjunction with a stakeholder analysis, can help the team to identify what the organization's critical success factors (CSFs) are (Johnson, Whittington, Regnér, Scholes, & Angwin, 2017). These are the things the organization must do, criteria it must meet, or, when measured, performance indicators it must do well against (because they matter to key stakeholders) for it to survive and prosper. Key success factors, in other words, function as important performance requirements that the organization's strategies as a set must meet. Note that CSFs help identify the sources of success, whereas key performance indicators (KPIs) are measures of how well the organization is doing against its CSFs.

In addition, the team should be encouraged to clarify the organization's distinctive competencies (Selznick, 1957). Here, some definitions are helpful (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2007): a competency is an ability, sets of actions, or processes that an organization can manage and that ideally help it perform well (the desired outcome) against important goals, desired competency outcomes, or CSFs (which should also be desired outcomes). In other words, an organization may have a competency, but if it does not help the organization do well against a goal or CSF, it is not much of a competency—unless stakeholders can be convinced to change their CSFs. Competencies usually arise and are perfected through “learning ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

by doing.”

A distinctive competency is a competency that is very difficult for others to replicate and thus is a source of enduring organizational advantage. A core competency is central to the success of the organization, that is, crucial to its doing well against goals or CSFs. A distinctive core competency is not only central to the success of the organization but also helps the organization add more public value than alternative providers. Examples of distinctive core competencies might be what goes into providing outstanding customer service, maintaining a strong reputation and the trust of key stakeholders, or being resilient in the face of crises.

Note that a competency indicates an ability to do something, so providing outstanding service is not a competency per se, but the specific abilities that make it possible to do so are. Outstanding service is the competency outcome of making use of the competencies needed and being available to do so. Usually distinctive core competencies arise from the interrelationships of a set of competencies and core competencies. It is the interrelationships that are particularly hard for others to replicate because they are based on tacit knowledge and long-term relationships. Finally, competencies are underpinned by assets of various kinds (e.g., technology, physical facilities, or other kinds of resources), some of which may be distinctive assets. Guidance on identifying competencies can be found in Bryson, Ackermann and Eden (2007) and Ackermann and Eden (2011).

A particularly useful outcome is the creation of the organization's current livelihood scheme that shows how competencies are directly related to aspirations, including helping to do well against key success factors necessary to achieve the aspirations. A livelihood scheme represents the core logic of a strategic plan—namely, mission, goals, key success factors or performance indicators, and the necessary competencies to do well against each. Each aspiration and key success factor must be supported by a competency or else it is not achievable. As Hill and Hupe (2014, p. 194) argue, among possibly the most relevant factors for fostering effective implementation is directly linking “ambition (‘willing’)” and “competence (‘being able’).” Guidance on developing a livelihood scheme and an example can also ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

be found in Bryson, Ackermann, and Eden (2007). Note that the current livelihood scheme may be changed as a result of further strategic planning work.

Before completing a SWOC/T analysis, it may be necessary to prepare various background reports on external forces and trends; on key resource controllers, such as clients, customers, payers, or dues- paying members; on the structure of the policy fields affecting the organization (Stone & Sandfort, 2009); on competitors and collaborators; and with additional reports on internal resources, present strategy, and performance.

It may also be necessary to prepare various scenarios, or stories, that capture important elements of possible futures for the organization— delineating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges, as well as CSFs and competencies—which are then assessed in relation to these possible futures (Marcus, 2009). Further, once the lists of SWOC/Ts, CFSs, and competencies is prepared (with or without the help of scenarios), it may be necessary to commission careful analyses of some listed items in relation to the overall strategic posture of the organization.

Another important early outcome of these two steps may be specific, relatively immediate actions to deal with challenges, threats, and weaknesses; to build on strengths (including especially distinctive core competencies); and to take advantage of opportunities (including improving performance against CSFs). As soon as appropriate moves become apparent, key decision makers should consider taking action. It is not only unnecessary, but probably also undesirable, to draw a sharp temporal distinction between planning and implementation. As long as the contemplated actions are based on reasonable information, have adequate support, and do not foreclose important strategic options, serious consideration should be given to taking them. The feedback arrows in Figure 2.1 try to capture this continuous blending and interplay of thinking and acting, doing and learning, planning and implementation, and strategic and operational concerns. This kind of prompt action in response to a rich appreciation of the interconnectedness of the organization's operations and its environment is the essence of “mindfulness” (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Relatively short, thoughtful deliberations among key decision makers and opinion leaders concerning strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges, CSFs, distinctive competencies, and immediate desirable short-term actions are one of the most important outcomes of this step. Such deliberations—particularly when they bridge various intra- and interorganizational boundaries—provide important quantitative and qualitative insights into the organization and its environment and also prepare the way for the identification of strategic issues in the next step. Strategic issues will stem from the convergence of these factors.

Discussions such as these are absolutely crucial in order to move from what individuals do (forage for information, intuit, and interpret) to what groups do (integrate information) to what organizations do (institutionalize information) (Crossan, Lane, & White, 1999; Jenkin, 2013). Paying attention to what maybe should be obvious, but is not until it is brought to people's attention, is one important key to success in a competitive world. As science fiction writer Isaac Asimov supposedly said, “Pay attention to the obvious—no one else will.” Or as William Gibson, another science fiction writer (and the inventor of the term cyberspace) said, “The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed.”

But be aware that getting key stakeholders to engage in these sorts of analyses and deliberation is not necessarily easy. People can find many more reasons not to engage in a SWOC/T analysis than they can to participate. The reasons are familiar: Participants may argue that they have no time or that they already know the answers. Other opinions may not be voiced but nonetheless strongly held. People may be afraid of discussing weaknesses and threats. They may not want to know what a SWOC/T analysis will reveal. Or they may simply not know how to do one and feel embarrassed by their lack of knowledge.

Whatever the reasons, process sponsors and champions should strongly encourage engaging in a SWOC/T analysis. The deliberations can be extremely helpful and actually should result in some very direct positive change. That said, it is possible to do SWOC/T analyses at various places in the process, and sometimes the most effective places to do the analyses are in relation to specific strategic issues (Step 5) or ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

strategies (Step 6). In those steps, the analysis will seem more grounded and specific to many people. And it must be kept in mind that it is also possible to overdo SWOC/T analyses; good judgment is needed to know when to quit.

LONGER-TERM DESIRED OUTCOMES An effective external and internal environmental assessment should result in several longer-term benefits to the organization. Among the most important is that it produces information that is vital to the organization's survival and prosperity. It is difficult to imagine that an organization could be truly effective over the long haul unless it has an intimate knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses in relation to the opportunities and challenges it faces, as Sun Tzu observed more than 2,500 years ago.

Said somewhat differently, Step 4 allows the strategic planning team to develop the habit of seeing the organization as a whole in relation to its environment. This is usually one of the singular accomplishments of strategic planning—one that helps keep the organization from being victimized by the present. Instead, the organization has a basis for reasoned optimism in that difficulties may be seen as specific rather than pervasive, temporary rather than permanent, and the result of factors other than irremediable organizational incompetence (Seligman, 2006). The organization thus prepares itself to create the best possible future for itself.

Step 4 clarifies for the organization the nature of the tension fields within which it exists. Every organization must manage the tensions among its capacities and intentions in relation to the opportunities and challenges it faces. A SWOC/T analysis clarifies the nature of these tensions by juxtaposing two fundamental dimensions of existence: good (strengths and opportunities) and bad (weaknesses and challenges or threats), as well as present (strengths and weaknesses) and future (opportunities and challenges). A SWOC/T analysis in conjunction with an understanding of key success factors and distinctive competencies helps clarify the tensions that arise when trends and events juxtapose concerns for equity, productivity,

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preservation, and change (Nutt & Backoff, 1992, 1996).

External and internal assessments also develop the boundary- spanning skills of key staff, especially key decision makers and opinion leaders. Assessments draw attention to issues and information that cross internal and external organizational boundaries. In effect, key decision makers and opinion leaders are prompted to move beyond their job descriptions in their thinking and discussions, increasing the opportunities for them to produce creative and integrative insights and actions that bridge within and across organizations and their environments (Quick & Feldman, 2014).

In large organizations, completion of Step 4 may be an impetus for establishing a formal environmental scanning operation if one does not exist already (Johnson, et al., 2017). It will need adequate staff— typically an in-house coordinator plus volunteer in-house scanners, including, ideally, people with major decision-making responsibilities. Added staff may be needed for special studies. Scanning should result in periodic meetings to discuss what people are learning plus communications vehicles and regular reports distributed widely within the organization. Special studies that produce detailed analyses may also need to be distributed.

Environmental scanning, however, should never be allowed to become a formulaic bureaucratic exercise. It should be kept simple and relatively informal; otherwise, it will deaden strategic thought, action, and learning, not promote them. One important way of staying on track is to always let purpose—in terms of meeting mandates, fulfilling mission, and creating public value—be your guide. Paying attention to purpose can help you engage in limited, rather than overwhelming and useless, information collection.

The most effective scanning operations will be part of a network of scanners or boundary spanners from several organizations who exchange information and mutually develop scanning and boundary- spanning skills and insights. If this network does not exist, it may be possible to create it through regular meetings and the use of electronic support. The point is for people to keep their eyes open and to talk about what they see—rather than overlook what might be important,

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as this chapter's opening epigraph by Diane Ackerman indicates may happen.

Paying attention also means not being blinded by existing categories or expectations because they will reveal some things and hide others. Categories are a necessary part of sensemaking; they help trim the amount of information that must be absorbed. But what is trimmed and then hidden may turn out to be what is most important (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). So paying attention also means staying open to surprises. As J.R.R. Tolkien says in The Hobbit, “You certainly find something if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after” (1937/1982, p. 58).

Completion of Step 4 also should prompt development or refinement of an effective management information system (MIS) that includes input, process, and output (and outcome, if possible) categories if one does not already exist. An effective MIS system usually is expensive and time consuming to develop, but without it, the organization may be unable to relatively objectively and unambiguously assess its strengths, weaknesses, efficiency, and effectiveness. If an organization is using a scorecard of some kind, as discussed in Chapters 2 7, 9 and 10, the MIS should support the use of the scorecard. Again, the MIS system should not be allowed to become excessively bureaucratic or cumbersome. And in no circumstances should the MIS system drive out attention to the kinds of qualitative information so vital to real understanding and so useful to effective managers. Beyond that, the MIS system should be designed to serve organizational purposes, and if they or the strategies for achieving them change, the MIS system should change too.

If reasonably regular, formal environmental scanning and MIS operations are established along with regular dialogues on what the information means, then the organization will have routinized attention to major and minor external trends, issues, events, and stakeholders and to internal inputs, processes, and outputs. The chances of encountering major surprises are reduced and the possibilities for anticipatory actions enhanced—particularly if the systems themselves are the subject of mindful scrutiny. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

But even if external scanning and MIS systems are not institutionalized, the organization will become more externally oriented if it engages in periodic assessments and gain a better understanding of its internal strengths and weaknesses in relation to what is outside. In my experience, organizations tend to be rather insular and parochial and must be forced to face outward. Unless they do, they are virtually certain to not satisfy key external stakeholders and to be overwhelmed by the unexpected.

In addition, people should never assume that the existence of any formalized systems of environmental assessment and management information relieves them of the need to constantly pay attention to what is going on in the outside world and to talk about it. For one thing, as noted, systems are designed around categories—and the categories can become outdated or simply wrong. They may make it hard or impossible to see important new developments that do not fit into them. So the best advice likely comes from Yogi Berra, who once aptly observed, “You can observe an awful lot just by watching.”

As noted above, an important immediate outcome of this step is that timely actions are taken based on analyses and conversations. But the outcome has a longer-term aspect as well: Whenever appropriate actions become apparent at any point, they should be taken as long they are based on reasonable information, have adequate support, and do not prematurely close off important strategic avenues. Indeed, the organization should work to make this habit of prompt, informed action a distinctive core competency (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015).

EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENTS The purpose of the first part of Step 4 is to explore the environment outside the organization in order to identify the opportunities and challenges the organization faces (and ideally, in conjunction with stakeholder analyses, to identify key success factors). Figure 2.1 identifies three major categories that might be monitored in such an exploration: (1) forces and trends, (2) key resource controllers, and (3) policy fields, including actual or potential competitors or collaborators, important forces affecting competition and

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collaboration, and the competitive and collaborative advantages available to the organization. The three categories represent the basic foci for any effective external environmental scanning system.

Forces and trends are often broken down into political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal categories (Johnson et al., 2017). Organizations may choose to monitor additional categories that are particularly relevant. For example, colleges and universities usually add education, and public health care organizations monitor health outcomes. Strategic planners must be sure they attend to both threats and challenges in whatever categories are used.

What are the recent issues and trends affecting public and nonprofit sector organizations? Innumerable reviews and forecasts are available, but it is hard to know what to make of them, including what they imply for action (e.g., Friedman, 2016; Haass, 2017; Isenberg, 2016; Johansen, 2012; Kettl, 2015c; Ross, 2016). See also Exhibit 5.2, which focuses mainly on the U.S. federal government; Exhibit 5.3, which looks mostly at the emerging global business environment; and Exhibit 5.4, a political conservative's worries about the U.S. economy and society. As W. S. Gilbert said in H.M.S. Pinafore, “Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream,” and the trick is to figure out which is which. What is clear is that we live in a time of substantial instability that is likely to last for some time.

Exhibit 5.2. Six Trends Driving Change in Government. The IBM Center for the Business of Government is an important source of thinking and resources about how to improve government performance. Its website offers a wealth of free resources for public, nonprofit, and business managers at http://www.businessofgovernment.org.

In a useful 2013 report titled Six Trends Driving Change in Government, authors Chenok, Kamensky, Keegan, and Ben- Yehuda assert that four major challenges confront government

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leaders, managers, and their stakeholders. These include:

1. Fiscal austerity, especially given resistance to tax increases and continued federal deficit projections over the long term

2. Heightened citizen expectations for online, real-time service and improved performance that correspondingly increases the need for a responsive, timely, coordinated, transparent, and accountable government

3. Technology-enhanced innovation that has made it easier to collect, connect, aggregate, analyze, and display data, including the ability to make it available to a broad range of users anytime, anywhere. In particular, mobile devices are leading to disruptive changes in how citizens communicate and do business with one another, private companies, and government agencies. This increasing pace of technology stands in contrast to the relatively deliberate pace of government.

4. A new role for governance as lines between public, private, and nonprofit organizations shift in response to the factors noted above and the 24-hour information cycle can turn small issues into large ones in seconds—highlighting the need for effective and timely coordination across sectors

In response to these challenges, the authors believe there are six trends that are driving change in how government managers lead today and how they can prepare for the future. These trends (which might also be viewed as challenges) include:

1. An emphasis on performance. Changes in laws, policies, technologies, and techniques are increasing the emphasis on performance as well as improving approaches to improving performance. These include approaches to creating a performance culture, developing an evidence base for decision making, and providing incentives to use performance data to inform decisions and actions.

2. An increased need to assess, manage, and communicate risks as part of program operations. The risks may involve, for example, national security (e.g.,

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cyberattacks, terrorism), environmental concerns (e.g., natural disasters), infrastructure (e.g., bridge and rail failures), the economy, budget- and program-related risks, and privacy risks. Unfortunately, government leaders lack an accepted culture and framework to properly identify, assess, manage, and communicate risk as part of government operations.

3. A need for innovation—and to explain rationale for it. Government executives must be able to articulate the value of innovation within their agencies, align innovation efforts to agencies' mission, and tap into innovators beyond government.

4. A need to ensure mission-support functions are aligned with mission delivery systems. Mission support functions (e.g., human resources management, information technology, procurement, finance, compliance) have professionalized and centralized in recent years, but they need to be sure to align with mission delivery leaders in order to add value.

5. An emphasis on greater efficiency in operations. Financial constraints are forcing greater efficiencies in operations. These may be achieved via a variety of service improvement methodologies and greater use of technology, data, and evidence-based practices.

6. An expanded view of leadership. If public problems that don't fit traditional organizational boundaries are to be successfully addressed, lateral, cross-boundary leadership must be blended with more traditional hierarchical leadership.

Source: Adapted from Chenok et al., 2013.

Exhibit 5.3. Building the New Leader. The Hay Group is a global management consulting firm with more than 3,000 employees operating out of offices in 49 countries. They have identified six “megatrends” that they believe will affect

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primarily businesses, but also governments and individuals, in fundamental ways over the next 15 years. They have also explored what these trends might mean for needed new leadership skills, especially in businesses. The trends are:

Accelerating globalization or what they call “globalization 2.0.” They argue that increasing globalization means the global balance of power is shifting to Asia and to a global middle class. Increasing globalization also means greater interconnectedness, volatility, and risk, which also means that financial crises, pandemics, and cyberterrorism are also more likely (p. 5).

Climate change and its environmental impact and scarcity of resources. Many resources, such as water, minerals, metals, and fossil fuels, are becoming more scarce in various parts of the world. This likely will cause price hikes and could also trigger regional and global conflicts. Greater environmental sensitivity and accountability will mean more investment in clean technologies. Reduced eco-footprints are likely to benefit corporations' bottom lines, competitiveness, and sustainability (p. 6).

Demographic change. While the world's population is growing and aging, there are major demographic imbalances. The populations of several countries in the industrialized West, China, and Japan are experiencing slowly growing, stagnating, or declining populations while the populations of developing countries are booming. Everywhere, highly skilled workers are in short supply, and the competition for them can be intense (p. 7).

Individualization and values pluralism. At least in the industrialized West, there is a strong desire among professionals for greater self-fulfillment and self-expression, which also often involves greater convergence between private and working lives and a desire by individuals to integrate personal and professional goals. Demands for individualization of jobs and treatment by superiors leads to changes in pay and

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promotion practices, work processes, and new ways of addressing work–life balance questions. In addition, a new “creative class” is becoming a key driver of business and economic growth, and it can require individually tailored treatment. More organizations will need to make use of decentralized workplaces, flatter organizational structures, and more cross-functional teams—with higher turnover also becoming a possibility (p. 8).

Increasingly digital lifestyles. Business, government, nonprofit, civic, and personal exchanges are increasingly digital and making use of digital devices and connections. Power is shifting to personal and professional networks in which digital “natives” are increasingly in control but may not have needed social and political skills. There is a clear need for “digital wisdom” on the part of leaders (p. 9).

Harnessing technology to innovate. An increasing number of innovations will be driven by the convergence of nano-, bio-, and information technologies and cognitive sciences through miniaturization and virtualization. These innovations will have far-reaching, but unpredictable, impacts on businesses, government, nonprofits, civil society, and personal and family lives (p. 10).

The report goes on to assert that the six trends will mean leaders (by which they mean primarily business leaders) will be challenged cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally. The new leadership competencies needed to address these challenges include (p. 15):

Cognitive competencies:

Leaders will need strong conceptual and strategic thinking skills rooted in deep understanding of often complicated contexts.

Conceptualizing change will need to be informed by knowledge of the trends noted above, which will require conceptual adeptness and strategic thinking skill.

Leaders need to exhibit intellectual openness and curiosity.

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Emotional competencies:

Leaders will need to be much more sensitive to different cultures, generations, and genders.

They will need to demonstrate higher levels of integrity and sincerity and adopt a more ethical approach to doing business.

They must also tolerate far higher levels of ambiguity.

Behavioral competencies:

Leaders must create a culture of trust and openness.

As post-heroic leaders, they must rethink old concepts, such as loyalty and retention, and personally create loyalty.

Collaboration—cross-generational, cross-functional and cross- company—will be their watchword.

They must lead increasingly diverse teams.

Source: Adapted from The Hay Group (2014).

Exhibit 5.4. “Our Miserable 21st Century.” Nicholas N. Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank in Washington, DC. He researches and writes extensively on demographics and economic development generally, including a focus on poverty and social well-being in the United States. In a noteworthy and widely discussed article in the February 17, 2017, issue of Commentary Magazine, Eberstadt argues that around the year 2000, “the Great American Escalator, which has lifted successive generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being broke down…and broke down very badly.” He bases his argument on a careful review of a wide array of statistics and intertwined economic and noneconomic grounds.

In economic terms, he argues that three trends that historically ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

have moved together are now “far out of alignment” with one another. These are wealth, output, and employment. As he puts it, “Depending upon which of these indicators you choose, America looks like it is heading down, or more or less nowhere.”

From the standpoint of wealth, the twenty-first century is doing fabulously well. Between 2000 and late 2016, “the estimated net worth of American households and nonprofit more than doubled, from $44 trillion to $90 trillion.” Unfortunately, that wealth gain has been very unevenly distributed.

In contrast, in the macroeconomy, the recovery since the Great Recession has been quite tepid by historical standards. “As of late 2016, total value added to the U.S. economy was just 12 percent higher than in 2007.” After factoring in per capita production and per capita output levels, “the American economy looks to have suffered something of a lost decade.” But the story is worse than that because the slow growth trends were already in place prior to the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, the employment data are very disturbing, if not downright dismal. Although the official unemployment rate is quite low at the moment—just below 5 percent—the actual work rate for all Americans ages 20 and older—not just those looking for work—has declined significantly between 2000 and 2016. As Eberstadt notes, “Postwar America has never experienced anything comparable….Alas, the exodus out of the workforce has been the big labor market story for America's new century….As of late 2016, the adult work rate was still at its lowest level in more than 30 years.”

Eberstadt continues: “The plain fact is that 21st century America has witnessed a dreadful collapse of work. For an apples-to-apples look at America's 21st-century job problem, we can focus on the 25–54 population—known to labor economists for self-evident reasons as the ‘prime working age’ group. For this key labor force cohort, work rates in late 2016 were down almost 4 percentage points from their year-2000 highs. That is a jobs gap approaching 5 million for this group alone.”

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Given the above trends, Eberstadt finds it not surprising that “public trust in almost all U.S. institutions has sharply declined since 2000, and growing majorities hold that America is ‘heading in the wrong direction.’”

The economic trends are interrelated to several noneconomic changes, where there are also serious problems: “[T]he anxiety, dissatisfaction, anger, and despair that range within our borders today are not wholly a reaction to the way the economy is misfiring. On the nonmaterial front, it is likewise clear that many things in our society are going wrong and yet seem beyond our powers to correct.” Perhaps most disturbing are changes in health status, where gains have been “shockingly slow,” and we are seeing actual “retrogression for broad and heretofore seemingly untroubled segments of the national population.” For example, death rates for middle-aged U.S. whites are rising, in part because of rising alcohol and drug use. “By 2013, according to a 2015 report by the Drug Enforcement Administration, more American died from overdoses (largely but not wholly opioid abuse) than from either traffic fatalities or guns.”

Other problems include high welfare dependency, a higher share of the population in jail or not in jail but still with felony convictions on their records, and stagnant or downward social mobility. In terms of the latter concern, this is how Eberstadt characterizes the “bittersweet reality of life for real Americans in the early 21st century: Even though the American economy still remains the world's unrivalled engine of wealth generation, those outside the [liberal intellectual and pundit] bubble may have less of a shot at the American Dream than has been the case for decades, maybe generations—possibly even since the Great Depression.” Although economic inequality may be a powerful talking point and abstraction for the liberal intellectual elite, the “reality of economic insecurity” matters a lot more to “ordinary Americans,” and “it badly needs to be fixed.”

Adapted from Eberstadt, 2017.

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What follows is my quick summary of much of this literature focused particularly on the United States in the form of 10 interconnected categories of forces or trends of particular importance to the public and nonprofit sectors. You obviously may disagree with my assessment and have your own list of concerns.

1. Social and organizational complexity. The complexity is driven by a number of forces, including technological change, the globalization of information and economies, and the consequent interconnectedness of almost everything (Mulgan, 2009; Scharmer, 2016). Meanwhile, many of our most important institutions were designed for a world that was more stable and simple. As a result, there are serious institutional mismatches between the problems or issues that need to be addressed and the institutional arrangements for doing so (Kettl, 2015c). We can expect serious interventions in selected areas such as financial regulation, health care and educational reform, environmental protection, and homeland security to alleviate some of the mismatches, but whether they will be based on adequate analyses of the problems and adoption of effective solutions is an open question (Mulgan, 2009).

2. Reform and redirection of governments and increased interaction among public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Citizens in the developed nations around the world have been asking for more effective, and often smaller and cheaper, governments. Given the massive debts run up by the United States, United Kingdom, and other governments, this means in very practical terms there will be limited economic growth and public sector resources and interventions will, therefore, need to be targeted. Specifically, this means that the size of government is not likely to increase much in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) though the overall cost of public problems almost certainly will (Osborne & Hutchinson, 2004). On the other hand, citizens have also asked for more programs and better services. In order to resolve this paradox, governments are experimenting with numerous ideas to be more productive, to improve performance, and to reduce costs (e.g., Exhibit 5.2; Kettl, 2016; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2017)

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Ultimately, this means changing the focus on government to resolve public problems to emphasizing governance as a shared phenomenon in which the institutions of public, private, and nonprofit sectors and civil society share the effort and responsibility for the common good (Osborne, 2010; Kettl, 2015a). Governments will have an especially important role to play in protecting important public values (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg, 2014)

3. Continuation of technological change. Many futurists and economists see technological innovation as the major force driving change. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, information technology, and improved technology-enhanced data analytic capabilities, among other areas, will alter many aspects of our lives in unforeseeable ways. Public and nonprofit organizational personnel will need new skills to utilize new technologies and capabilities while their organizations will need to adapt their processes, structures, and resource allocation patterns. Information technologies, in particular, are driving major changes likely to have dramatic impacts on organizational performance, accountability, stakeholder empowerment, and issues related to data use and privacy.

4. Diversity of workforce, clientele, and citizenry. The diversity will take many forms, including racial, ethnic, gender, cultural, political, and almost any other category you can imagine, including those related to knowledge, expertise, and competence. In addition, as people live longer, the number of senior citizens will increase dramatically in most advanced economies, simultaneously increasing the need for many public services and the number of people out of the taxpaying workforce. In the jargon of strategic planning, the number of stakeholders is increasing, each with its own ideas, interests, and needs. This differentiation will complicate the quest for public value, governance, service design and delivery, and workforce recruitment, retention, training, and management.

5. Individualism, personal responsibility, and civic republicanism. Most futurists envision a move away from reliance on large institutions, particularly governmental institutions, and toward

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self-reliance and greater personal responsibility. U.S. welfare reform initiatives of the 1990s emphasized these values, as do reforms of the U.S. tax code to favor saving rather than spending. There are also signs that citizenship is being reinvigorated to emphasize active citizen involvement in public problem solving and governance—the kind of “civic republicanism” favored by Thomas Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists, Jacksonian Democrats, Populists, John Dewey and many of the Progressives, and the present-day communitarians (Nabatchi, Gastil, Weiksner, & Leighninger, 2012). But citizen action is going against the tide at present when social capital of many kinds has been in decline for decades. Social capital formation is the antidote to excessive individualism (Ferragina & Arrigoni, 2016; Putnam, Feldstein, & Cohen, 2004) and is vitally important for the reinvigoration of democracy.

6. Quality of life and environmentalism. Concern for the quality of life is likely to increase. The sources of these concerns are numerous, including the emergence of an era when time is more scarce than money for many people though money is also clearly an issue for those near the bottom of the income distribution (Isenberg, 2016; Piketty, 2015). There also is a search for meaning beyond work, fears for the long-term viability of the planet when climate change is upon us, and worry about health and physical safety issues. The increased influence of women in the workplace is bringing with it demands for changes in the workplace. Flexibility and workplace improvements are likely to be needed and demanded; further health care reform will be necessary to get costs down and coverage and quality of care up; crime prevention and control will be called for (yet difficult to provide); and “green” policies and practices will be both much needed and preferred by a majority of the population though not necessarily their governments.

7. Struggles for legitimacy and the changing American dream. Governments at all levels, churches of many kinds, a host of nonprofit organizations, and many corporations have seen their legitimacy undermined as a consequence of poor performance,

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scandals, or sometimes concerted ideological attacks. There are not many icons left to topple, and legitimacy is increasingly difficult to attain as much of what was previously taken for granted is questioned. In the midst of all this, the American Dream has been changing. Andrew Delbanco (1999) argues that in the colonial era, the dream involved doing or realizing God's will in the New World. From the early republic to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the dream was secularized as an ideal of the sacred nation-state— smaller than God but larger and more enduring than the individual American citizen. Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address captures perfectly this sense of transcendence through national union (Wills, 2006). Now, however, “hope has narrowed to the vanishing point of self alone” (Delbanco, 1999, p. 103). I think this last statement is overdrawn. Worryingly, however, as conservative commentator Nicholas Eberstadt (2017) points out in Exhibit 5.4, the American Dream of “ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being” has broken down since 2000.

8. Culture of fear. It should not be surprising that we have developed what University of Southern California sociologist Barry Glassner (2010) calls a “culture of fear” in our very diverse U.S. culture after so many icons have been toppled, social capital is in decline, a transcendent faith in the purpose of life has diminished, and the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for many. Mainly what we fear is the Other, meaning individuals of many kinds—for example, black males, pedophiles, single mothers, teenagers, drug dealers, immigrants, Muslims, Hispanics, and terrorists. We also fear plane crashes.

What is so striking about all these fears—media hype notwithstanding—is how truly small the risks generally are. Take plane crashes, for example: Even when you take terrorism into account, you are far more likely to be struck by lightning than to die in a plane crash. Or consider crime: Although press coverage of crimes went up in the 1990s and this century, crime typically was going down. The murder rate did go up in 2015 and 2016, mainly because of surges in some large cities, but still, the rate is way below the murder rates of the 1980s and 1990s or even the earlier

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2000s. My home state of Minnesota is part of that trend: The overall crime rate there is now at a 50-year low (Mannix & Sinner, 2017). Crime is not good, but exaggerating the extent of crime also is not good.

As individuals, we have become a market for fears—and for anger as well because anger usually covers fear of some kind—and there are plenty of media sources, pundits, and politicians persistently feeding fears and stoking anger. As communities and as a nation, we have the wherewithal to address those fears in wise and responsible ways, but we have to relearn how to be the vibrant civil society and democracy we once were if we are to succeed.

Meanwhile, there are things we really ought to fear and do something about. These include the ill effects of poverty, an extraordinarily expensive health care system that underperforms the much cheaper systems in many other developed countries, and poor education. These also include the almost 16,000 homicides (even though the rate is lower than in previous decades) and more than 40,000 suicides that occur each year (National Center for Health Statistics, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/; accessed June 25, 2017). There are as many gun-related deaths, including suicides, in the United States every day as there are in a year in many developed nations. Average expected life spans for middle- and lower-income whites are declining, in part due to chronic joblessness, inadequate health care, obesity, and an epidemic use of pain killers (see Exhibit 5.4; Hochschild, 2016; Isenberg, 2016; and Vance, 2016].

We also should fear the serious decline in social capital as the loss makes us more vulnerable to fear- and anger-mongers, more receptive to authoritarianism and totalitarianism, and less able to respond wisely and collectively to what we genuinely should fear and be angry about. And we should also fear the media that sensationalizes the unusual, plays to our fears and stokes our angers, seriously distorts our perceptions of risk, overemphasizes personal rather than systemic causes of behavior, and feeds our dysfunctional gridlocked politics.

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9. An emphasis on learning. Individuals, jobs, organizations, and communities cannot stand still, given the pace of change. People, organizations, and communities must constantly be learning how to do their work better and how to adapt to the transitions they are likely to face if they are to play constructive roles in shaping the future (e.g., Friedman, 2016; Scharmer, 2016).

10. Transitions with continuity, not revolution. The American tradition emphasizes disjointed incrementalism involving partisan mutual adjustment among actors (Braybrooke & Lindblom, 1963; Lindblom, 1965). We had an American Revolution and many major convulsions such as the Civil War and Great Depression, but generally, muddling through (Lindblom, 1959) has been our preferred strategy as a nation. As the French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the mid-1830s in Democracy in America, “They like change, but they dread revolutions” (quoted in Damrosch, 2010, p. 205). The good news is that continuous improvement in institutions is possible; the bad news is that typically it is very difficult to stimulate major institutional change in the absence of a crisis (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009, 2015; Kingdon, 2010). Clearly, it is a leadership challenge to inspire and mobilize others to undertake collective action in pursuit of the common good—producing wise small or big changes in response to the situation at hand (Crosby & Bryson, 2005).

These times—as indicated by the trends—are perhaps particularly challenging for those who would like our U.S. democracy to produce policies supported by substantial majorities of the citizenry—as opposed to just economic elites and the often slim majorities of the fewer than 60 percent of registered voters who vote in presidential election years or the approximately 40 percent of registered voters who vote during midterm elections. In a carefully done and widely cited quantitative study of almost 1,779 policy issues, Gilens and Page (2014, p. 564) found that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have no [statistically] independent influence.” Public policy, in other words, is often out of alignment with what a majority of the

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American people as a whole want because of a high degree of dissensus, the disproportionate influence of affluent citizens and organized interests, and the extent to which governing structures favor inaction and drift (Hacker & Pierson, 2010, 2016; Jacobs, 2014). This situation has not gone wholly unnoticed: In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, supporters of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders agreed that the system was rigged against ordinary people. Unfortunately, the situation is made even worse when we consider the current assaults on the value ideals that have defined the West since the Enlightenment: “truth, facts, reason, science, tolerance, freedom, democracy, and the rule of law” (Cohen, 2017).

In addition to various trends, public and nonprofit sector organizations might monitor important stakeholder groups, especially actual or potential clients, customers, payers, or members (for voluntary organizations), as well as competitors and collaborators and the forces driving competition or collaboration.

Finally, it is very helpful to develop maps of the policy fields within which organizations find themselves (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015; Stone & Sandfort, 2009). As noted in Chapter 2, the policy fields framework helps clarify relationships across levels (policy, organizational, frontlines) among major institutions and key stakeholders—including the organization being planned for—and how those relationships affect power and the flow of resources, such as money, information, and clients. The framework also details how these “relationships and networks influence the work of nonprofit organizations themselves” (Stone and Sandfort, 2009, p. 1056). Knowing the policy fields can also be very helpful in clarifying the competitive and collaborative forces and actual or potential competitors and collaborators at work in the environment.

An example involving the work of the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA) with the Minnesota Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program in partnership with the Association of Women Contractors can be found in Figure 5.1 (Seo, 2016). The program is a federal initiative involving the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). It is designed to help women- and minority-owned businesses ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

by providing technical and financial support and opportunities to participate in major markets. The program requires any state and local transportation agencies that benefit from DOT federal financial assistance or that participated in DOT-assisted contracts to establish goals for the participation of disadvantaged entrepreneurs.

Figure 5.1. Simplified Policy Field Map of the Relationships Surrounding the Metropolitan Economic Development Association's Program With the Association of Women Contractors and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency.

All DOT-assisted state and local transportation agencies are required to set their own DBE goals tailored to different needs of each agency. After evaluating their DOT-assisted contracts throughout the year, these agencies assign a certain portion of subcontracts to DBEs in order to ensure nondiscrimination in federally assisted procurements. In this way, the DBE Program aims to “ensure that small disadvantaged business enterprises (DBE) can compete fairly for

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federally funded transportation-related projects; ensure that only eligible firms participate as DBEs; and assist DBE firms in competing outside the DBE Program” (DOT webpage, https://www.transportation.gov/civil-rights/disadvantaged-business- enterprise/).

The map reveals a decentralized and even fragmented program implementation approach. As a result, disadvantaged businesses are likely to find access to the program difficult. Beyond that, there is a lack of resources and information for both frontline workers and the target group population. To overcome these problems, Seo's analysis suggests that “more implementation resources and guidance are needed for both frontline workers and the target group population. In addition, a consistent monitoring system should be built in to make sure that disadvantaged firms benefit from the program and to get feedback on how to continue improving the DBE program” (p. 1).

In my experience, members of a public or nonprofit organization's governing board, particularly if they are elected, are often better at identifying and assessing external threats and opportunities than the organization's employees are. Partly this is a reflection of differing roles; unlike most employees, a governing board typically has formal responsibility for relating an organization to its external environment (Kettl, 2015b, 2016; Renz, 2016). In the public sector, there is another reason. Employees get their mandates from laws, rules, and policies. Elected officials and politicians get their mandates primarily from elections. There can be a major difference between legal or quasilegal mandates and political mandates. Politicians mostly pay attention to political mandates because they must. Indeed, they typically employ external environmental assessors (pollsters, that is) to keep them informed about likely externally imposed mandates. So it may be easier to sell external scanning to elected officials than to planners and public administrators given that politicians live or die by how well they scan.

Even though the board may be better than staff members at identifying external opportunities and threats, typically neither group does a systematic or effective job of external scanning. Thus, both groups should rely on a reasonably formal and regular process of ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

external assessment. The technology is fairly simple and allows organizations to keep tabs cheaply, pragmatically, and effectively on outside trends and events that are likely to have an impact on the organization and its pursuit of its mission. A simple process is outlined later in this chapter.

In addition to external scanning, organizational members can construct scenarios to help them pinpoint possible opportunities and challenges (as well as the organization's internal strengths and weaknesses). Relatively simple methods can be found in Chermak (2011), Marcus (2009), and Wade (2012).

INTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT The purpose of the second part of Step 4 is to assess the organization's internal environment in order to identify its strengths and weaknesses —that is, those aspects of the organization that help or hinder accomplishment of the organization's mission and fulfillment of its mandates. (Note also that communities are more likely to think in terms of assets rather than strengths; see McKnight & Block, 2010.) This step may also lead to clarification of the organization's competencies, distinctive competencies, and distinctive core competencies.

The three major categories that should be assessed (see Figure 2.1 in Chapter 2) are the basic elements of a simple systems model: resources (inputs), present strategy (process), and performance (outputs). Not only are these categories basic to any internal organizational assessment, but they also are the fundamental categories around which any effective MIS should be built (Niven, 2008). Indeed, organizations with effective MIS systems should be in a better position to assess their strengths and weaknesses than organizations without such systems. The caveat, of course, is that no MIS system can provide all the information the organization needs— especially qualitative information, which is crucial. Culture, for example, is largely qualitative and rarely shows up in an MIS system, yet culture is a crucial bridge across inputs, process, and outputs, as well as the inside and outside worlds (Goodsell, 2010; Schein, 2016).

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In my experience, most organizations have plenty of quantifiable information about inputs—salaries, supplies, physical plant, full-time equivalent (FTE) personnel, and so on—readily available. They typically have far less of a command of qualitative information about inputs, even though such inputs may be vital for performance.

It is important to remember that MIS systems provide routine information. Oftentimes, even more important is the nonroutine information provided by informal engagements with stakeholders, news sources, conference participants, and so on (Kroll, 2013). Also, organizations generally cannot say succinctly what their present strategy is, either overall, by business process, or by function. One of the most important things a strategic planning team can do is simply articulate what the organization's current strategies in practice are. This role of finders of strategy—codifying the organization's apparent logic model (McLaughlin & Jordan, 2015) or value chain (Alford & Yates, 2014)—is very useful for planners and their organizations (Mintzberg et al., 2009). The pattern recognition involved, and the discovery of pockets of innovative strategies in various parts of the organization, can be immensely instructive and provide a better- informed basis for assessing strengths and weaknesses.

Additionally, clarifying the current strategy helps people understand exactly what the value proposition that the organization offers its stakeholders is—that is, precisely how the organization is going about converting inputs into outputs intended or presumed to meet its mandates, fulfill its mission, satisfy its stakeholders, and create public value (Alford & Yates, 2014; Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda, Smith, & Papadakos, 2014). In short, being clear about what is can be an extraordinarily helpful prelude to discerning what ought to be. As one of the founders of gestalt psychotherapy Fritz Perls observed, “Nothing changes until it becomes what it is.”

Organizations also often can say little, either historically or in the present, about outputs, let alone the effects those outputs have on clients, customers, or payers. For example, social welfare agencies can say a lot about their budgets, staff, physical facilities, and so on, but often they can say very little about the effects they have on their clients, and schools typically can say little about how educated their ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

students are. For these reasons, the need to demonstrate effective performance is one of the trends driving government (see Exhibit 5.2).

The relative absence of performance information presents problems both for the organization and its stakeholders. Stakeholders will judge the worth of an organization by how well the organization meets the criteria for success they have already chosen. For external stakeholders in particular, these criteria typically relate to performance. If the organization cannot demonstrate its effectiveness against the criteria, then stakeholders are likely to withdraw their support.

Public schools, for example, are now finding their management, budgets, staffing patterns, and curricula judged by how well the schools' pupils score on standardized educational achievement tests. Schools that fail to produce educated students by these standards may be forced to do better or close their doors. If educational voucher schemes become widespread, public schools may even have to compete directly with one another for revenues, students, and staff in the same way that private and nonprofit schools must compete with one another and with public schools. Indeed, some voucher schemes allow public monies to be spent on education delivered in private and nonprofit schools, including religiously affiliated ones, so that all schools, regardless of legal status, might need to compete with one another. This kind of competition is prompting many school districts to engage in strategic planning because they want to win in the competition for students. As another example, nonprofit organizations that rely on government financing, foundation support, or charitable contributions to provide social services are likely to find their funding sources drying up unless they can demonstrate effective performance against relatively objective measures (Renz, 2016).

The absence of performance information may also create, or harden, major organizational conflicts. This is because without performance criteria and information, there is no way to judge the relative effectiveness of different resource allocations, organizational designs, and distributions of power. Without such judgments, organizational conflicts are likely to occur unnecessarily, be more partisan, and be resolved in ways that undermine the organization's mission. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

The difficulties of measuring performance in the public and nonprofit sectors are well-known (Poister et al., 2015). Nevertheless, stakeholders continue to demand that organizations demonstrate effective performance and thereby justify their existence. Indeed, the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010, and similar acts by states across the nation—and indeed in many places around the world—mandate strategic plans and annual or multiyear performance plans geared to key criteria held by external stakeholders. The managerialist push goes by different names—for example, strategic management, performance management, managing for results, results-oriented budgeting, and so on—but regardless, the push is in large part a response to stakeholders demanding demonstrably better performance and value for money (Talbot, 2010; Van Dooren, Bouckaert, & Halligan, 2015).

THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS Here are two techniques that can be particularly helpful for carrying out a SWOC/T analysis. The first is the organizational highs, lows, and themes example, which is presented in Exhibit 5.5. This exercise is often a useful prelude to the second technique, the snow card process.

Exhibit 5.5. The Organizational Highs, Lows, and Themes Exercise. Organizations will find it easier to look forward for any period of time (five, 10, 20 years) if first they look backward for an equivalent period of time. An extremely useful technique for helping organizations assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges in a historical context is the organizational highs, lows, and themes exercise. It is patterned after one for individuals outlined in Crosby and Bryson (2005, p. 50), which is based on a more elaborate charting exercise described by Kouzes and Posner (2017), and consists of the following steps:

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1. Reserve a room with a large wall. A room with a whiteboard that covers a whole wall is ideal. Alternatively, you might wish to cover a wall with sheets of flip chart paper taped together (two rows of eight each), so that the results of the exercise may be saved intact.

2. Divide the wall into top and bottom halves. This can be done by drawing a line on the whiteboard or flip chart sheets with a flip chart marker or by using a long strip of masking tape.

3. At the right-hand end of the line, write in the current year. At the left-hand end, write in the date that is as far back as you wish the strategic planning team to ultimately look forward (typically five or 10 years).

4. Ask group members to individually and silently brainstorm, on a sheet of scratch paper, all of the organizational highs and lows they can recall that occurred within the agreed-upon timeframe. These might include the organization's founding, arrivals or departures of respected leaders, successful or unsuccessful management of crises, particularly useful or disastrous innovations, and so on. Participants should date each item and label it as a high or low.

5. Have participants transcribe their highs and lows onto half sheets of paper, one high or low per sheet. Once this is done, attach a piece of tape rolled sticky side out or a small bit of self- adhesive putty to the back of each sheet.

6. Have participants stick their sheets to the wall at the appropriate places on the timeline. The height of each card above or below the line should indicate just how high the high was or how low the low was.

7. Ask the group to identify the themes that are common to the highs, to the lows, and to both.

8. Then ask the group to analyze the data and themes by answering these questions:

What opportunities have we had? Which have we taken advantage of, which were we unable to take advantage of,

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and which have we ignored?

What challenges have we had to deal with? Which have we handled successfully, which have we handled unsuccessfully, and which have we ignored?

What strengths have we relied upon to deal with challenges and take advantage of opportunities? Which have we ignored?

What weaknesses have we had in dealing with challenges and opportunities? What have we done about them?

9. Identify patterns in the way strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, challenges, and themes have interrelated over the relevant organizational history. In particular, identify what the organization's strategies have been in practice—what has actually happened as opposed to what might be voiced in official pronouncements. Ask what the organization seems to be particularly good at doing; probe for ambitions and competencies and how they have been linked.

10. Have the group move the timeline forward an equivalent distance and discuss what their previous analyses might imply for the future. In particular, have the group speculate about future opportunities and challenges and the strengths and weaknesses the organization might have when addressing them. What themes, patterns, and strategies from the past would the group like to see projected into the future? Which would the group not like to see projected? What new themes would the group like to see?

One example of the usefulness of the organizational highs, lows, and themes exercise is provided by a generally successful nonprofit organization in the United Kingdom devoted to addressing the needs of children (and whose patron is a member of the Royal Family). The management team realized as a result of this exercise that the organization almost always performed better when they did careful planning, attended to key stakeholder interests, and took advantage of

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opportunities. Conversely, they did less well when they got caught in crisis management, failed to attend to key stakeholder interests, and failed to deal with important challenges. The exercise thus renewed their commitment to strategic planning and helped them focus on some key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges related particularly to stakeholder concerns. Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel (2009, p. 217) capture this interplay of past, present, and future well when they say, “Strategies appear first as patterns out of the past, only later, perhaps, as plans for the future, and ultimately, as perspectives to guide overall behavior.”

The snow card technique is presented in Exhibit 5.6. The exhibit focuses particularly on its use for SWOC/T analyses. Examples of the kinds of categories that might be produced can be seen in the table in Exhibit 5.1, the 2014 SWOT (not SWOC/T) analysis of INTOSAI. Examples of how strategic implications may be drawn out of a SWOC/T analysis can be found in Exhibit 5.7, which shows how the strengths and weaknesses of MEDA could lead directly to strategic options that built on strengths, took advantage of opportunities, and minimized or overcame weaknesses and challenges. In fact, MEDA went ahead with implementing almost all of the options outlined in the exhibit.

Exhibit 5.6. The Snow Card, or Affinity Diagram, Technique. The snow card or affinity diagram technique is a very simple yet effective group technique for developing a list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Spencer, 1996). The method combines brainstorming, which produces a long list of possible answers to a specific question, with a synthesizing step in which the answers are grouped into categories according to common themes. Each of the individual answers is written on a white card (i.e., a snow card—remember, I live in Minnesota!), whether a half-sheet of inexpensive photocopy paper, a 5”x7” card, or a large sticky note. The individual cards are then stuck to a wall,

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with masking tape or self-adhesive putty, according to common themes, producing several snowballs of cards.

The technique is simple in concept, easy to use, speedy, and productive. It is particularly useful as part of a SWOC/T analysis and as part of the strategy development step. In a SWOC/T analysis, the technique would be used four times in order to focus on the following questions:

What are our major internal or present strengths?

What are our major internal or present weaknesses?

What major external or future opportunities do we have?

What major external or future challenges do we face?

This quickly produces four lists for the strategic planning team to discuss, compare, and contrast, both to determine actions that should be taken immediately and to prepare for the identification of strategic issues in the next step. The SWOC/T analysis also will help the team prepare effective strategies in response to the issues.

Here are the guidelines for using the snow card technique:

1. Select a facilitator.

2. Form the group that will use the technique. The ideal size for the group is five to nine people, but the technique can still be effective with as many as 12 to 15. Even larger numbers of participants can be involved if subgroups are formed.

3. Have the members of the group seat themselves around a table in a room that has a nearby wall onto which the snow cards can be attached.

4. Focus on a single question, problem, or issue. Typically the entire process will be repeated four times in a SWOC/T analysis, once each for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges. Alternatively, you may choose to do strengths and weakness in one round and opportunities and challenges in another.

5. Have the participants silently brainstorm as many ideas as ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

possible in response to the question, and record them on their personal worksheets.

6. Have individuals pick out five to seven of their best items on their personal worksheets and transcribe them onto separate snow cards. Make sure people write legibly and large enough so that items can be read when posted on the nearby wall. Attach a rolled piece of tape or a bit of self-adhesive putty to the back of each of the snow cards.

7. Collect the cards (shuffle them if anonymity is important), and attach them one at a time to the wall, clustering cards with similar themes together. The tentative label for each cluster should be selected by the group. As an alternative, the group may wish to tape all of the cards to the wall at once and as a group rearrange the cards into thematic clusters.

8. Label each cluster with a separate card. These label cards should be differentiated in some way from regular snow cards, perhaps by using paper or ink of a different color or by drawing a box around the category name.

9. Once all items are on the board and included in a cluster, rearrange the items and tinker with the categories until the group thinks the results make the most sense. Categories might be arranged in logical, priority, or temporal order. New items may be added and old ones deleted as necessary. Subcategories should be added as needed. In addition, structuring within categories may be advisable to highlight any linkages among items.

10. When the group members are satisfied with the categories and their contents, they should discuss, compare, and contrast the results. They should also draw out their strategic implications in terms of strategic issues to be addressed or strategies and tactics to be pursued or avoided.

11. The group's collective opinion of the importance of the categories (or individual items) may be visually accentuated with colored stick-on dots. For SWOC/T analyses, I usually give

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each participant seven dots per list and ask them to place one dot on each of the seven most important categories or items in the list. The pattern of the dots graphically displays the pattern of group opinion.

12. When the session is over, collect the cards in order, have them typed up in outline or spreadsheet form, and distribute the results to the group. Having a computer and note taker at the session will speed this process. It may also be advisable to take digital photographs of the display, both as a backup and to provide a pictorial reminder of the process.

Exhibit 5.7. MEDA Strengths, Weaknesses, and Strategic Implications—2014. MEDA president and CEO Gary Cunningham and staff member Ashley Michel reviewed and revised the SWOT analysis performed by Accenture consulting staff on MEDA's behalf. This exhibit reformats that analysis so that their strategic implications can be drawn out. In other words, the opportunities that strengths enable are pointed out, and the threats entailed by weaknesses are minimized or overcome—and reframed as opportunities instead.

Strengths

Service for minority entrepreneurs is what MEDA is known for and is MEDA's “sweet spot.”

Strategic Implications

MEDA should realign its goal to be the go-to organization for helping minority entrepreneurs succeed.

MEDA's primary customer is established entrepreneurs when there is a gap in the marketplace for minority entrepreneurs, which presents an opportunity.

MEDA needs to segment customers based on business maturity. Servicing the entire minority entrepreneurial

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development lifecycle provides MEDA a larger growth opportunity to better service minority entrepreneurs.

MEDA's loan and consulting programs distinguish themselves from the rest of the programs; they are consistent with MEDA's current vision and applicable to its future operating model.

MEDA should aggressively and immediately invest in the capital fund program and use technology to increase the reach of its consulting program.

Weaknesses Strategic Implications

MEDA has created an “identity crisis” by managing and reporting on programs not entirely related to the original goal of serving minority entrepreneurs.

MEDA needs a balanced, well-known, and cross- program scorecard with fewer goals and more focus on minority entrepreneurs. MEDA should develop key performance indicators (KPIs) based on growth impact, operations, and brand.

MEDA is currently using a hybrid operating model that prevents it from developing a cohesive market strategy and affects performance negatively.

MEDA needs to change its operating model in order to reach the desired level of scale. Specifically, MEDA is positioned to broker relationships between external service providers and customers, focusing on market access and leveraging technology to increase

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the number of customers served.

MEDA should secondarily focus on education at specific stages of entrepreneurial growth.

MEDA's assets grew more slowly than those of its competitors over the past 10 years.

MEDA should improve its growth by increasing the number of minority customers serviced through its loan program and utilizing strategic partnerships.

MEDA's fundraising has stagnated over the past five years because MEDA has been minimizing administrative costs, meaning it had little staff capacity to help raise money.

MEDA's fundraising efforts perform relatively poorly compared to competitors'.

MEDA needs to improve its performance in fundraising and diversify its sources. Specifically, MEDA should increase fundraising ROI, increase its nongovernment revenue to government revenue, and improve its ratio of service dollars to administrative dollars.

There are funding opportunity costs to maintaining the status quo of current programs. After allocating for fixed costs, the loan program contributes a small profit to MEDA. Minority business consulting services, the Federal Procurement Center, the Procurement Technical

MEDA should develop a program scorecard of some kind to evaluate its impact on minority entrepreneurs, brand/position, operating model, and cost and demand growth. MEDA should constantly

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Assistance Center, and Small Business Innovation Research programs do not provide a profit.

monitor existing and new program opportunities, again in this framework, to make strategic choices.

MEDA does not have dedicated IT support and data management services, which are critical to leveraging future technology to meet customer needs.

MEDA should hire an internal IT/data management administrator to address IT/data initiatives, management, and ongoing support.

Source: Adapted from Gary Cunningham and Ashley Michel's revision of information contained in consulting documents produced by Accenture in 2015.

The SWOT analysis indicated that though MEDA has generally been successful over the course of its history, it is not going to go to “the next level” unless it makes some major strategic changes. Specifically, it needs a new business model. It needs to focus on its core mission and quit doing what does not relate directly to it. It needs a more focused and effective performance management system. It needs to upgrade its IT and data management capabilities. It needs to explore strategic partnerships to enhance its effectiveness.

A particularly interesting feature of the Accenture analysis was the competitive analysis, which did two things. First, it identified different stages of the entrepreneurial life cycle, each of which identifies a different customer segment, and showed what proportion of MEDA's clients were in each state: pre-venture, 3 percent; startup, 8 percent; early stage, 8 percent; moving toward long-term sustainability, 15 percent; and expansion and acquisition, 66 percent. MEDA concentrates in the latter stages of the entrepreneurial life cycle, with the implication being that if MEDA wishes to grow substantially, it has to somehow have a more balanced portfolio of clients across the stages—the newer businesses in the earlier stages are the ones who reach the big time in the expansion and acquisition stages.

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The second part of the analysis arrayed the clienteles of MEDA and its competitors against the stages. By far, most of the competitors specialized in a specific ethnic group, such as Latino Americans, Asian Americans, African immigrants, or Native Americans, rather than all entrepreneurs of color; women; or all entrepreneurs. No organization focused specifically on all entrepreneurs of color across all stages in the entrepreneurial life cycle. Accenture identified that gap as the primary area for MEDA to grow and referred to it as the “sweet spot,” given that MEDA was primarily known for serving entrepreneurs of color. Accenture also saw strategic partnerships, including ones with competitors, as an important avenue for filling the gap. Combining the two parts of the analysis presented MEDA with a choice: Either grow the pipeline of minority-owned businesses itself or partner with other organizations to do so. MEDA would choose the latter option.

Note that the snow card technique actually is quite flexible and can be used to help perform tasks other than SWOC/T analyses. For example, it can be used to carry out the five-step strategy formulation process outlined in Chapter 2. Instead of asking about SWOC/Ts, the questions would focus on eliciting answers to questions tied to each of the five steps.

PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES One of the special features of strategic planning is the attention it accords to external and internal environments. Coupled with attention to its mandates and mission, external and internal assessments give an organization a clear sense of its present situation and lay the basis for identifying strategic issues and developing strategies in the next two steps. As the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu (1910) might have said, without this kind of in-depth understanding, an organization is likely to be continuously imperiled. And successful major change will be highly unlikely. The following process guidelines may be helpful as an organization looks at its external and internal environments:

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1. Make a point of regularly paying attention to what is going on inside and outside the organization. Regardless of whether there is a formal scanning process, you should keep your eyes and ears open and pay attention. This guideline isn't a call for some sort of hypervigilance but rather a call for attending in a thoughtful way to the “complexly busy” world Diane Ackerman describes around you. Numerous sources of good ideas, observations, and reflections abound, including good newspapers in hard copy and electronic form; websites and Web aggregators such as Google Alerts; trade journals and newsletters; interest group and professional association meetings, newsletters, blogs, and listserv discussions; webinars; public lectures in person or online as podcasts; and, one of my favorites, browsing in independent bookshops that also serve good coffee.

2. Keep in mind that simpler is likely to be better. Highly elaborate, lengthy, sophisticated, and quantified procedures for external and internal assessment are likely to drive out strategic thinking, not promote it. Let purpose be your guide—meaning always keep in mind the mandates, mission, and need to create public value—and search for information related to them. Do not gather information indiscriminately. An instructional guide to performing a basic SWOC/T analysis will be found at https://www.hubertproject.org/hubert-material/438/.

(One possible way to simplify the process is to skip doing a SWOC/T analysis for the organization as a whole in this step and instead to do the analyses in relation to specific strategic issues (Step 5) or strategies (Step 6). In those steps, the analysis will seem more grounded and specific.)

3. The organization may wish to review its mission and mandates; stakeholder analyses; existing goal statements; results of the organizational highs, lows, and themes exercise (if it was used); cultural audits; relevant survey results; MIS and external scanning reports; possible future scenarios; and other information related to the organization's internal and external environments prior to performing a SWOC/T analysis. Alternatively, a “quick and dirty” SWOC/T analysis may prompt

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strategic planning team members to pay attention to what they previously ignored or it may indicate where more information is needed.

Because an organization's culture can place severe limits on its ability to perceive SWOC/Ts as well as constrain strategic responses, an analysis of the culture may be particularly useful. If key decision makers and opinion leaders are willing, a serviceable cultural analysis can be performed in one and a half days, following guidelines provided by Johnson et al. (2017) and Schein (2016).

4. Consider using the snow card technique with the strategic planning team to develop a list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges or threats.

5. Always try to get a strategic planning team to consider what is going on outside the organization before it considers what is going on inside. Attending to the outside is crucial because the social and political justification for virtually every organization's existence is what it does, or proposes to do, about external social or political challenges or problems. Organizations, therefore, should focus on those challenges or problems first and themselves second.

6. As part of the discussion of its SWOC/T list, the strategic planning team should look for patterns, important actions that might be taken immediately, and implications for the identification of strategic issues and strategies. Discussants should also see if there are any important requirements emerging from the SWOC/T analysis that need to be taken into account or addressed in later stages in the process. For example, a requirement of effective strategies is that they must build on strengths and take advantage of opportunities while minimizing or overcoming weaknesses and threats.

7. A follow-up analysis of the SWOC/T analysis developed by the strategic planning team is almost always a good idea. Constructing logic models, value chains, or visual strategy maps that capture the apparent reasoning and perceived causal chains behind existing organizational processes and strategies can be very instructive (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2014; McLaughlin &

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Jordan, 2015). Mapping the policy fields in which the organization finds itself can also be a good idea (Stone & Sandfort, 2009).

8. The organization should take action as quickly as possible on those items for which it has enough information. Doing so is desirable if it does not foreclose important strategic options for the future. It is important to show continuous progress and desirable results from strategic planning if people are to stay with it when the going gets tough.

9. The organization should consider institutionalizing periodic SWOC/T analyses. The simplest way to do this is to schedule periodic meetings of the strategic planning team, say, once or twice a year, to engage in a snow card exercise to develop a SWOC/T list as a basis for discussion. A norm should be established that at least some organizational changes will result from the sessions. In more elaborate form, holding periodic meetings would imply establishing a quasipermanent external and internal scanning function.

10. The organization may wish to construct various scenarios to help it identify SWOC/Ts. There are advantages to doing so in that the stories conjured up by scenarios can help many people better imagine the future. As poet Muriel Rukeyser said, “The world is made of stories, not atoms.” The often abstract categories of a SWOC/T analysis may just be vague “atoms” to people when what they need is a tangible story—a scenario with real scenes, events, and actors. The story can help them see the whole rather than just the parts. I have seen effective assessments done with and without scenarios. Not using scenarios can save time, but some of the possible richness of a good assessment exercise can be lost without them. Scenarios can be particularly useful in identifying and assessing the risks surrounding potential Black Swan events (Taleb, 2007).

SUMMARY Step 4 explores the organization's external and internal environments in order to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

challenges or threats that the organization faces. When combined with a greater attention to mandates and mission, these steps provide the foundation for identifying strategic issues and developing effective strategies to create public value in the following two steps. Recall that every effective strategy will build on strengths and take advantage of opportunities while it minimizes or overcomes weaknesses and challenges.

By far, the most important strategic planning techniques are individual thinking and group deliberation. Neither may look like useful work—as when poet Wallace Stevens says, “Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between thinking and looking out the window.” But do not be deceived. The organizational highs, lows, and themes exercise and the snow card technique, for example, can be used to provide the basic SWOC/T list that will be the focus of the individual thinking and group deliberations to come, which will clarify the most important issues and much of what the organization has to work with.

Simply creating lists of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges or threats is not enough. The list must be carefully discussed, analyzed, compared, and contrasted; that is, a SWOC/T analysis must be performed. Planners should note specific implications for the formulation of strategic issues and effective strategies, as well as actions that may be necessary (and that could be taken) before the end of the strategic planning process.

One of the fascinating features of most SWOC/T analyses is that strengths and weaknesses are often highly similar to one another. That is, an organization's greatest strengths may also be its greatest weaknesses. Likewise, the opportunities and challenges an organization faces are also often similar to one another. Strategic planning team members should not be surprised to see such relationships. Indeed, they should expect that every organization will carry the weaknesses of its strengths and face the challenges of its opportunities (and vice versa). The trick is to take advantage of the strengths and opportunities without being disadvantaged by the related weaknesses and challenges.

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The team also should not be surprised to find internal opportunities and challenges and external strengths and weaknesses. Figure 2.1 indicates that opportunities and challenges are primarily external and strengths and weaknesses are internal; meanwhile, Nutt and Backoff (1992) argue that strengths and weaknesses are primarily in the present and opportunities and challenges are primarily in the future. As a result, SWOC/Ts may arise either inside or outside the organization, in the present or the future (as INTOSAI found; see Exhibit 5.1).

A few additional observations are in order. First, SWOC/T analyses often provide a very succinct statement of the situation the organization faces and the challenges it will need to address in the next steps of the planning process. The holistic assessment is one of the most important outcomes of SWOC/T analyses. Second, organizations almost always have strengths on which they can draw, but they also need to work constantly at overcoming any weaknesses its opportunities create or expose, in addition to the challenges that can magnify the weaknesses or overwhelm the strengths and opportunities. Third, this needed outward focus is the reverse of what often happens when a group of senior managers (or even elected officials) get together. Typically, most managers are responsible for the day-to-day operation of their departments. Their jobs often virtually preclude paying careful attention to external trends and events. Furthermore, most organizations do not have well-established occasions and forums for line managers, as a group, to discuss external trends and events and their likely impact. Most organizations are thus in danger of being blindsided by external developments unless they make use of external scanning practices and have organized forums for managers to discuss information developed through external scanning or an invited speakers program.

Fourth, there is good news in the shared perception of organizational needs or concerns and challenges as it may induce both group cohesion and action, particularly if the culture supports facing rather than avoiding failure, weakness, and threats (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). Indeed, as was noted in Chapter 2, organizations often get into strategic planning because they face strategic issues that they do not

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know how to handle or because they are pursuing strategies that are failing or likely to fail. In either case, it is the perception of serious challenges that prompts strategic planning. There is potential bad news in shared perceptions about strategic issues because without some sense of safety provided by credible leaders, inspiring missions, visions, goals, supportive cultures, or strong facilitators, groups gripped by challenges or actual threats may become paralyzed and unable to think of or take advantage of opportunities (Kouzes & Posner, 2017; Schein, 2016; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015).

Fifth, strengths are good because they help inoculate the group against the natural human tendency to become a captive of action inhibitors (weaknesses) rather than focus on what facilitates human action (strengths). It also protects them from the equally familiar human tendency to assign blame or find a scapegoat as a way of avoiding action. Whatever the reason, it is important to turn weaknesses into challenges to be overcome (Seligman, 2006).

Sixth, organizations should consider institutionalizing their capability to perform periodic SWOC/T analyses. To do so, they will need to establish serviceable external and internal scanning operations, develop a good MIS system to gather routine information, open themselves up to spotting and attending to nonroutine information, and undertake regular strategic planning exercises.

A final point to be made about SWOC/T analyses is that if a special- purpose government such as a park board or a general-purpose government performs a SWOC/T analysis, the results will involve both the government as an organization and its jurisdiction as a place or community. This blending should be expected of governments responsible for themselves and for places. As with every step in the strategic planning process, simpler is usually better. Strategic planning teams should not get bogged down in external and internal assessments. Important and necessary actions should be taken as soon as they are identified as long as they do not prematurely seal off important strategic options.

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CHAPTER SIX Identifying Strategic Issues Facing the Organization

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

—Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Johnson

Identifying strategic issues is the heart of the strategic planning process. Recall that a strategic issue is a fundamental policy question or challenge affecting an organization's mandates, mission and values, product or service level and mix, clients or users, cost, financing, organization, or management. The purpose of this step (Step 5), therefore, is to identify the fundamental policy questions—the strategic issue agenda—facing the organization. The way these questions are framed can have a profound effect on the creation of ideas for strategic action and a winning coalition, along with the associated decisions that define what the organization is, what it does, and why it does it—and therefore on the organization's ability to create public value (see Figure 2.3). If strategic planning is in part about the construction of a new social reality, then this step outlines the basic paths along which that drama might unfold (Bolman & Deal, 2013, 2014; Bryant, 2015).

An organization's mission often is explicitly or implicitly identified as an issue during this phase. In other words, organizational purpose is almost always an issue, at least implicitly, and strategic planning efforts revisit the issue often, if only to reaffirm existing purposes. In addition, the organization's culture will affect which issues get on the agenda and how they are framed, as well as which strategic options get serious consideration in Step 6—strategy formulation and plan development. The need to change the organization's culture may thus become a strategic issue itself if the culture blinds the organization to important issues and possibilities for action. It is also worth keeping in mind that every major strategy change will involve a cultural change

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(Mulgan, 2009; Schein, 2016).

As noted in Chapter 2, strategic issues are important because issues play a central role in political decision making. Political decision making begins with issues, but strategic planning can improve the process by affecting the way issues are framed and addressed. With carefully framed issues, subsequent choices, decisions, and actions are more likely to be politically acceptable, technically workable, administratively feasible, in accord with the organization's basic philosophy and values, and morally, ethically, and legally defensible.

Identifying strategic issues typically is one of the most riveting steps for participants in strategic planning. Virtually every strategic issue involves conflicts: what will be done, why it will be done, how and how much of it will be done, when it will be done, where it will be done, who will do it, and who will be advantaged or disadvantaged by it. These conflicts are typically desirable and even necessary because they help clarify what the issues are. As Rainey (2014, p. 395) observes, “In public and nonprofit organizations, one expects and even hopes for intense conflicts, although preferably not destructive ones.” As a result, a key leadership task is to promote constructive conflict aimed at clarifying which issues need to be addressed in order to satisfy key stakeholders and create public value.

Whether issue-related conflict draws people together or pulls them apart, participants will feel heightened emotion and concern (Schein, 2016; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). As with any journey, fear, anxiety, and sometimes depression are as likely to be travel companions as excitement and adventurousness. It is very important, therefore, that people feel enough psychological safety to explore potentially threatening situations, relationships, and ideas; in other words, they need what Heifetz, Linsky, and Grashow (2009, pp. 155–159) call a holding environment to help them through. An effective strategic planning coordinating committee and strategic planning team will provide this necessary support.

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This step should result in the creation of the organization's strategic issue agenda. The agenda is a product of three prior outcomes. The first is a list of the issues faced by the organization. The items on the list may have many sources, but the list itself is likely to be a product of strategic planning team deliberations. The second is the division of the list into two broad categories: strategic and operational. It often takes focused discussion to discern which issues are really strategic, which are more operational, and which are somewhere in between.

Figure 6.1 shows key differences among strategic issues, operational issues, and those that are a mix of the two. Strategic issues are likely to involve more need for knowledge exploration, changes in basic stakeholders and/or stakeholder relationships, and perhaps radical new technologies. Responses different from the status quo are likely to be required from the system level (for example, changes in basic rules or institutional redesign) or organizational level (for example, changes in mission, vision, and goals). Statements of guiding principles and values may be needed. Decision makers involved are likely to be top- level decision makers and decision-making bodies at the system and organizational levels. When new strategies are needed, the strategic planning team will be a key focal point for helping formulate new strategies or codifying effective emergent strategies.

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Figure 6.1. Sorting Out the Issues and Their Implications. Source: Adapted from F. Alston, 2010, personal communication; M. Barzelay, 2010, personal communication; Heifetz, 1994; Hill and Hupe, 2014; O'Reilly and Tushman, 2013; and Ostrom, 1990.

Operational issues, in contrast, are more technical in nature and are likely to involve knowledge exploitation, strategy refinement, and process improvement. Line managers, operations groups and personnel, and service coproducers or recipients will be required to respond. Issues that are partly strategic and partly operational are in between. Each issue's strategic aspects should be examined and resolved first before operational concerns can be settled. It is important to recognize, however, that sometimes strategic aspects of issues cannot be resolved without first learning more about operational realities.

The third prior outcome is an arrangement of the strategic issues in some sort of order: priority, logical, or temporal. The listing and arrangement of issues should contain information to help people consider the nature, importance, and implications of each issue.

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A number of additional outcomes result from the identification of strategic issues. First, attention is focused on what is truly important, and this is not to be underestimated. Key decision makers in organizations usually are victimized by the “80–20 rule.” That is, they usually spend at least 80 percent of their time on the least important 20 percent of their jobs (Parkinson, 1957). When this is added to the fact that key decision makers in different functional areas rarely discuss important cross-functional matters with one another, the stage is set for shabby organizational performance—or what Alvesson and Spicer (2012) call “organizational stupidity.”

It also helps to recognize that in terms of the immediacy of required attention, there are three different kinds of strategic issues: (1) issues where no action is required at present but that must be continuously monitored; (2) issues that can be handled as part of the organization's regular strategic planning cycle; and (3) issues that require an immediate response.

A second desirable outcome is that attention is focused on issues, not answers. All too often, serious conflicts arise over solutions to problems that have not been clearly defined (Fisher & Ury, 2011). Such conflicts typically result in power struggles, not problem-solving sessions. More important, they are unlikely to help the organization achieve its goals, be satisfied with the outcome of its planning, or enhance its future problem-solving ability.

Third, the identification of issues usually creates the kind of useful tension necessary to prompt organizational change. Organizations rarely change unless they feel some need to change, meaning some pressure or tension—often fear, anxiety, or guilt—requires change to relieve or release the stress (Ackermann & Eden, 2011). The tension must be great enough to prompt change but not so great as to induce paralysis. Strategic issues that emerge from the juxtaposition of internal and external factors—and that involve organizational survival, prosperity, and effectiveness—can provide just the kind of tension that will focus the attention of key decision makers on the need for change. These decision makers will be particularly attentive to strategic issues that entail severe consequences if they are not addressed. As Samuel Johnson observed, albeit humorously, frightening situations can ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

quickly focus one's attention on what is important.

Fourth, strategic issue identification should provide useful clues about how to resolve the issue. By stating exactly what it is about the organization's mission, mandates, and internal and external factors (or SWOC/Ts) that makes an issue strategic, the team also gains some insight into possible ways that the issue might be resolved. Insights into the nature and shape of effective answers are particularly likely if the team follows the dictum that any effective strategy will take advantage of strengths and opportunities and minimize or overcome weaknesses and challenges (see Exhibit 5.7). Attention to strengths and opportunities is likely to promote action-enhancing optimism, as opposed to the inaction, depression, or rigidity of thought associated with attention only to weaknesses and threats (Seligman, 2006).

Fifth, if the strategic planning process has not been real to participants previously, it will become real for them now. For this to happen, there must be a correspondence between what the person thinks, how he or she behaves toward that thing, and the consequences of that behavior (Hunt, Boal, & Dodge, 1999). As the organization's situation and the issues it faces become clear, as the consequences of failure to face those issues are discussed, and as the behavioral changes necessary to deal with the issues begin to emerge, the strategic planning process will begin to seem less academic and much more real.

The more people realize that strategic planning can be quite real in its consequences, the more seriously they will take it. A qualitative change in the tone of discussions among members of the team often can be observed at this point, as the links among cognitions, behaviors, and consequences are established. Less joking and more serious discussion occur. A typical result is that the group may wish to cycle through the process again. In particular, the group's initial framing of the strategic issues may change as a result of further dialogue and deliberation. Or, to return to the theatrical metaphor, as the group rehearses the various decision and action sequences that might flow from a particular issue framing, they may wish to reframe the issue so that certain kinds of strategies are more likely to find favor (Bolman & Deal, 2013; Bryant, 2015). ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

A further consequence of the understanding that strategic planning may be all too real in its consequences is that key decision makers may wish to terminate the effort at this point. They may be afraid of addressing the conflicts embodied in the strategic issues. They may not wish to undergo the changes necessary to resolve the issues. The decision makers may fall into a pit of stress, anger, depression, feelings of powerlessness, grief, or some combination of these. Such feelings are quite common among individuals undergoing major changes until they let go of the past and move into the future with a new sense of direction and renewed confidence (Bridges & Bridges, 2017). A crisis of trust or a test of courage may thus occur and lead to a turning point in the organization's character.

If, after completion of this step, the organization's key decision makers decide to push on, a final very important outcome will be gained: The organization's character will be strengthened. Just as an individual's character is formed in part by the way the individual faces serious difficulties, so too is organizational character formed by the way the organization faces difficulties (Schein, 2016). Strong characters emerge only from confronting serious difficulties squarely and courageously.

Examples of Strategic Issues and How They Should Be Described There are many different ways to identify strategic issues (Figure 2.1), some of the most important of which are discussed further below. The most common approach, however, is blending aspects from two or more of the approaches. The City of Minneapolis, the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA), and the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI), all used hybrid approaches and made use of extensive dialogue and deliberation in order to figure out what the issues were. Exhibits 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 present in brief the respective strategic issues facing the three organizations.

Exhibit 6.1. Some Key Strategic Issues in ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

the City of Minneapolis's Strategic Planning Process. In the Minneapolis case, one important strategic issue was when to initiate the process. Should the process begin before the November 2013 mayoral and city council election or after? The new mayor and council might throw out much of the work that had been done if the process began before the election. Waiting to begin until after the election, however, would throw the Results Minneapolis performance management system way off schedule. The decision was made to begin before the election to keep the Results Minneapolis process on track and to ensure city staff had adequate time to provide their input but also to make sure the process included adequate time and occasions for the elected officials to review and modify the draft plan prior to adoption.

The new mayor and council did in effect add a strategic issue to be addressed when they directed the City Coordinators Office to develop a new approach to much more directly engage the citizenry in setting directions for the city (see Exhibit 3.3).

EXHIBIT 6.2. Strategic Issues Facing the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA). There was no formal document that identified and discussed the strategic issues facing MEDA. Instead, Gary Cunningham talked with many people, engaged a Humphrey School class in helping him understand MEDA, and engaged the consulting firm Accenture to help him understand what the issues were and what might be done about them. He already knew MEDA faced several issues, and as a result of these measures, he was able continually address them whenever opportunities arose. This was wise because many of the staff and some board members he inherited were

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basically satisfied with the status quo even though he and many other board members were not.

Cunningham also needed to have his own team in place and to convince as many key staff as possible of the desirability of change so that forward movement in an uncertain environment had enough internal support to succeed. He also needed to have a more fully developed understanding of the entire ecosystem of support for entrepreneurs of color at regional, state, and national levels. And he needed more knowledge about what was happening in other parts of the country in order to know how best to proceed.

Cunningham therefore kept a broad agenda of issues in mind. First, he needed to understand MEDA and the broader systems that affected and were affected by it. Second, Cunningham needed to build support and credibility with the board. Most of the board members were savvy business people but generally did not know as much about the environment faced by entrepreneurs of color and minority-owned businesses. Cunningham did not have a business background though he had managed large government and nonprofit enterprises and budgets. A mutual learning process was needed for Cunningham and the board.

Third, Cunningham had to build MEDA's capacity. This included getting the right team in place, stopping some things, building competence and confidence to expand products and services, redesigning structures and processes, becoming more successful in fundraising and developing long-term funding, and building or strengthening relationships with other organizations in the ecosystem.

Fourth, a new strategic vision was needed for MEDA; what Cunningham hoped would be a strong set of collaborative strategic partnerships in the ecosystem; and, beyond minority entrepreneurship, a regional and national reframing of issues of race and disparities that would make it easier to advance communities of color.

Finally, Cunningham saw a need to change the policy fields within which support for entrepreneurs of color and minority-owned

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businesses takes place. There were several changes he wanted to see: (1) He wanted MEDA to become a central player, catalyst, and facilitator of change in the field. (2) He wanted MEDA to move from being a nonprofit charity service provider to being more of a social enterprise that would charge for services. (3) He wanted to change regional government policies that aggravated racial and economic segregation, specifically transportation and housing policies. He was helped in this regard by being Minneapolis's representative on the Metropolitan Council, the fairly powerful regional planning and coordinating body. (4) Finally, he wanted to alter state policies and funding approaches so that they did a better job of addressing disparities.

Exhibit 6.3. Some Strategic Issues in the INTOSAI Case. In the INTOSAI case, there were perhaps three main strategic issue areas. The first involved how to design a process that was more sophisticated and externally focused than previous processes. The result was the first internal and external scans.

The scans revealed the need to address a number of challenges. These constitute the second area of strategic issues. Specifically (Huff, 2017, p. 5):

The organization faced communications challenges, ongoing gaps in the capacities of its members, a slow response time to rapidly changing global issues, inaccessibility of information and training, limited implementation accountability, and confusion regarding its complex organizational structure. [In addition,] stakeholders saw opportunities for INTOSAI to use its expertise in setting global auditing standards to build its role in global issues and to increase networking opportunities. However, the same stakeholders also identified threats for INTOSAI to monitor and respond to: the weakening independence of certain SAI members; funding constraints; environmental issues, notably climate change;

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financial corruption; economic declines; shifting technology; and INTOSAI members no longer seeing the organization as relevant to their needs.

The final strategic area was how to adapt INTOSAI's existing strategic goals to serve the new focus of helping SAIs build their respective countries' capacities or implementing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. The result was a draft strategic plan that included, for the first time, clearly articulated strategic objectives to support each strategic goal and “cross- cutting priorities” to help break down silos within the organization.

How Should Strategic Issues Be Described? An adequate strategic issue description (1) phrases the issue as a question the organization can do something about and that has more than one answer, (2) discusses the confluence of factors (mission, mandates, and internal and external environmental aspects, or SWOC/Ts) that make the issue strategic, and (3) articulates the consequences of not addressing the issue. A strategic issue description probably should be no longer than a page or two for it to attract the attention of and be useful to busy decision makers and opinion leaders.

There are several reasons why the issue should be phrased as a question the organization can do something about. First, if there is nothing the organization can do, then there is no strategic issue, at least not for the organization. Rather, this apparent issue would be a condition or constraint. Having said that, I must point out that a strategic issue may still exist if the organization is forced by circumstances into doing something, however symbolic or ineffective, about said condition. Second, effective strategic planning has an action orientation. If strategic planning does not produce useful decisions and actions, then it probably is a waste of time—although it is not a waste of time to consider taking action in response to an issue and then to choose, based on careful analysis, not to act. Third, focusing on what the organization can do helps it attend to what it controls instead of worrying pointlessly about what it does not. Finally, organizations should focus their most precious resource—the attention of key

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decision makers—on issues they can do something about.

Articulating strategic issues as challenges the organization can do something about, particularly when done on a regular basis, should help the organization strongly influence the way issues get framed and what might be done about them. In the vernacular, this will help the organization get in front of the issues. If the organization waits until a crisis develops, it may be very difficult to deal with it strategically in wise ways.

Strategic issues thus typically—or at least ideally—are not current problems or crises—though obviously there are almost always strategic implications to the way current problems or crises are resolved and decision makers should think strategically about how to address current problems and crises (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). In any event, strategic issues are typically complex and potentially destructive if not satisfactorily resolved.

There are several reasons why the issue should be phrased as a challenge that has more than one solution. If the question has only one answer, it is probably not really an issue but rather a choice about whether to pursue a specific solution. In addition, the chances are increased that strategic issues will not be confused with strategies and that innovative or even radical answers to those issues might be considered. Innovative or radical answers may not be chosen, but they almost always should be considered because dramatic performance gains, increases in key stakeholder satisfaction, or public value creation may result (Borins, 2014).

Attention to the factors that make an issue strategic is important both to clarify the issue and to establish the outlines of potential strategies to resolve the issue. Strategic issues arise in three kinds of situations. First, they can arise when events beyond the control of the organization make or will make it difficult or impossible to accomplish basic objectives acceptably and affordably. These situations would certainly be challenges and may even be called threats. Second, they can arise when technology, cost, financing, staffing, management, or political choices for achieving basic objectives change or soon will. These situations might present either challenges or opportunities.

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Finally, they arise when changes in mission, mandates, or internal or external factors suggest present or future opportunities to (1) make significant improvements in the quantity or quality of products or services delivered; (2) achieve significant reductions in the cost of providing products or services; (3) introduce new products or services; (4) combine, reduce, or eliminate certain products or services; or (5) in general create more public value. Unless the context surrounding the issue is understood clearly, it is unlikely that key decision makers will be able to act wisely in that context, which they must do to improve the chances for successful issue resolution (Crosby & Bryson, 2005).

Finally, there should be a statement of the consequences of failure to address the issue. These may be either exposure to serious threats or failure to capitalize on significant opportunities. If there are no positive or negative consequences, then the issue is not an issue. The issue may be interesting in an academic sense, but it does not involve an important or fundamental challenge for the organization. Again, the resource in shortest supply is the attention of key decision makers, so they should focus on issues that are the most consequential for the organization.

Once a list of strategic issues has been prepared, it is possible to figure out just how strategic each issue is. Two methods for doing so, the use of a litmus test and construction of an issue-precedence diagram, are covered later in the Process Design and Action Guidelines section.

EIGHT APPROACHES TO STRATEGIC ISSUE IDENTIFICATION At least eight approaches to the identification of strategic issues are possible: the direct and indirect approaches, the goals approach, the vision of success approach, the visual strategy mapping approach (Ackermann & Eden, 2011; Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2014), the alignment approach, the issue-tensions approach (Nutt & Backoff, 1993), and the systems analysis approach (Senge, 2006). Which approach is best depends on the nature of the broader environment and the characteristics of the organization, collaboration, or ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

community. Guidelines for the use of the eight approaches will be presented in this section; guidelines for the whole strategic issue identification step will be presented in the following section.

The direct approach is probably the most useful to most governments and nonprofit organizations. In it, planners go straight from a review of mandates, mission, and SWOC/Ts to the identification of strategic issues. The direct approach is best if (1) there is no agreement on goals or the goals on which there is agreement are too abstract to be useful; (2) there is no preexisting vision of success and developing a consensually based vision will be difficult; (3) there is no hierarchical authority that can impose goals on the other stakeholders; or (4) the environment is so turbulent that development of goals or visions seems unwise and partial actions in response to immediate, important issues seem most appropriate. The direct approach, in other words, can work in the pluralistic, partisan, politicized, and relatively fragmented worlds of most public (and many nonprofit) organizations as long as there is a dominant coalition strong and interested enough to make it work. That is, there must be a coalition committed to the identification and resolution of at least some of the key strategic issues faced by the organization, even if they are not committed to the development of a comprehensive set of goals or a vision of success (Bolman & Deal, 2013).

In the goals approach—which is more in keeping with traditional planning theory—an organization first establishes goals and objectives for itself and then goes on to identify issues that need to be addressed to achieve those goals and objectives, or else it goes straight to developing strategies. Increasingly, these goals and objectives are likely to be embedded in a scorecard of some sort from a prior round of strategic planning; the issues thus concern how best to achieve what is in the scorecard. For the approach to work, fairly broad and deep agreement on the organization's goals and objectives must be possible and the goals and objectives themselves must be specific and detailed enough to provide useful guidance for developing issues and strategies (but not so specific and detailed that they filter out wise strategic thought, action, and learning). This approach also is more likely to work in organizations with hierarchical authority structures in which

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key decision makers can impose goals on others affected by the planning exercise and in which there is not much divergence between the organization's official goals and its operative goals (Rainey, 2014). Finally, externally imposed mandates may embody goals that can drive the identification of strategic issues or development of strategies.

The approach, in other words, is most likely to work in public or nonprofit organizations that are hierarchically organized, pursue narrowly defined missions, and have few powerful stakeholders (Bolman & Deal, 2013). In contrast, organizations with broad agendas and numerous powerful stakeholders are less likely to achieve the kind of consensus (forced or otherwise) necessary to use the goals approach effectively—though they may achieve it in specific areas as a result of political appointments, elections, referenda, or other externally imposed goals or mandates. Similarly, the approach is likely to work for communities that are relatively homogeneous and have a basic consensus on values, but is unlikely to work well for heterogeneous communities, or those without agreement on basic values, unless extraordinary efforts are put into developing a real consensus on goals. Of course, many city and county governments have put in the effort to develop consensus-based goals for their communities with often impressive results: for example, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and King County, Washington.

In the vision of success approach, the organization is asked to develop a “best” picture of the organization in the future as it fulfills its mission and achieves success. The issues then involve how the organization should move from the way it is now to how it would look and behave based on its vision of success. The vision of success developed in this step will be sketchier than the more elaborate version called for in Step 8 of the strategic planning process. All that is needed in the present step is a relatively short, idealized depiction of the organization in the future.

This approach is most useful when it is particularly important to take a holistic approach to the organization and its strategies—that is, when integration across a variety of organizational boundaries, levels, or functions is necessary (Barzelay & Campbell, 2003; Bolman & Deal, ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

2013). As conception precedes perception (Weick, 1995), development of a vision of success can provide the concepts necessary in times of major change to enable organizational members to see what adjustments are necessary. Finally, many people understand the utility of beginning with a sense of vision. When enough key actors think that way, this may be the best approach and lead to truly integrated strategies, assuming the actors can agree on a vision.

This approach is more likely to apply to nonprofit organizations than to public organizations as public organizations are usually more tightly constrained by mandates and conflicting expectations of numerous stakeholders. Public organizations will find the approach particularly useful, however, when newly elected leaders take charge after having campaigned for organizational reform based on their vision for the future or been appointed because of their vision. In addition, the approach has been shown to be quite successful as a way of helping cope with significant downsizing. The Ohio Department of Public Health used a vision of success to help guide a dramatic downsizing of operations in response to mandated deinstitutionalization of its clients (Nutt & Hogan, 2008). This approach may also work for communities if they are reasonably homogeneous, share an underlying value consensus, or are willing to take the time to develop a consensus.

Next, there is the indirect approach, which, as its name implies, is a more indirect way to identify strategic issues than the direct approach. The approach works in the same situations as the direct approach and is generally as useful. In addition, the approach is particularly useful when major strategic redirection is necessary but many members of the planning team and organization have not yet grasped the need or cannot sense where the changes might lead. The method starts with participants' existing ideas, helps them elaborate on the action implications of those ideas, and then recombines the ideas in new ways so that participants socially construct a new reality, which allows them to convince themselves of the need for change. Participation in this process of social reconstruction is a means of producing the commitment necessary to pursue new directions.

In other words, participants' own ideas, when recombined in new ways, help them see things differently and act accordingly. Innovation ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

thus is more a consequence of recombination than mutation (Kingdon, 2010). When using this approach, the planning team develops several sets of options, merges the sets, then sorts them into clusters of similar themes using the snow card (or affinity diagram) process (discussed in Chapter 5) or the visual strategy mapping process (described in Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2014). Each cluster's theme represents a potential strategic issue. The sets consist of five options generated by the team to: (1) make or keep stakeholders happy according to their criteria for satisfaction; (2) build on strengths, take advantage of opportunities, and minimize or overcome weaknesses and challenges; (3) fulfill the mission and mandates and in general create public value; (4) capture existing goals, strategic thrusts, and details; and (5) articulate stated or suggested actions embodied in other relevant background studies.

The visual strategy mapping approach involves creation of word- and-arrow diagrams in which statements about potential actions the organization might take, how they might be taken, and why are linked by arrows indicating the cause–effect or influence relationships between them. In other words, the arrows indicate that action A may cause or influence B, which in turn may cause or influence C, and so on; if the organization does A, it can expect to produce outcome B, which in turn can be expected to produce outcome C. These maps might consist of hundreds of interconnected relationships, showing differing areas of interest and their relationships to one another. Important clusters of potential actions may comprise strategic issues. A strategy in response to the issue would consist of the specific choices of actions to undertake, how to undertake them, and why (Ackermann & Eden, 2011; Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden 2014).

The approach is particularly useful when participants are having trouble making sense of complex issue areas, time is short, the emphasis must be on action, and commitment on the part of those involved is particularly important. Participants simply brainstorm possible actions, cluster them according to similar themes, and then figure out what causes what. The result is an issue map (see Figure 6.2 later in this chapter for a high-level overview of how issues may be connected). This process of producing word-and-arrow diagrams may

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also be called causal mapping, and it can be used in tandem with the other approaches to indicate whatever logic is being followed.

The alignment approach helps clarify where there are gaps, inconsistencies, or conflicts among the various elements of an organization's governance, management, and operating policies, systems, and procedures. The approach is based on the assumption that superior (or even just good) organizational performance requires reasonable (or better) coherence across an organization's governance, management, mission, mandates, stakeholder relations, policies, goals, budgets, human resources, communications, technologies, operations, and other elements (for example, Goodsell, 2010; Kaplan & Norton, 2006).

If an organization is to be at least the sum of its parts, then there must be reasonable alignment across these organizational elements and between the organization and what it seeks to do in relation to its environment. Issues related to alignment are very common in all organizations, whether they are well-established, expanding, downsizing, or start-ups. Indeed, leaders, managers, and planners should always be alert to possible alignment challenges—including throughout a strategic planning process—and should regularly consult with frontline workers about possible misalignments in operations. The approach thus works well in tandem with all the other approaches.

The issue tensions approach was developed by Nutt and Backoff (1992, 1993) and elaborated in Nutt, Backoff, and Hogan (2000). These authors argue that there are always four basic tensions around any strategic issue. These tensions involve (1) human resources, especially equity concerns; (2) innovation and change; (3) maintenance of tradition; and (4) productivity improvement; and their various combinations. The authors suggest critiquing the way issues are framed using these tensions separately and in combination to find the best way to frame the issue. The critiques may need to run through several cycles before the wisest way is found. The tensions approach can be used by itself or in conjunction with any of the other approaches. Taking the extra time to critique an issue statement using the tensions approach is advisable when the costs of getting the issue ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

framing wrong are quite high or when there is a lot of uncertainty about what the issue actually is.

Finally, systems analysis can be used to help discern the best way to frame issues when the issue area may be conceptualized as a system (and they almost always can be) and the system contains complex feedback effects that must be modeled in order to understand the system (Mulgan, 2009; Senge, 2006). Systems analysis can vary in how formal it is and whether computer support is needed. Many systems do not require formal modeling in order to be understood but others do, and it can be dangerous to act on these more complex systems without adequately appreciating what the system is and how it behaves. The more complicated the system, the more difficult it is to model and the more expert help will be needed. But there are limits to systems analysis because there are systems no one can understand given current methodologies. Considerable wisdom is required to know when it is worth attempting sophisticated analyses, which analysts to use, and how to interpret and make use of the results.

The Direct Approach The following guidelines may prove helpful to organizations that use the direct approach.

After a review of mandates, mission, and SWOC/Ts, strategic planning team members should be asked to identify strategic issues on their own. For each issue, each member should answer three questions on a single sheet of paper (sample worksheets can be found in Bryson & Alston, 2011):

1. What is the issue, phrased as an issue the organization can do something about and that has more than one answer?

2. What factors (mandates, mission, and external and internal influences) make it a strategic issue?

3. What are the consequences of failure to address the issue?

It may be best to give individuals at least a week to propose strategic issues. The identification of strategic issues is a real art and cannot be forced, and people may need time to reflect. Also, individuals' best

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insights often come unpredictably in odd moments and not in group settings.

Each of the suggested strategic issues should then be placed on a separate sheet of flip chart paper and posted on a wall so that members of the strategic planning team may consider and discuss them as a set. The sheets may be treated as giant snow cards with similar issues grouped together and perhaps recast into a different form on blank sheets held in reserve for that purpose.

Alternatively, ask planning team members to individually brainstorm as many strategic issues as they can—answering only the first question —on individual worksheets. Have each participant place a check mark next to the five to seven most important issues on their individual lists. These items should be transferred to snow cards and then clustered into issue categories. The group (or subgroups) can then answer the three questions in relation to each cluster.

Whichever method is used, it is usually helpful to clarify which issues the group thinks are the most important issues in the short and long terms. I usually rely on the use of colored stick-on dots to indicate individuals' views. I ask each person to place an orange dot on the five issues they think are the most important in the short term and a blue dot on the five issues they think are the most important in the long term. (The same issue can be important in both the short and the long term.) The pattern of dots will indicate where the majority opinion lies, if any exists. As with any judgmental exercise, it usually is best to have people make their individual judgments first and record them on a piece of scratch paper before they publicly express their views (by placing colored dots, for example). After individuals have expressed their views, a group discussion should ensue, followed by additional individual “voting” (using the dots) if it appears people have changed their minds. A more reasoned group judgment is likely to emerge via this procedure (Kahneman, 2013).

When at least tentative agreement is reached on the list of strategic issues, prepare new single sheets of paper that present each issue and answer the three questions. These new sheets will provide the basis for further dialogue, if necessary, or for the development of strategies to

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resolve the issues in the next step.

The Goals Approach The following guidelines are for organizations that choose the goals approach.

Begin with a compilation, review, and update of existing organizational goals or desired outcomes. These goals may be found in a variety of places; for example, prior strategic plans, functional area plans, key performance indicators, scorecards, or mandated outcomes. Remember, however, that there may well be a divergence between an organization's official goals and its operative goals.

If the organization does not already have a current set of goals, then after a review of mandates, mission, and SWOC/Ts, members of the strategic planning team should be asked to propose goals for the organization as a basis for group discussion. Again, the snow card procedure is an effective way to develop and organize a set of possible goals quickly as a basis for further group discussion. More than one session may be necessary before the group can agree on a set of goals that is specific and detailed enough to guide the development of strategies to achieve the goals in the next step.

It may not be necessary to identify strategic issues if this approach is used; rather, the team may move directly to the strategy development step. If strategic issues are identified, they are likely to pose questions such as: “How do we gain the agreement of key decision makers on this set of goals?” “How do we establish priorities among these goals?” and “What are the best strategies for achieving the goals?” INTOSAI essentially followed this latter approach.

An alternative way to identify a set of goals for the organization is to assign one or more members of the strategic planning team the task of reviewing past decisions and actions to uncover the organization's implicit goals. (This activity can also be usefully undertaken as part of the previous step, internal assessment.) This approach can uncover the existing consensus in the organization about what its goals are. It also can uncover any divergences between this consensus and the organization's mandates, mission, and SWOC/Ts. Dealing with the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

divergences may represent strategic issues for the organization.

Whichever approach to the development of goals is used, specific objectives will be developed in the next step, strategy development. Strategies are developed to achieve goals; objectives (as opposed to goals) should be thought of as specific milestones or targets to be reached during strategy implementation.

Vision of Success Approach New boards or elected or appointed officials may arrive with a vision essentially already worked out. Their main task often will involve spending time selling their vision and incorporating any useful modifications that are suggested (Kotter, 2012). Other organizations wanting to develop a vision of success from scratch may wish to keep in mind the following guidelines. In addition, the approach can be adapted to identify desirable guiding principles rather than a vision.

After a review of mandates, mission, and SWOC/Ts, each member of the strategic planning team should be asked as individuals to develop a picture or scenario of what the organization should look like as it successfully meets its mandates, fulfills its mission, creates public value, and in general achieves its full potential. The visions should be no longer than a page in length and might be developed in response to the following instructions: Imagine that it is three to five years from now and your organization is extremely successful at fulfilling its mission and attracting resources. Imagine that you are a newspaper reporter assigned to do a story on the organization. You have thoroughly reviewed the organization's mandates, mission, services, personnel, financing, organization, management, etc. Describe in no more than a page what you see (Barry, 1997/2013).

The members of the strategic planning team should then share their visions with one another. A facilitator can record the elements of each person's vision on large sheets. Either during or after the sharing process, similarities and differences among them should be noted and discussed. Basic alternative visions should then be formulated (perhaps by a staff member after the session) as a basis for further discussion.

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At a subsequent session, planning team members should rate each alternative vision or scenario along several dimensions deemed to be of strategic importance (such as ability to create public value, fit with mandates and mission, stakeholder support, SWOC/Ts, and financial feasibility) and develop a list of relative advantages and disadvantages of each vision. The team may also wish to consult internal and external advisers, critics, and possible partners to gain their insights and opinions. Deliberation should follow to decide which vision is best for the organization.

An alternative approach involves asking team members to develop two lists: what the organization is moving from (both good and bad) and what it is moving toward (both good and bad). The approach involves capturing the essence of the organization's past and present and then projecting what it might be into the future. The good and bad aspects inherent in future possibilities can be used to formulate best- and worst-case scenarios. A subsequent sketch of an organizational vision of success would highlight the good that the organization wants to move toward, and take account of the bad that the organization wants to avoid.

Once agreement is reached among key decision makers on the best vision, the strategic planning team may be able to move on to the next step: developing strategies to achieve the vision. A major 3,000- member downtown church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, pursued the vision of success approach. Its strategic planning team constructed visions to guide subsequent strategy development in areas covered by its mission statement or other areas where new strategies were clearly needed. These included:

Worship

Nurture (Christian education for member families and their children)

Global outreach (education and action abroad)

Local outreach (local social service and community action)

Children and youth (bringing member youth into the life of the church and doing more for youth who are not members)

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Ministry of caring (mutual support and comfort for those in need)

Evangelism (faith sharing and development)

Stewardship (resource development)

Communication with the public (electronic broadcasts of services and public forums on timely issues)

Facilities (redoing the sanctuary and entrances to the building, education, and outreach facilities)

Goals, strategies, and action steps were then formulated within each of these vision areas.

The visions developed with this approach actually may constitute a grand strategy for the organization—the overall scheme or plan for how best to “fit” with its environment. The strategy development step would then concentrate on filling in the details for putting the grand strategy into operation.

The strategic planning team may decide to identify strategic issues first, however, before developing more detailed strategies for implementation. The strategic issues typically would concern how to gain broad acceptance of the vision and how to bridge the gap between the vision and where the organization is at present. It is important to not spend all of one's energy on visioning so that not enough time, energy, and attention are left for developing detailed strategies, implementation guidance, and vehicles for implementation.

The Indirect Approach The following guidelines may help organizations identify strategic issues using the indirect approach.

Planning team members should review the organization's current mission, the summary statement of its mandates, the results of the stakeholder and SWOC/T analyses, statements of present goals and strategies, and any other pertinent background studies or discussions. The team then should systematically review these materials to brainstorm sets of possible options for organizational action. Each option should be phrased in action terms—that is, it should start with

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an imperative (get, acquire, create, develop, achieve, show, communicate, and so on). Each then should be placed on a separate snow card or sticky note. The following option sets should be created:

1. Create options to keep stakeholders happy where they are happy or to make them happy where they are not. (Obviously, the organization may not wish to make certain stakeholders happy. For example, police forces are not likely to pursue options that will make drug dealers happy by relaxing law enforcement efforts; however, police forces might collaborate with economic development agencies, for example, to find alternative employment for drug dealers.)

2. Develop options that enhance strengths, take advantage of opportunities, and minimize or overcome weaknesses and challenges or threats.

3. Identify options tied directly to fulfilling the organization's mission, meeting its mandates, and creating public value.

4. Create options that articulate the goals, thrust, and key details of current organizational strategies.

5. Create cards or ovals for options identified or suggested by any other pertinent background studies or discussions.

The source of each option (stakeholder or SWOC/T analysis, mission or mandates, existing goals and strategies, background reports, or discussions) should be indicated in small print somewhere on the snow card. Knowing the source can help participants assess the potential importance of options.

Once the option sets have been assembled—often using snow cards attached to a wall—they should be mixed and regrouped by team members into clusters that share similar themes. The theme of each grouping represents a candidate strategic issue. The visual strategy mapping process can be used to structure the clusters further by showing interrelationships among clusters and the various options that comprise them (Bryson, Ackermann & Eden, 2014).

When suitable categories have been identified, and key interrelationships noted, the team should develop one-page ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

descriptions of the strategic issues that answer the three questions discussed on page 195. The process of noting the source of each option will help the team answer the second question about relevant situational factors and the third question about the consequences of not addressing the issue.

The Visual Strategy Mapping Approach As noted in Chapter 2, the approach involves creation of word-and- arrow diagrams in which actions the organization might take, how it might take them, and why, are linked by arrows indicating the cause– effect or influence relationships between them. People interested in the visual strategy mapping approach can find detailed process guidelines in Bryson, Ackermann, and Eden (2014; see also Bryson, Ackermann, Eden, & Finn, 2004). An instructional video featuring an effort to reduce traffic deaths in Minnesota will be found at: https://www.hubertproject.org/hubert-material/402/ The arrows indicate that action A may cause or influence B, which in turn may cause or influence C, and so on; if the organization does A, it can expect to produce outcome B, which in turn may be expected to produce outcome C. (The approach is thus a more elaborate version of the purpose mapping technique outlined in Exhibit 3.1.) These maps can consist of hundreds of interconnected relationships, showing differing clusters of actions and their relationships to one another. Important clusters of potential actions are each candidate strategic issues. A strategy in response to the issue would consist of the specific choices of actions to undertake in the issue area, how to undertake them, and why (Bryson et al., 2014). The approach is particularly useful when participants are having trouble making sense of complex issue areas, time is short, the emphasis must be on action, and commitment on the part of those involved is particularly important.

A visual strategy map indicates not only strategic issues and how they might be addressed but also how the issues relate to mission and goal statements. These links show the possible consequences of addressing or not addressing the issues.

The Alignment Approach ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

The alignment approach helps clarify where there are gaps, inconsistencies, or conflicts among the various elements of an organization's governance, management, and operating policies, systems, procedures, financing, and competencies. If an organization is to be at least the sum of its parts, then there must be reasonable alignment across these organizational elements and between the organization and what it seeks to do in relation to its environment. As noted, issues related to alignment are very common in all organizations, whether they are well-established, expanding, downsizing, or start-ups. The alignment approach works well in tandem with all other approaches.

The following guidelines will help identify alignment issues:

1. Review documents pulled together or specifically prepared for the strategic planning process and look for alignment challenges. These are often highlighted as a result of comparing and contrasting the results of stakeholder analyses and external and internal assessments of various kinds, including, for example, analytic performance reports, staff surveys, logic modeling, strategy reviews, scorecard use, and so on. Search for gaps, inconsistencies, or conflicts among the elements of an organization's various governance, management, and operating policies, systems, procedures, financing, and competencies.

2. Pull together insights from these various assessments as a basis for a more encompassing dialogue around what the real alignment challenges are. Many alignment issues are essentially operational in nature, but the most significant gaps, inconsistencies, and conflicts are likely to flag potential strategic issues.

3. Consider using the alignment approach with any of the other approaches.

The Issue Tensions Approach The following guidelines will help those who wish to explore the tensions surrounding an issue.

The tensions approach begins much like the direct approach. After a

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review of mission, mandates, and SWOC/Ts, planning team members are encouraged to put forward statements of potential strategic issues. The statements are then categorized according to whether they are essentially a question of human resources, especially equity concerns; innovation and change; maintenance of tradition; or productivity improvement.

After the initial categorization, the statements are then explored further to draw out any other tensions that might be involved. For example, an issue about executive pay (human resources) may also be explored in relation to the other tensions: human resources or equity concerns versus the need to foster innovation and change versus the need to maintain a culture and tradition versus productivity improvement. Drawing out these other aspects of the issue may allow for the kind of reframing often necessary to find constructive strategies in response to the issues (Bolman & Deal, 2013, 2014; Nutt & Backoff, 1992).

The critiques may need to run through several cycles before the wisest way to frame the issue is found. The tensions approach can be used in tandem with any of the other approaches to gain additional insight. For example, the tensions related to goals, visions, clusters of actions, or system models may be explored.

Systems Analysis Approach Modeling a system of any complexity takes considerable skill (Richardson, Andersen, & Luna-Reyes, 2015); therefore, skilled help and facilitation should be sought if it appears that system modeling will be necessary. Modeling is often done in a conference setting in order to elicit needed information and to build understanding of and commitment to the resulting model. Andersen and Richardson (1997) offer detailed guidance, what they call “scripts,” for building a model directly with a planning team. Their approach includes the following steps:

1. Plan for the modeling conference. This includes goal setting and managing the scope of the work, logistics, and designing and making use of the appropriate groups for specific tasks.

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2. Schedule the day. This includes a variety of planning guidelines, such as starting and ending with a bang; clarifying expectations and products; mixing the kinds of tasks and including breaks frequently; striving for visual consistency and simplicity in model representations; and reflecting frequently on the model as it develops.

3. Follow specific scripts for specific tasks. Andersen and Richardson have developed scripts for defining problems; conceptualizing model structure; eliciting feedback structure; supporting equation writing and parameterizing for quantified models; and developing policy.

It should be noted that the eight approaches to the identification of strategic issues are interrelated (a point that will be brought out again in the next chapter on strategy development). It is a matter of where you choose to start. For example, an organization can frame strategic issues directly, indirectly, or through visual strategy mapping, and then in the next step develop goals and objectives for the strategies developed to deal with the issues. Mission, strategies, goals, and objectives then can be used to explore issues of alignment or to develop a vision of success in Step 8 of the process. Or an organization may go through several cycles of strategic planning using the direct or goals approaches before it decides to develop a vision of success. Or the organization may start with a sketch of a vision of success in this step and then expand that into a full-blown vision of success after it completes the strategy development step. Particular issue areas may require system modeling in order to be understood well enough to guide subsequent strategy development. At various points along the way, the organization may explore issues, goals, visions, system models, or potential strategies further through the alignment approach or the tensions framework.

In other words, a planning team may use more than one approach as part of the same strategic planning effort. Differing conditions surrounding different issue areas can prompt the use of multiple approaches in identifying strategic issues. Where useful goals or visions are already developed, they may be used to help formulate issues. Where they are not available, efforts to develop them or use the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

direct or indirect approaches should be considered. Whenever sophisticated analyses are needed, they should be undertaken.

Process Design and Action Guidelines The following process guidelines should prove helpful as a strategic planning team identifies the strategic issues its organization faces:

1. Review the organization's (program's, collaboration's, or community's) mandates, mission, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges, including any key indicators the organization watches—or should watch.

2. Select an approach to strategic issue identification that fits the organization's situation: direct, goals, vision of success, indirect, visual strategy mapping, alignment, issue tensions, or systems analysis. Whichever approach is used, prepare one-page descriptions of the resulting strategic issues that (a) phrase the issue as a question the organization can do something about; (b) clarify what it is about mission, mandates, and internal and external factors that make it an issue; and (c) outline the consequences of failure to address the issue. In the process of identifying and articulating issues, do not be surprised if: (a) the mission itself is an issue, (b) you need to do issue-specific SWOC/T analyses in order to appropriately understand and frame the issues, or (c) the issues go through considerable reframing as the consequences of one framing versus another become clear.

Also, no matter which approach you choose, do not be surprised if problems arise involving misalignment between or across the organization's mission, goals, strategies, staffing, technology, resources, and so on. Organizations are chronically out of alignment, and issues can be expected to arise at points of mismatch. For example, the MEDA process began with recognition of a number of misalignments internally and externally. The City of Minneapolis's efforts over the years have involved addressing a number of misalignments with, for example, city-wide goals and organizational capabilities, as well as adopted goals and strategies and the annual budgeting processes.

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The phenomenon of misalignment is so common that I have included the alignment approach as one of eight approaches to identifying strategic issues. In my experience, misalignments are also quite likely to emerge as operational issues. Team members also should search for misalignments in Step 7, strategy formulation; Step 9, implementation; and Step 10, strategy and planning process reassessment. There is almost always a need to work on appropriate alignments in those steps.

3. Once a list of issues has been prepared, try to separate them into strategic and operational issues or some combination of the two (see Figure 6.1). Operational issues should be assigned to an operations group, team, or task force. If an appropriate grouping does not exist, it should be created. Some issues are likely to have both strategic and operational aspects; try to treat the strategic aspects first before assigning operational concerns to an operations group.

4. It may be helpful to use a “litmus test” to develop some measure of just how “strategic” an issue is. For example, a litmus test that might be used to screen strategic issues is presented in Exhibit 6.4. A truly strategic issue is one that scores high on all dimensions. A strictly operational issue would score low on all dimensions.

Exhibit 6.4. Operational Versus Strategic Issues.

Issue: Issue is: Operational ___ Operational and Strategic __ Strategic ___ Operational Strategic

1. Is the issue on the agenda of the organization's policy board (whether elected or appointed)?

No Yes

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2. Is the issue on the agenda of the organization's chief executive (whether elected or appointed)?

No Yes

3. When will the strategic issues' challenge or opportunity confront you?

Right now Next year Two or more years from now

4. How broad an impact will the issue have?

Single unit or division

Entire organization

5. How large is your organization's financial risk/opportunity?

Minor (<10% of the budget)

Moderate (10%–15% of the budget)

Major (>25% of the budget)

6. Will strategies for issue resolution likely require:

a. Changes in the rules governing the organization (e.g., significant amendments in federal or state statutes or

No Yes

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regulations)?

b. New institutional or organizational design?

No Yes

c. Development of new service goals and programs?

No Yes

d. Significant changes in revenue sources or amounts?

No Yes

e. Major facility additions or modifications?

No Yes

f. Significant staff expansion?

No Yes

7. How apparent is the best approach for issue resolution?

Obvious, ready to implement

Broad parameters, few details

Wide open

8. What is the lowest level of management that can decide how to deal with this

Line staff supervisor

Head of major department

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issue?

9. What are the probable consequences of not addressing this issue?

Inconvenience, inefficiency

Significant service disruption, financial losses

Major long- term service disruption, large cost/revenue setbacks

10. How many other groups are affected by this issue and must be involved in resolution?

None 1–4 5 or more

11. How sensitive or “charged” is the issue relative to community, social, political, religious, and cultural values?

Benign Touchy Dynamite

5. Once strategic issues have been identified, they should be sequenced in either a priority, logical, or temporal order as a prelude to strategy development in the next step. It is important to focus the attention of key decision makers effectively and efficiently. Establishing a reasonable order, or agenda, among strategic issues allows key decision makers to focus on them one at a time. (It must be recognized, however, that the issues may be so interconnected that they have to be dealt with as a set.)

An effective tool for figuring out a useful issue order is an issue- precedence diagram (Nutt & Backoff, 1992). This diagram consists of issues and arrows indicating the direction of influence relationships among them (which makes it a variant of a visual strategy map; see Ackermann & Eden, 2011; Bryson et al., 2014).

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Figure 6.2 presents an issue-precedence diagram of the strategic issues facing the U.S. province of a Roman Catholic religious order. The order consists of priests and brothers who live in religious communities and work with low-income people and communities. The order employs many laypeople to teach in its schools, work with target communities, produce publications, and assist with fundraising and management.

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Figure 6.2. Strategic Issues Facing a Roman Catholic Religious Order.

The diagram indicates that in order to achieve more effective ministries, an issue closely linked with the order's mission, four additional issues must be dealt with first (maintain or increase ministries; clarify vision of success; maintain and improve income in the long run; and have satisfied, productive employees). In order to maintain or increase ministries, more members will need to join the order (increase vocations) and income will need to be maintained and improved in the long run. In general, arrows leading to an issue indicate the issues that also must be addressed if the focal issue is to be resolved. Arrows leading from an issue indicate potential consequences of having addressed the issue.

Preparation of this diagram produced two crucial insights for the planning team. First, they were able to see that the key to “increasing vocations” was the sequence of issues flowing into that issue from “improve community life” (key strategy options are indicated by the bullet points), “improve interpersonal relations,” “improve attention to individual needs,” “promote healthy lifestyles,” and “improve governance and management structures and processes.” It is this set of issues, in particular, that is tied to the order's community life that prompted members of the planning team to push for strategic planning in the first place.

Second, the team was able to make the case to the members of the order who mainly cared about having more effective ministries and increased vocations that the best way to achieve these was to first address the issues tied to improving community life. The diagram thus helped all members of the religious order understand the logical, and probably temporal, relationships among the issues; helped key stakeholder groups understand how their individual agendas might be served by working together on each other's issues; and helped the group decide what its priorities for attention should be.

Of course, the strategic implications of the issue agenda should be considered carefully. For example, it may not be wise to have key

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decision makers focus first on the top-priority issue, especially if there has been little prior interaction among key decision makers and little experience with constructive conflict resolution. In such circumstances, it may be best to start the process of resolving strategic issues by focusing on the least important issue so that decision makers can gain experience dealing with one another and with conflict when the consequences of failure are least. Planning team members should talk through the likely implications of different issue agenda orders before deciding on the appropriate sequence for action in the next step, strategy development.

6. There is a real art to framing strategic issues. Considerable discussion and revision of first drafts of strategic issues are likely to be necessary in order to frame issues in the most useful way. The process is likely to seem rather messy at times as people struggle with finding the best way to frame the issues, but out of the struggle, wisdom is likely to emerge. If the organization's mission is itself a strategic issue, the organization should expect to develop a second set of issues after the mission is reexamined. In other words, once the new or revised mission is in place, an altered set of strategic issues is likely to emerge.

It is important to critique strategic issues to be sure that they usefully frame the fundamental policy questions the organization faces. The strategic planning team should ask itself several questions about the issues it identifies before it settles on what to address. Some useful questions include the following:

What is the real issue, conflict, or dilemma?

Why is it an issue? What is it about mission, mandates, or SWOC/Ts that makes it an issue?

Who says it is an issue?

What would be the consequences of not doing something about it?

Can we do something about it?

Is there a way to combine or eliminate issues?

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Should issues be broken down into two or more issues?

What issues are missing from our list, including those that our culture might have kept us from recognizing?

It is especially important to remember that strategic issues framed in single-function terms will be dealt with by single-function departments or agencies. Strategic issues that are framed in multifunctional terms will have to be addressed by more than one department. And strategic issues that are framed in multiorganizational, multi-institutional terms will have to be addressed by more than one organization or institution. If one seeks to wrest control of an issue from a single department, then the issue must be framed multifunctionally. If one seeks to wrest control of an issue from a single organization, then it must be framed multiorganizationally. Strategic planners can gain enormous influence over the strategic planning process and its outcomes if the issues are framed in such a way that decision makers must share power in order to resolve the issues. Often, wresting control over the framing of the issue from the status quo ante is a crucial step in moving toward dramatic changes or what will be called big wins in the next chapter (Barzelay & Campbell, 2003; Baumgartner & Jones, 2009, 2015; Crosby & Bryson, 2005).

The importance of this admonition is apparent when one examines organizations' efforts to engage in process improvement, performance budgeting, or new uses of information technology. In my experience, organizations often get into these ventures without thinking through carefully why they wish to do so. Partly this may be the result of particular professionals championing the causes that are the current fashion within their respective professions. Process improvement then gets assigned to an improvement czar of some sort, performance budgeting to the budget director, and information technology improvement strategies to IT professionals. The reform agenda then becomes the captive of these particular units, and the organization-wide perspectives and goals are subverted. The means substitute for the ends and a kind of goal displacement occurs in which instrumental values become terminal values (Merton, 1940). Although the power of the

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subunits may be enhanced, organizational performance is less than it should be. The quality initiative ends up making process improvements in unwise strategies; budgets enhance performance in the wrong directions; and IT improvements are led by technology rather than overarching organizational strategies. Convening forums in which the organization-wide perspective is developed is the best way to make sure the means serve the ends and not the reverse.

7. Remember that there are likely to be at least three kinds of strategic issues in terms of the kind of attention they require and when they require it; each will need to be treated differently. The three are (1) those that require no action at present but must be monitored; (2) those that can be handled as part of the organization's regular strategic planning cycle; and (3) those that require urgent attention and must be handled out of sequence with the organization's regular strategic planning cycle. Do not be surprised if issues in this latter category emerge in the midst of the strategic planning process.

8. Focus on issues, not answers. The answers will be developed in the next step, strategy formulation. Those answers will be helpful only if they are developed in response to the issues that actually confront the organization. That is, an answer without an issue is not an answer.

Keep in mind, however, that people can be counted on to put forward favored solutions, whether or not they have much to do with the real issues (Kahneman, 2013). Planners can utilize this tendency to their advantage by constantly asking team members what problems or issues their proposed solutions actually address. When this question is asked about several proposed solutions, a useful picture of what the real issues might be is likely to emerge. Issues developed in this fashion have the advantage of emerging from what people actually can imagine doing and thus may seem more “real” to them.

9. Reach an agreement among key decision makers that a major fraction of their time together will be devoted to the identification

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and resolution of strategic issues. Without an agreement of this sort, it is too easy to forget that when key decision makers get together, one of their most important tasks is to deal with what is most important to the organization. The decision-making bodies in all three organizations highlighted in this book made such a commitment.

10. Keep it light. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, this step in the strategic planning process can quickly become very serious and “heavy.” It is important for members of the strategic planning team to keep a sense of humor, acknowledge emotions, and release tensions with good-humored mutual solicitude. Otherwise, destructive conflict or paralysis may set in, and the group may find it difficult to agree on a set of strategic issues and move on to developing effective strategies to deal with the issues. Emotions may run high—or low in the case of depression and grief—and the group will have to acknowledge these emotions and deal with them constructively.

11. Notwithstanding efforts to keep things light, remember that participants may fall into the pit or hit the wall (Bridges & Bridges, 2017). Walls often consist of what appear to be dilemmas, vicious circles, or paradoxes that cannot be resolved (Scharmer, 2016; Senge, 2006). For example, a public library with which I worked faced a vicious circle that resulted when its service culture collided with serious budget cuts. Existing strategies had begun to fail because the system was at its limit and staff stress and burnout were reaching crisis proportions. Given their ethos, the librarians could not yet see what to do. They were all deeply committed to giving library patrons what they wanted—almost no matter what it took—but could not continue to do so without increased resources. The obvious need to narrow their role, set priorities among patrons, and adopt a more entrepreneurial and political mentality challenged their professional identifies that had built up over many years. They felt themselves surrounded by a wall they did not know how to climb, skirt, tunnel under, or blow up. However, through lots of discussion, emotional venting, mutual support, and consideration of various options for addressing the issues, they

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eventually figured out how to knock down the wall.

12. Agreement on strategic issues to be addressed in the next step is likely to mark an important organizational decision point. Remember that the identification of strategic issues is the heart of the planning process. Identifying the fundamental challenges the organization faces will have a profound effect on the actual choices made and ultimately on the viability and success of the organization.

13. Managing the transition to the next step in the process—strategy development—is crucial. Too often organizations move quickly to the identification of strategic issues and then back off from resolving those issues. The conflicts or choices embodied in the issues may seem too difficult or disruptive to address. Strong leadership and commitment to the strategic planning process must be exercised if the organization is to deal effectively with the basic issues it confronts.

SUMMARY The purpose of Step 5 is to identify the fundamental challenges facing the organization concerning its mandates, mission, and product or service level and mix; clients, customers, or users; cost; financing; organization; or management. At the end of this step, key decision makers should agree on a strategic issue agenda—the set of strategic issues to be addressed and arranged in priority, logical, or temporal order. Effectively addressing these issues should help the organization satisfy its key stakeholders and create real public value.

The eight approaches to identifying issues are the direct approach, the goals approach, the vision of success approach, the indirect approach, the visual strategy mapping approach, the alignment approach, the issue tensions approach, and systems analysis. In general, governments and nonprofit agencies will find the direct, goals, vision of success, visual strategy mapping, and alignment approaches most useful, but which approach to use depends on the situation at hand.

To return to the drama metaphor, this step constitutes the framing of

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conflicts (issues). The climax of the story will be reached in the next two steps, when these conflicts are resolved through the construction and adoption of effective strategies. Fear, anxiety, guilt, dread, or grief about how these issues might get resolved can cause people to flee from strategic planning. Faith, hope, courage, and reasoned optimism typically are needed to press forward (Seligman, 2006).

The transition to the next step in the process will require careful management. It is one thing to talk about what is fundamental and quite another to take action based on those discussions. Strong leadership, high morale, and a reasonable sense of psychological safety and optimism will all help the team and organization keep moving ahead. Unless they push on, organizational effectiveness and stakeholder satisfaction are likely to suffer, and the organization will not meet its mandates or fulfill its mission.

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CHAPTER SEVEN Formulating and Adopting Strategies and Plans to Manage the Issues

If you play with the fibers, they suggest possibilities. —Annie Albers, weaver

And when faced with a choice, remember: our business is with things that really matter.

—Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, 161–180 CE

This chapter will cover Steps 6 and 7, formulating and adopting strategies and plans. Even though the two steps are likely to be closely linked in practice, they should be kept separate in the planning team members' minds. Both concern creating ideas for strategic action and building a winning coalition (see Figure 2.4), but the dynamics that surround each step may be dramatically different, especially when strategies must be adopted by elected or appointed policy boards. Strategy formulation often involves freewheeling creativity and the give-and-take of dialogue and deliberation, whereas formal adoption of strategies and strategic plans can involve political intrigue, tough bargaining, public posturing, and high drama. Remember: Whatever else they are, strategic planning is ultimately a political process and strategic plans are political documents. Strategies should be formulated that can be adopted in a politically acceptable, technically and administratively workable, results-oriented, and legally, ethically, and morally defensible form.

Strategy may be thought of as a pattern of purposes, policies, programs, projects, actions, decisions, or resource allocations that defines what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why it does it. Strategy, therefore, is the extension of an organization's mission, forming a purpose-driven (and sometimes purpose- revealing) bridge between the organization and its environment. Strategies typically are developed to deal with strategic issues; that is, they outline the organization's response to the fundamental challenges ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

it faces. To follow the bridge metaphor, strategic issues show where bridges are needed, with the strategies being the bridges. (If the goals approach to strategic issues is taken, strategies will be developed to achieve the goals; if the vision of success approach is taken, strategies will be developed to achieve the vision.)

This definition of strategy is purposely broad. It is important to recognize patterns that transcend and, ideally, integrate and align organizational goals, policies, decisions, resource allocations, and actions large and small. General strategies will fail if specific steps to implement them are absent. Further, strategies are prone to fail if there is no alignment or consistency between what an organization says it wants, what it pays for, and what it actually does. The definition of strategy offered here—an arrangement to achieve the mission, meet the mandates, and create public value—calls attention to the importance of this alignment.

Good strategies involve creating effective linkages with the organization's environment, even if the purpose is to change the context. As noted in Chapter 5, the word context comes from the Latin for weave together. The arrows in the strategic planning process outlined in Figure 2.1 may be thought of as the threads of communication concerning ideas about the organization's context and what might be done to respond usefully to it. The possibilities for creating good patterns are suggested if you play with these threads or fibers, as famous weaver Annie Albers proposes. The art of creating an effective response is also highlighted—as it should be—because in my experience, decision makers and strategic planning team members often are not creative enough in addressing strategic issues and crafting strategies (Lusk & Birks, 2014; Mulgan, 2009).

The art, however, is typically not without anguish. As psychotherapist- theologian Thomas Moore observes: “Creative work can be exciting, inspiring, and godlike, but it is also quotidian, humdrum, and full of anxieties, frustrations, dead ends, mistakes, and failures” (2016, p. 199). Part of the challenge is that change processes often feel like—and are—failures in the middle (Bridges & Bridges, 2017). This is particularly true of innovations because they must be. By definition, they have never been tried before (at least by the organization), and ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

success can be determined only after they are implemented. Thus, strategy is intentionally defined in a way broad enough to help ensure that though strategic changes (a kind of innovation) may be failures initially, they can be successes in the end.

Also, according to my definition, every organization (or collaboration or community) already has a strategy (or strategies). That is, for every organization, there is already some sort of pattern—or logic in action (McLaughlin & Jordan, 2015)—across its purposes, policies, programs, actions, decisions, or resource allocations. However, it may not be a very good one. It may need to be refined or sharpened or (less frequently) changed altogether to be an effective bridge between the organization and its environment. The task of strategy formulation typically involves highlighting what is good about the existing pattern; reframing, downplaying, or pruning away what is bad about it; and adding whatever new elements are needed to complete the picture (Mulgan, 2009).

Culture becomes very important in strategy formulation as whatever patterns exist are typically manifestations of the organization's culture(s). Culture provides much of the glue that holds inputs, processes, and outputs together. It affects how strategic issues are framed and placed on the agenda in the first place and subsequently affects which strategy options are given serious consideration (Schein, 2016). Issues of organizational identity are similarly wrapped up in existing strategies and affect how issues are framed, get on the agenda, and are addressed (Rughase, 2007). Put differently, every strategy is almost always both emergent and deliberate though the balance can vary a good deal (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009).

Borins (1998, 2014), in major studies of a very large study of public sector innovations, explored who the innovators were and whether the innovation processes were more deliberate or emergent. Politicians and agency heads tended to be the initiators of innovations in times of crisis; middle managers and frontline staff tend to initiate innovations jointly when there is problem to be addressed that is not yet a crisis. In other words, middle managers and frontline staff can be proactive problem solvers when there is no crisis, but they cede that role to politicians and agency heads in the face of a crisis (2014, p. 78). ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

The extent to which these initiators' strategies involved deliberate comprehensive planning or emergent groping along varied considerably. Politicians and middle managers are more likely to be associated with planning, whereas frontline staff are more likely to favor groping along. Collaborations were strongly associated with planning rather than groping along; in other words, a great deal had to be worked out in advance for the collaboration to proceed (Borins, 2014, p. 78)

Another study by Nutt and Hogan (2008) of the downsizing of the Ohio Department of Mental Health through closures and mergers of its mental hospitals supports these findings. The authors found that better results were produced by emphasizing the importance of careful planning—including the use of strategic waiting to slow the process down enough so that people could adjust to the new reality and work out a way forward (perhaps using some groping)—than were produced by more rushed processes. In other words, speed led to an overemphasis on groping, which resulted in excessive disarray and confusion and did not produce good results; a more deliberate and deliberative approach resulted in better outcomes.

Recall also that most organizations' strategies remain fairly stable for long periods of time and then may change abruptly. Thus, most of the time, strategic planning focuses on adapting and programming strategies whose outlines are already reasonably clear (Mintzberg et al., 2009). At other times, though, strategic planning will be called upon to assist with the formulation of new strategies to deal with quite new and different circumstances. Even in times of rather drastic change, however, an organization is unlikely to discontinue all of its existing strategies, so the task of blending the old with the new and the deliberate with the emergent still remains (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2013). In effect, organizations are always called upon to develop three agendas: what they will keep and improve, what they will initiate that is new, and what they will stop. Of the three, the stop agenda always seems to be the hardest to pursue.

As indicated in Figure 6.1, strategic issues and therefore strategies to address them may be focused on:

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1. Addressing the need for new or revised high-level rules for making rules; institutional redesign; or adaptations involving new knowledge exploration, new concepts, changes in basic stakeholders and/or stakeholder relationships, or radical new technologies

2. Creating a process (for example, a strategic planning process) to develop mission, vision, and goals and realize them in practice

3. Developing future capabilities

4. Controlling strategy delivery in the present

5. Producing or co-producing programs, products, projects, and services

6. Maintaining and enhancing stakeholder relations

Strategies also can vary by time frame, from fairly short term to long term, and by level. Four basic levels for single organizations include:

1. Grand strategy for the organization as a whole

2. Subunit strategies (subunits may be divisions, departments, or units of larger organizations)

3. Program, service, or business process strategies

4. Functional strategies (such as financial, staffing, communications, facilities, information technology, and procurement strategies)

Strategies are different from tactics. Tactics are the short-term, adaptive actions and reactions used to accomplish limited objectives. One needs to be cautious, however, about drawing too sharp a distinction between the two, given the importance of changing environments and emergent strategies.

PURPOSE The purpose of the strategy formulation and plan development step (Step 6) is to create a set of strategies that will effectively link the organization (or community) to its environment and create significant and enduring public value. Typically, these strategies will be developed

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in response to strategic issues, but they may also be developed to achieve goals or a vision of success. The purpose of the strategy and plan adoption step (Step 7) is to gain authoritative decisions to move ahead with implementing the strategies and plans.

The City of Minneapolis provides a good example of a grand strategy statement for the organization as a whole. The statement provides a strategic framework to inform mayoral and city council decision making and to guide business planning by city departments. The statement consists of the city's vision, values, goals, and strategic directions (see Exhibit 7.1).

Exhibit 7.1. The Vision, Values, Goals, and Strategic Directions in the 2014–2017 Minneapolis Strategic Plan.

Minneapolis Vision Minneapolis is a growing and vibrant world-class city with a flourishing economy and a pristine environment, where all people are safe, healthy and have equitable opportunities for success and happiness.

Minneapolis Values We will be a city of. . .

Equity

Fair and just opportunities and outcomes for all people.

Safety

People feel safe and are safe.

Health

We are focused on the well-being of people and our

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environment.

Vitality

Minneapolis is a world-class city, proud of its diversity and full of life with amenities and activities.

Connectedness

People are connected with their community, are connected to all parts of the city and can influence government.

Growth

While preserving the city's character, more people and businesses lead to a growing and thriving economy.

We work by. . . Innovating and being creative

New ideas drive continuous improvement.

Driving toward results

Our efficient, effective work meets measurable goals for today and tomorrow.

Engaging the community

All have a voice and are heard.

Valuing employees

Employees are supported and take pride in public service.

Building public trust

All have access to services and information. We work in an open, ethical and transparent manner.

Collaborating

We work better together as one team. We are a valued partner in the community.

Minneapolis Goals and Strategic Directions ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Living well: Minneapolis is safe and livable and has an active and connected way of life

All neighborhoods are safe, healthy and uniquely inviting.

High-quality, affordable housing choices exist for all ages, incomes and circumstances.

Neighborhoods have amenities to meet daily needs and live a healthy life.

High-quality and convenient transportation options connect every corner of the city.

Residents and visitors have ample arts, cultural, entertainment and recreational opportunities.

The city grows with density done well.

One Minneapolis: Disparities are eliminated so all Minneapolis residents can participate and prosper

Racial inequities (including in housing, education, income and health) are addressed and eliminated.

All people, regardless of circumstance, have opportunities for success at every stage of life.

Equitable systems and policies lead to a high quality of life for all.

All people have access to quality essentials, such as housing, education, food, child care and transportation.

Residents are informed, see themselves represented in City government and have the opportunity to influence decision- making.

A hub of economic activity and innovation: Businesses—big and small—start, move, stay and grow here

Regulations, policies and programs are efficient and reliable

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while protecting the public's interests.

The workforce is diverse, well-educated and equipped with in- demand skills.

We support entrepreneurship while building on sector (such as arts, green, tourism, health, education and high-tech) strengths.

We focus on areas of greatest need and seize promising opportunities.

Infrastructure, public services and community assets support businesses and commerce.

Strategies with our City and regional partners are aligned, leading to economic success.

Great Places: Natural and built spaces work together and our environment is protected

All Minneapolis residents, visitors and employees have a safe and healthy environment.

We sustain resources for future generations by reducing consumption, minimizing waste and using less energy.

The City restores and protects land, water, air and other natural resources.

We manage and improve the city's infrastructure for current and future needs.

Iconic, inviting streets, spaces and buildings create a sense of place.

We welcome our growing and diversifying population with thoughtful planning and design.

A City that works: City government runs well and connects to the community it serves

Decisions bring City values to life and put City goals into action.

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Engaged and talented employees reflect our community, have the resources they need to succeed and are empowered to improve our efficiency and effectiveness.

Departments work seamlessly and strategically with each other and with the community.

City operations are efficient, effective, results driven and customer focused.

Transparency, accountability and ethics establish public trust.

Responsible tax policy and sound financial management provide short-term stability and long-term fiscal health.

Source: “City Vision, Values, Goals & Strategic Directions.” (Last updated May 9, 2017). Accessed July 26, 2017, at http://www.minneapolismn.gov/citygoals/.

There is more to the story of strategy formulation, however. As we noted in Exhibit 3.3, on January 6, 2014, the newly elected mayor Betsy Hodges and the winners of the city council elections were sworn in. Seven of the 13 council members were new and therefore had little or no experience with the results management cycle (Dickens, D'Haem, Newman, & Rousey, 2015). The City Coordinators Office staff spent the next month providing the new city leadership with the opportunity to review and debate the draft city vision, values, goals, and strategic directions. There was also a public comment period in February and March. The goals were formally adopted by the council's Committee of the Whole on March 28, 2014. At that time, the council also directed the city coordinator “to develop measures for Minneapolis' adopted Values, Goals, and Strategic Directions and report at least annually to the Committee of the Whole or other appropriate committees on goal progress” (Dickens et al., 2015, p. 7; see Exhibit 9.1). Beginning in April, departments were directed to use the values, goals, and strategic directions to guide development of their individual business plans.

A prominent feature of the 2014 plan is the emphasis on eliminating disparities, which was a feature of Mayor Hodges's campaign (see Exhibit 7.1, especially the One Minneapolis goal). As mayor, Hodges

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asked all departments to consider what they do through an equity lens. Indeed, across the country, a number of cities and counties are developing explicit goals and strategies aimed at addressing issues of inequality. One noteworthy example is the King County, Washington, Equity and Social Justice Plan 2016–2022 (King County, WA (2016); http://www.kingcounty.gov/elected/executive/equity-social- justice.aspx; accessed July 1, 2017). Another is the efforts and products of the City of Portland, Oregon's, Office of Equity and Human Rights (https://www.portlandoregon.gov/oehr/62223). Another prominent feature of Minneapolis's 2014 plan is an increased emphasis on characterizing strategic directions in terms of outcomes, not activities. This was part of the culture change that the process was meant to help stimulate.

The Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA) strategic statement for 2016–2020 is another good example of a grand strategy (see Exhibit 7.2). Given how much of MEDA's strategy work is emergent, greater detail wasn't really desirable, or even possible, in some cases. The framework does, however, provide enough direction for continued strategy development and refinement, and in several areas, there was more detail provided to help work groups progress.

Exhibit 7.2. Metropolitan Economic Development Association's Strategic Framework, 2016–2020.

Background In 2015, Accenture conducted a comprehensive analysis of MEDA. Accenture's project scope included defining a common MEDA vision, evaluating MEDA's current state, identifying leading practices, assessing execution gaps, defining the future model, and developing a long-term MEDA road map. The analysis was completed through five work streams: (1) technology, (2) program effectiveness, (3) competitive landscape, (4) voice of the customer,

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and (5) voice of the stakeholder.

Leadership Review and Recommendations Accenture's findings and recommendations were discussed with the strategic planning committee as well as the full MEDA board. They agreed MEDA should:

Serve minority entrepreneurs

Have the capability of connecting or directly serving entrepreneurs throughout the business development lifecycle

Develop a new operating model that leverages core strengths and maximizes the ability to serve minority entrepreneurs throughout the entrepreneurial lifecycle while remaining flexible enough to capitalize on unique opportunities to provide business development education

Center key performance indicators (KPIs) around the areas of growth, impact, operations, and brand

Invest in the capital fund program

Develop a program scorecard based on the following criteria: (1) impact on minority entrepreneurs, (2) brand/position (awareness), (3) operating model, (4) cost (affordability), and (5) demand growth

MEDA Strategic Framework MEDA'S vision: Thriving communities through equal economic participation

MEDA'S mission: Helping minority entrepreneurs SUCCEED

MEDA'S values: Excellence, Customer Focus, Integrity, Respect

MEDA's strategic focus: Realign MEDA as the go-to organization to enable minority entrepreneurs to prosper

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Transformational Goals 1. Align the organization to increase its impact on minority

entrepreneurs.

2. Grow the loan fund from $8 million to $20 million.

3. Serve the entire entrepreneurial business lifecycle by leveraging strategic partnerships.

4. Expand and diversify funding sources to ensure sustainability and flexibility.

Go-To Market Model As the go-to organization for minority entrepreneurs, MEDA will enhance its customer and stakeholder operating model by:

Expanding or enhancing existing services to meet customer demands

Increasing the number of customers served by utilizing digital platforms to improve intake, referral, and customer assessment processes

Providing customer education at each stage of the business lifecycle

Exploring creating a value exchange for customers through a tiered service model

Segmenting the market and focus on market solutions that increase success for minority entrepreneurs and offering high- touch solutions to limited segments

Developing criteria for evaluating new strategic opportunities to ensure they are aligned to the mission and operating model

Undertaking advocacy to enhance MEDA's influence and support for minority entrepreneurs

Building prestige and funding through media promotions, partnerships, and endorsements

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Key Performance Indicators (KPIS) 1. Growth

Increase the number of minority entrepreneurs using MEDA's services

Grow the capital fund from $8 million to $20 million

Increase the number of minority businesses that are financially capable to operate within traditional financial structures

2. Impact

Increase minority entrepreneurs served across the entrepreneurial lifecycle (pre-venture > start-ups > early stage > sustainability > expansion/acquisition)

Accelerate minority entrepreneurs' transition to the next level of the business lifecycle

3. Operational

Increase the ratio of minority entrepreneurs served to program cost

Maintain high standards of capital fund performance

Increase in fundraising return on investment

4. Brand

Increase coverage of MEDA, its customers, and their successes in tier one media, affinity media, and trade journals locally and nationally

Increase and enhance MEDA's touchpoints across all available channels

Source: Adapted from background documents produced by Accenture and adopted by the MEDA board in September 2015.

Unfortunately, not enough governments, nonprofit organizations, collaborations, or communities have thought as long and hard as the

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City of Minneapolis, MEDA, or the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) about what they want to do, for whom, why, where, when, and how. Nor have most condensed their thinking into a succinct grand strategy, either in text or graphic form. As a result, too often there is little more than an odd assortment of goals and policies to guide decision making and action in pursuit of organizational purposes. In the absence of deliberate or emergent overall strategic directions, the sum of the organization's parts can be expected to add up to something less than a whole.

Of course, in a period of transition from a deliberate strategy to an emergent one whose contours are not yet clear, or vice versa, perhaps this is acceptable—even good. In such cases, sometimes the best strategy is sustained exploration, prototyping, trials, and pilot testing (Scharmer, 2016). Franklin D. Roosevelt argued in the midst of the Great Depression for “bold, persistent experimentation.” He went on to say, “Try something; if it fails, admit it frankly, and try another” (quoted in Kay, 2010, p. 128). Or the organization may face powerful stakeholders whose expectations are conflicting or contradictory, making it unwise or impossible to develop a coherent grand strategy. In either case, the organization's key decision makers and planning team should be clear at least in their own minds about the legitimate reasons—not excuses—for not having a grand strategy.

Special note must also be made of the importance for many organizations to have a strategy for technology use, particularly information and communication technology (ICT) and social media use (see Resource B). Any public or nonprofit organization, collaborative, or community would be wise to attend to the need for an ICT and social media strategy that emphasizes common infrastructure, standards, capability, and implementation approaches.

DESIRED IMMEDIATE AND LONGER-TERM OUTCOMES Several immediate desired planning outcomes may emerge from these two steps. First, the organization (or collaboration) might seek a grand strategy statement for itself, perhaps including an accompanying ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

strategy map. It also might want strategy statements for its subunits; programs, products, projects, services, or business processes; and for support functions such as IT, HR, finance, facilities, and so on. It might want to tie all of these statements to scorecards of some sort. On the one hand, a complete set of these statements may be warranted if the organization has chosen the vision of success approach to issue identification—the set would be necessary to clarify strategies for achieving the vision. On the other hand, the organization may have more limited aims. If it has chosen the direct or indirect approach, it may simply want a statement of how it will deal with each issue. If it has chosen the goals approach, it may want statements that clarify how it will achieve each goal. Collaborations may be inclined to produce a set of principles to guide action or issue-specific plans.

Second, the organization—or at least the strategic planning team and key decision makers—should gain clarity about which parts of current strategies should be kept and improved, what will be initiated, and what should stop. Keeping these three agendas clear and conceptually separate is important; otherwise, what is currently being done is likely both to drive out what is new and to make it harder to stop what should be stopped.

Third, the organization may or may not wish to have a formal strategic plan at the end of Step 6 to be formally adopted in Step 7. The contents of a strategic plan will be discussed later in this chapter.

Fourth, planners may seek formal agreement to push ahead at the conclusion of Step 6. If a strategic plan has been prepared and the organization (collaboration or community) is governed by an elected or appointed policy-making body, this agreement likely will mean proposing policy board adoption of the plan (Step 7). Policy board adoption then would be a fifth desired outcome. (It is likely that collaborations and community-based strategic plans will need to be adopted by several organizations if the plans are to be implemented; see Clarke & Fuller, 2010) If the unit doing the planning is the board itself or if the organization does not need the approval of its board (or if it does not have a board), then Steps 6 and 7 may be merged into a single step. Formal agreement by key decision makers may not be necessary, but it usually enhances the legitimacy of strategic actions ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

and provides an occasion for widely communicating the intent and content of such actions.

Finally, as is true throughout the process, actions should be taken when they are identified and become useful or necessary. Otherwise, important opportunities may be lost or threats may not be countered in time. It is also important to ease the transition from an old reality, whatever that may have been, to the new reality embodied in the organization's emerging strategies. If the transition can be broken down into a small number of manageable steps, it will be easier to accomplish than if it requires a major leap. Small steps can result in the equivalent of a big leap.

Ten additional longer-term desirable outcomes of the strategy and plan development steps can be identified. First, a fairly clear picture will emerge—from grand conception to many implementation details— of how the organization can create public value, meet its mandates, fulfill its mission, and deal effectively with the situation it faces. This picture provides the measure of clarity about where an organization is going, how it will get there, and why, which is an important part of most successful change efforts (Kotter, 2012). As the eighteenth- century philosopher Immanuel Kant argued, a new reality cannot be fully realized until it is named and understood (Kant, 2008; Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005).

Second, this new picture should have emerged from a consideration of a broad range of alternative strategies, which in itself should enhance organizational creativity and overcome the usual tendency of organizations to engage in simplistic, truncated, and narrow searches for solutions to their problems. Considering a variety of options, often via rapid prototyping, helps build the organization's capacity to embrace new approaches (Scharmer, 2016).

Third, if actions are taken as they become identified and useful, a new reality will emerge in fact, not just in conception. If the strategic planning exercise hasn't become real for team members and key decision makers prior to this point, it certainly will become real now (Hunt, Boal, & Dodge, 1999).

Fourth, early implementation of at least parts of major strategies will

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facilitate organizational learning. The organization will be able to find out quickly whether its strategies are likely to be effective. Thus, strategies can be revised or corrected before being fully implemented. Learning of this sort will be facilitated if an appropriate kind of evaluation has been included in strategic plans (Patton, 2008, 2011).

Fifth, emotional bonding to the new reality can occur as the new reality emerges gradually through early and ongoing implementation efforts. To return to the story metaphor, no drama can reach an effective and satisfying conclusion without a catharsis phase in which the audience is allowed time to break its emotional bonds with an old reality—and perhaps experience confusion, distress, depression, and despair—so that it can forge new emotional bonds to the new reality (Scharmer, 2016). This bonding process is likely to fail if the gap between old and new realities is too large and not bridged in a series of acts and scenes (Rughase, 2007).

Sixth, organizational members will get help working their way through the failure-in-the-middle syndrome. In many of the strategic planning efforts in which I have been involved, decision makers and planning team members all experienced this sense of failure somewhere between identifying strategic issues and formulating strategies to deal with the issues. Each of these organizations had to acknowledge their difficulties, engage in constructive (though not always easy) dialogue and deliberation, offer support, and search for thoughtful responses to the issues before they could see their way through the difficulties and imagine a better and viable future (Scharmer, 2016). In this regard, recall philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's observation in his play The Flies (1947) that “human life begins on the far side of despair.”

Seventh, heightened morale among strategic planning team members, key decision makers, and other organizational members should result from task accomplishment and early successes in the resolution of important issues. If the organization is pursuing an important mission and dealing with the fundamental questions it faces, it can expect involvement and excitement on the part of key organizational actors (Kouzes & Posner, 2017).

Eighth, further strategic planning team development (and indeed

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broader organization, collaboration, and community capacity building; development; adaptability; and resilience) should result from the continued discipline of addressing fundamental questions constructively. Improved communication and understanding among team (and organizational, collaboration, or community) members should occur. Strategic thinking, acting, and learning are likely to become a habit.

Ninth, if key internal and external stakeholder interests have been addressed successfully as part of the strategic planning process, a coalition is likely to emerge that is large enough and strong enough to agree on organizational (collaboration, community) strategies and use them as an ongoing basis for decision making.

Tenth, organizational members will have the permission they need to move ahead with implementation of strategies. Those who wish to preserve the status quo will find themselves fighting a rearguard action as the organization mobilizes to implement adopted strategies.

If all these benefits are realized, the organization will have achieved progress in an effective and artful way. Following philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's observation about “the art of progress,” the organization will have preserved “order amid change, and change amid order” (Whitehead, 1929, p. 515). It will have built new and more effective bridges from itself to its environment, from its past to its future. And people will be able to cross those bridges relatively easily and painlessly.

THREE APPROACHES TO STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT In this section, I present three approaches to strategy development that I have found to be particularly effective. Participants should be adequately prepared in advance to use one of the approaches as the success of each depends on ideas that can be created, brought forth, and organized by participants. Preparations may include reading relevant background information (including results of previous planning steps), visiting relevant comparison organizations, attending

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suitable conferences, being part of cognate online discussion groups, and so on.

The Five-Step Process One useful approach to strategy development involves a five-step process, in which planners answer five questions about each strategic issue. (The approach is adapted from one developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs; see Spencer, 1996.) The questions themselves should be adjusted depending on which approach to strategic issue identification was used.

1. What are the practical alternatives, dreams, or visions we might pursue to address this strategic issue, achieve this goal, or realize this idealized scenario?

2. What are the barriers to the realization of these alternatives, dreams, or idealized scenarios?

3. What major proposals might we pursue to achieve these alternatives, dreams, or idealized scenarios directly or to overcome the barriers to their realization?

4. What major actions (with existing staff within existing job descriptions) must be taken within the next year (or two) to implement the major proposals?

5. What specific steps must be taken within the next six months to implement the major proposals, and who is responsible?

The five-part process begins conventionally by asking strategic planning team members to imagine grand alternatives to deal with the specific issue. Then comes an unconventional step—enumerating the barriers to realizing the alternatives instead of developing major proposals to achieve them directly. Listing barriers at this point helps ensure that implementation difficulties are dealt with directly rather than haphazardly. The next step asks for major proposals to achieve the alternatives either directly or indirectly through overcoming the barriers, which many organizations find they must spend considerable time on before they can get on with achieving an alternative.

The answer to the fourth question will essentially consist of a one- to ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

two-year work program to implement the major proposals. Note that the work will be done by existing staff within existing job descriptions. This question begins to elicit the specifics necessary for successful strategy implementation and also conveys the notion that any journey must begin where one is. For example, if full-blown implementation of the strategy will require more staff and resources, this question asks strategists to be clear about what can be done using existing staff and resources to procure them. It also forces people to put their money where their mouths are. As the precise shape and content of strategy implementation emerges, it will become quite clear who is willing to move ahead and who is not.

The final question asks strategists to be even more specific about what must be done and who must do it. The implications of strategy implementation for organizational members will become quite real at the conclusion of this step. Defining specific actions and assigning responsibilities to particular individuals are requisites of successful strategy implementation. In addition, such specificity often will determine exactly what people are and are not willing to live with. Such details prefigure the emerging future better than any grand vision. To paraphrase novelist Gustave Flaubert, the divine is in the details.

The fourth and fifth questions involve the group in the work of Step 9 (implementation), but this is desirable because strategies always should be developed with implementation in mind. Actually, Steps 6 and 9 may be merged in some circumstances: for example, when implementation must be understood clearly before the key decision makers or policy boards within an organization or collaboration are willing to act or when a small, single-purpose organization is involved.

A strategic planning team can use the snow card process to answer each question. (Alternatively, software or an Internet-based site that supports brainstorming and clustering can be used to create and organize ideas.) The technique allows for great creativity, and it facilitates development of organization-specific categories to hold the individual ideas.

Using this five-step process together with the snow card technique has

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several other advantages. First, relatively large groups of people can be involved (broken into subgroups of five to 12 people). Second, the process keeps people from jumping immediately to solutions, a typical failing of problem-solving groups. Third, it keeps people from overevaluating their own and others' ideas; it keeps idea creation and evaluation in a reasonable balance. Fourth, it forces people to build a bridge from where they are to where they would like to be. Fifth, it forces people to deal with implementation difficulties directly.

Finally, a particular advantage of the technique is that a great deal of unnecessary conflict is avoided because alternatives proposed in answer to one question will drop out if no one suggests a way to handle them in the next step. If no one can think of a reasonable response to a major proposal, then an unnecessary struggle over its possible advantages and disadvantages never happens, and strategy remains tied to what people can actually imagine themselves doing. Strategy formulation thus remains more realistic and grounded. Of course, the group needs to make sure that answers in previous steps are linked to answers in subsequent steps to keep some proposals from being unintentionally dropped from sight.

But there is a caveat: The five-part process is very useful for developing the broad outlines of a strategy and for engaging fairly large groups of people, but it does not promote much understanding of the structure of relationships among ideas. Categories of ideas are created in response to the five questions, but the connections among ideas within categories or across responses to the five questions remain unclear. Care should be taken to ensure that important connections are made. It may be necessary to develop logic models to tie together key elements of desirable strategies (Knowlton & Phillips, 2009; McLaughlin & Jordan, 2015).

Some groups may find that it may not be necessary to answer all five questions; they may be able to collapse the last three questions into two questions or even a single question. The important point is that the specifics of implementation must be clarified as much as necessary to allow effective evaluation of options and to provide desired guidance for implementation. Recall that a strategy has been defined as a pattern of purposes, policies, decisions, actions, or resource ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

allocations that effectively link the organization to its environment. The purpose of the questions, whether or not all five are used, is to get the organization to clarify exactly what needs to be done and by whom for the resulting pattern to be truly effective.

Some organizations (and collaborations or communities), particularly the larger ones, find it useful to have their strategic planning team answer the first two questions using the snow card technique. The task of developing answers to the last three questions is then delegated to task forces, committees, or individuals. Those answers are then brought back for review and perhaps decisions made by the team.

Alternatively, the entire task of answering all five questions may be turned over to a division, department, task force, committee, or individual that then reports back to the appropriate review or decision-making body. Yet another alternative is to use the two-cycle strategic planning process outlined in Chapter 2. In the first cycle, divisions, departments, or smaller units are asked to identify strategic issues (or goals or visions) and to prepare strategies using the five-part process (or the visual strategy mapping process described later in this chapter) within a framework established at the top. The strategies are then reviewed by cross-divisional or cross-departmental strategic planning committees, perhaps including a cabinet. Once this committee agrees to specific strategies, detailed operating plans may be developed. These plans would involve a detailed elaboration of answers to the last two questions.

Once answers have been developed to deal with a specific strategic issue, the strategic planning team is in a position to make judgments about what strategies actually should be pursued. In particular, the team needs to ask:

1. What is really reasonable?

2. Where can we combine proposals, actions, and specific steps?

3. Do any proposals, actions, or specific steps contradict each other, and if so, what should we do about them?

4. What (including the necessary resources) are we or key implementers really willing to commit to over the next year?

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5. What are the specific next steps that would have to occur in the next six months for this strategy to work?

The process also helps with ongoing strategy implementation efforts. Once specific strategies have been adopted and are being implemented, the organization should, on a regular basis, work its way back up the original set of five questions. Every six months, the last question should be addressed again. Every year or two, the fourth question should be asked again. Every two or three years, the third question should be asked. And every three to five years, the first two questions should be addressed again as well.

The Visual Strategy Mapping Process The visual strategy mapping process is a second helpful approach to formulating effective strategies. The approach has been developed by Colin Eden and his associates over the past 40 years (Ackermann and Eden, 2011; Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2014; Eden & Ackermann, 1998). It involves creating options (phrased as actions) to address each issue. (This will already have been done if the visual strategy mapping or indirect approaches to strategic issue identification have been used. The purpose mapping technique introduced in Chapter 3 is a truncated version of the process.)

The planning team should be as practical and creative as possible when brainstorming options. As with the five-step process, it is important for mapping participants to be prepared. Specific options can be triggered by any number of considerations relevant to the issue at hand, including mission, mandates, and ideas for creating public value; stakeholder analyses; SWOC/Ts; existing strategies; applicable reports and background studies; and knowledge of what other organizations are doing. Each option is written on a large sticky note or a 3- by 5-inch index card.

Once a set of options is in hand, they are stuck on a wall covered with flip chart sheets or on a whiteboard by means of adhesive putty or tape if the options are on snow cards or stickies. The options are then arranged by a facilitator (as in the instructional video; see below) or the team members and linked with arrows indicating which options

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cause or influence the achievement of other options. An option can be part of more than one influence chain. The result is a map of action- to-outcome (cause-to-effect, means-to-end) relationships between the options intended to address the issue at hand. The team is then asked to develop options that outline consequences (desired or otherwise) of effectively addressing the issue. These options are used to extend the action-to-outcome relationships to develop goals for the organization in each issue area. Options toward the end of a chain of arrows (usually placed near the top of the map) are likely to be goals and are likely to be closely related to the organization's mission.

Once a draft map has been prepared, it can be discussed further, reviewed, and revised until the full range of options for addressing each issue is articulated and the full range of possible goals for each issue area is understood. Particular action-to-outcome sets can then be selected as strategies for addressing each issue. As with the five-step process, this method also moves over into the work of Step 9.

Figure 7.1 presents an example of a high-level summary map focused just on the goals, performance indicators, and strategies related to wise resource use—a key part of the strategic plan—for a nonprofit writers-support organization in Minneapolis called the Loft Literary Center (Bryson et al., 2014, p. 83). The map is a high-level summary because it does not include other intervening material or actions to implement the strategies. The map shows five goals and two performance indicators supported by eight strategies. The idea is that if the strategies are implemented, then the goals will be achieved. The map itself provides background information for ultimate inclusion in the strategic plan. (Figure 3.1 also presents a kind of visual strategy map.)

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Figure 7.1. The Loft Literary Center Map of High-Level Goals (boxed with shadow), Performance Indicators (boxed with no shadow), and Strategies Related to Resource Use (unboxed).

Maps can get quite large, and computer support may be needed to understand, analyze, and manage the resulting complexity. Decision Explorer software has been specially designed for this purpose (Banxia Software, 2017). More information on the software may be found online at www.banxia.com and in Bryson et al., 2014. Numerous examples of mapping as part of strategy development processes can be found in Bryson et al. (2014) and Bryson, Ackermann, Eden, and Finn (2004). The use of mapping to discover the collaborative advantage to be gained by organizations working together may be found in Bryson, Ackermann, and Eden (2016). An instructional video demonstrating one approach to facilitating the process may be found at https://civios.umn.edu/case_study/visual-strategy-mapping-groups/.

Principles-Focused Strategizing Principles-focused strategizing makes sense when facing the following situations: The issues to be addressed are complex and the challenges

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are clearly adaptive rather than technical. The context involves a shared-power system with many feedback effects, many organizations are involved or affected, goals are necessarily unclear, and available technologies are at best unproven. Top-down strategizing won't work either politically or technically. Instead, bottom-up adaptive management is necessary, and strategy will be emergent based on innovation, rapid prototyping, and ongoing learning (Walker, 2013). Developmental evaluation is required because there is no preexisting model to be implemented with the help of formative or summative evaluations. The challenge is to invent the model of what works via a process on ongoing trial and error and built-in learning experiences (Patton, 2011).

Although direction in such messy situations cannot be provided by clear goals, it can be guided and shaped by principles that can inform values-based choices. Principles are useful because they are more flexible than goals and, therefore, can be adapted to unfolding situations. They also can enhance effectiveness by bringing experience and judgment to bear in light of actual or expected consequences, outcomes, and impacts. In other words, principles can help guide strategy formulation and implementation and the learning process informing each (Patton, 2017). Once principles are in place, they can be used to help guide application of the five-step or visual strategy mapping processes.

An example of guiding principles may be found in Exhibit 7.3, which has guided the development of MetroGIS, the very large and effective, collaborative, national and international award-winning geographic information system serving the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. The principles are very important because of the size, diversity, and completely voluntary nature of the collaboration. Because organizations are free to leave whenever they wish, the principles are needed to ensure a sense of procedural justice, procedural rationality, substantive rationality, and political acceptability and administrative feasibility.

Exhibit 7.3. Principles Guiding the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Development of MetroGIS. MetroGIS is the regional geographic information systems initiative serving the seven-county metropolitan area of Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota. The organization is housed and staffed by the regional government, the Metropolitan Council, but it is actually a completely voluntary collaboration of some 300 organizations, including local and regional governments and partners in state and federal government, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, and the business community.

MetroGIS provides a regional forum to promote and facilitate widespread sharing of geospatial data. The collaboration seeks to “institutionalize the sharing of accurate and reliable geospatial data so that both user and producer communities share in the efficiencies of users being able to effortlessly obtain data needed from others, in the form needed, and when it is needed” ((https://www.metrogis.org/about-metrogis/overview.asp).

From its founding in the 1990s, MetroGIS has used a set of principles to guide strategy development and decision making (somewhat modified over the years from the original) (Bryson, Crosby, & Bryson, 2009, p. 193). The principles were especially helpful as MetroGIS worked in the 1990s and 2000s to develop its approach, governance, and service provision focus and arrangements. Now that the organization has matured and is much more focused on specific issues, tasks, responsibilities that are often quite technical and administrative in nature, the principles are more in the background, though they are still subscribed to by participants (Maass, 2017, personal communication).

The principles are as follows:

Pursue collaborative, efficient solutions of greatest importance to the region when choosing among options.

Ensure that actively involved policy makers set policy direction.

Pursue comprehensive and sustainable solutions that coordinate and leverage resources (i.e., build once, make

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available for use by many).

Leverage the Internet and related technology capabilities.

Value knowledge sharing as highly as data sharing.

Seek cross-sector (public, nonprofit, academic, utility, and for- profit) solutions, including data enhancements from many sources, to serve shared geographic information needs when in the public interest.

Pursue interoperability with jurisdictions that adjoin the Twin Cities metropolitan area, seeking consistency with standards endorsed by state and national authorities.

Acknowledge that the term stakeholder has multiple participation characteristics: contributor of resources, consumer of services, active knowledge sharer, potential future contributor, potential future user, continuous participant, and infrequent participant.

Acknowledge that funding is not the only way to contribute; data, equipment, and people are also valuable partnership assets.

Rely upon voluntary compliance for all aspects of participation.

Rely upon a consensus-based process for making decisions critical to sustainability.

Ensure that all relevant and affected perspectives are involved in the exploration of needs and options.

Enlist champions with diverse perspectives when implementing policies and carrying out activities.

Sources: Adapted from Bryson, Crosby and Bryson, 2009, p. 19; G. Maass, personal communication, 2017; MetroGIS, accessed June 20, 2017, at https://www.metrogis.org/about-metrogis/overview.aspx and https://www.metrogis.org/archives/Bryson-Links.aspx.

Developing guiding principles clearly should involve dialogue and deliberation among knowledgeable key stakeholders as a way of reaching agreement on the principles and how they are to be applied. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Use of the snow card technique can be a useful way to start identifying principles. Start with the question: “What principles should guide our strategizing efforts?” The ensuing discussion should narrow in on those principles that are most useful because they (Patton, 2017):

1. Provide direction, but not prescription; they encourage efforts to understand context, interpretations, and challenges

2. Are grounded in values about what matters to those who will develop, adopt, and attempt to follow them

3. Grow out of experience, knowledge, and evidence about what it takes to be effective

4. Point to consequences, outcomes, and impacts and thereby inform choices about which direction to take

5. Require judgment in application, considering what to do when principles conflict

6. Can be assessed as a guides for process implementation and for their effectiveness in producing results

Patton (2011, 2017) and Patton, McKegg, & Wehipeihana (2015) offer many useful examples of the development and use of principles in practice for guidance and evaluation in complex situations. Though their work is focused primarily on developmental evaluation, in complex situations strategic planning and developmental evaluation are simply two sides of the same coin: Strategic planning needs to be guided by principles and there has to be ongoing evaluation to inform decision making.

Strategic Plans Strategic plans can vary a great deal in their form and content. The simplest form may be nothing more than an unwritten agreement among key decision makers about the organization's mission and what it should do given its circumstances. This is the most common form of strategic plan and clearly reflects a basic premise of this book—that shared strategic thinking, acting, and learning are what count, not strategic plans in and of themselves. As Mintzberg (1994, p. 252) noted some time ago, “Organizations function on the basis of ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

commitment and mind set.”

But coordinated action among a variety of organizational actors over time usually requires some kind of reasonably formal strategic framework, such as Minneapolis's or MEDA's, or a more detailed plan so that people can keep track of what they should do and why (Bolman & Deal, 2013; Sandfort and Moulton, 2015). For one thing, people forget, and the plan can help remind them of what has been decided. The plan also provides a baseline for judging strategic performance. And the plan serves a more overtly political purpose: It usually amounts to a treaty among key actors, factions, and coalitions. Finally, the plan (perhaps not in all its details) can serve as a communications and public relations document for internal and external audiences (Lee, McGuire, & Kim, 2017).

The simplest form of written strategic plan consists of the final versions of several of the worksheets in Bryson and Alston (2011):

Mission statement

Mandates statement

Vision of success, if one has been prepared

SWOC/T analysis (perhaps as an appendix)

Strategic issues (or a set of goals or scenarios outlining the preferred future)

Strategies—grand; subunit; program, service, product, project, and business process; and functional—including information technology, human resources, and financial strategies (indeed, for many organizations pursuing e-commerce or e-government strategies, the IT strategy, though functional, is becoming paramount and must be deeply embedded in and aligned with the organization's fundamental strategies)

Most organizations will prefer, however, to use the final versions of the worksheets as background material for preparation of a written strategic plan. When this approach is taken, a table of contents for a very complete strategic plan might include the following headings (Barry, 1997/2013; Bryson & Alston, 2011):

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Executive summary

Introduction (including purpose, process, and participation, as well as a brief organizational history)

Mission statement (including meeting the mandates)

Mandates statement (may be presented as an appendix)

Vision of success (if one has been prepared)

Values and guiding principles

Situation analysis, including SWOC/Ts (perhaps as an appendix)

Goals (including perhaps negative- or risk-avoidance goals and public value goals beyond core goals), overarching performance indicators, and grand strategy statements

Issue-specific goals, performance indicators, and strategy statements (including perhaps risk management strategy statements tied to negative-avoidance goals and strategy statements related to negative public value consequences of pursuing core goals)

Subunit goals, performance indicators, and strategy statements (if applicable)

Program, service, product, project, or business process plans, including goals, performance indicators, and strategy statements

Functional strategy statements, goals, and performance indicators

Implementation plans (perhaps including action plans)

Staffing plans (including needed full-time staff, part-time staff, and volunteers)

Financial plans (including operating budgets for each year of the plan, plus any necessary capital budgets or fundraising plans)

Monitoring and evaluation plans

Plans for updating all of parts of the plan

Appendixes

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The plan itself need not—and should not—be overly long. If it is, it will be put aside or forgotten by key staff.

Additional sections that might be included, perhaps as appendixes, are the following:

A review of needs, problems, or goals to be addressed

A description of the organization's structure (current, proposed, or both)

Governance procedures (current, proposed, or both)

Key organizational policies (current, proposed, or both)

Relationships with key stakeholders (current, proposed, or both)

Assumptions on which the plan is based

Risk assessments

Marketing plans

Facilities plans

Contingency plans to be pursued if circumstances change

Any other sections deemed to be important

The task of preparing a first draft of the strategic plan usually should be assigned to a key staff person. Once the draft is prepared, key decision makers, including the strategic planning team, the governing board, and possibly several external stakeholders, should review it. Several modifications are likely to be suggested by various stakeholders, and modifications that improve the plan should be accepted. After a final review by key decision makers, the revised plan will be ready for formal adoption. After that occurs, the planning team will be ready to move on to implementation though many actions may have occurred already as they became obvious and necessary over the course of the planning process.

Collaborations, in particular, should consider engaging in rather extensive deliberations to come up with fairly detailed strategic plans to which all parties agree (Bryson et al., 2016). Lee et al. (2017), for example, studied empirically the linkages between collaboratively

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developed strategic plans, plan designs, and governmental effort to reduce homelessness in U.S. counties. Using a mixed-method, 10- year-long panel design involving 145 county-level strategic plans from 124 county governments, they found three things: First, having a strategic plan, rather than not having one, can mean many more beds for homeless people. Second, a more robust strategic plan as measured by the number of components in the plan's design (i.e., from the list of possibilities in Bryson and Alston, 2011, noted above) is significantly and positively associated with a greater number of beds. Third, collaboration among stakeholders increases the number of components in the design of the plan, which, as noted, leads to increases in the number of beds. In short, beds for the homeless increase with greater diversity of participation in the planning process and the resulting richer plan designs.

Plan Adoption The purpose of Step 7 is to gain an official decision to adopt and proceed with the strategies and plan prepared and informally reviewed in Step 6. For the proposed plan to be adopted, it must address issues that key decision makers think are important with solutions that appear likely to work. Also, the political climate and stakeholder opinion must be favorable, and the barriers to effective action must be down. There must be a “coupling,” in other words, of problems, solutions, and politics (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Kingdon, 2010).

The planning team should keep Step 6 conceptually distinct from Step 7, as the dynamics surrounding the two steps may differ—even though in practice Steps 6 and 7 may merge (for example, when the planning involves small, hierarchically organized, single-purpose organizations). Step 6 may be quite collegial as the team deliberates in forums about what might be best for the organization. Step 7, however, can be quite conflictual, particularly when formal adoption must take place in legislative arenas such as city councils, multiorganizational confederations, or the various boards and organizations necessary for effective implementation of community plans. (Readers seeking more detailed advice on this step should see Crosby & Bryson, 2005, pp. 290–311.)

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Key decision makers and important stakeholders must be open to the idea of change, and they must be offered specific inducements to gain their support. These should be geared to their targets' values, interests, beliefs, and frames of reference as they choose whether to support the proposal according to their own judgments. Considerable bargaining, negotiating, and trading may be necessary to find the right combination of exchanges and inducements to gain the support needed without also sacrificing key features of the proposed strategies and plans (Thompson, 2014). As Lusk and Birks (2014, p. 8) note, “Decision-making in the political realm relies as much on values and beliefs as it does on evidence….There's a tension between belief, political players, institutional power, and dominating paradigms on the one hand and evidence on the other.”

Formal adoption is likely to occur at a window of opportunity, an occasion when action favoring change is possible. There are three kinds of windows: those opened by the emergence of pressing issues, those opened by important political shifts (new elected or appointed policy makers, new executive directors, changed priorities of funding agencies), and those opened by reaching decision points (times when official bodies are authorized and empowered to act). A major purpose of the initial agreement step is to define the network of stakeholders likely to form the basis of a supportive coalition and to map out likely decision points in advance so that the full-blown coalition will be able to act when the specific, viable plan is ready for adoption. Steps 2 through 6 also are designed to prepare the way for formal plan adoption in Step 7 through producing the appropriate array of tangible and intangible process and content outcomes needed to convince enough people to move ahead (see Figure 3.2).

Sometimes, formal adoption of a strategic plan occurs in stages over many months. For example, the INTOSAI strategic plan went through months of discussions involving a huge number of individuals and governments before it was ready for formal adoption in November 2016.

As another example, I worked with a school board that broadly supported most features of a draft plan. But board members had sharply differing opinions about selling an old high school and the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

land on which it sat. The school was obsolete and did not meet state standards, but it was important symbolically as a focus for much of the community. After much discussion, bargaining, and negotiation over the entire facilities section of the plan, and deciding and then redeciding, the board finally approved building a new high school on a site adjacent to the old one. The old high school was then to be remodeled to become the district's headquarters. The strategic plan was formally adopted six months after it was presented. The dynamics of this adoption process were often rocky—in sharp contrast to previous steps—except for the final stages of Step 6. When the first- draft strategic plan was formulated for review by the board, the conflicts became clear as did the challenge of resolving them in a way that would ensure a supportive coalition on the board and in the community. The difficulties of that challenge carried all the way through Step 7.

PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES The following guidelines should be kept in mind as a strategic planning team formulates effective strategies to link the organization with its environment.

1. Remember that strategic thinking, acting, and learning are more important than any particular approach to strategy formulation or the development of a formal strategic plan. The way in which strategies are formulated is less important than how good the strategies are and how well they are implemented. Similarly, whether a formal strategic plan is prepared is less important than the effective formulation and implementation of strategies.

Note as well that you do not have to have the best strategies; you just have to have good ones and stick with them. And good strategies are those that effectively address the specific issues (goals, visions) that require strategic action, meaning in part that they are adequately resourced. In this regard, the importance of considering three agendas—the new initiatives, continuing efforts, and stop agendas—becomes clear. The stop agenda may well provide the resources needed for the new initiatives.

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2. It is very important that a variety of creative, even radical, options be considered during the strategy formulation process. The broader the range of alternative strategies the team considers, the more likely they will find supportable, implementable, and effective strategies (Mulgan, 2009; Scharmer, 2016). Constant awareness of the variety of options available will help ensure that a diverse set of possible strategies is considered before final choices are made. Recall the advice of the late Nobel Prize laureate Linus Pauling: “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” Or consider the advice of the great German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “When ideas fail, words come in very handy.” Keep talking and bouncing ideas off one another; keep your eyes open for nascent, useful, but nonmainstream ideas in the organization; pay attention to what might be going on elsewhere that is good; and do not become a victim of what has been called “hardening of the categories” (Mintzberg et al., 2009, p. 70).

Another way of making this point is to argue that an organization should not engage in strategic planning unless it is willing to consider alternatives quite different from business as usual. If the organization is interested only in minor variations on existing themes, then it should not waste its time on a full-blown strategic planning exercise. Instead, it should concentrate on programming existing strategies (the main focus of Chapter 9) and making process and quality improvements in those strategies. Or the organization may wish to pursue a strategy of guided or logical incrementalism—that is, a number of small changes organized around a general sense of direction (Barzelay & Campbell, 2003; Bryson & Edwards, 2017). Or it may wish to give up on strategic planning altogether and pursue traditional incremental decision making, or “muddling through” (Lindblom, 1959), as a way of finding an acceptable fit with its environment.

A number of authors provide useful typologies that can help strategic planning teams think broadly about the array of strategy possibilities for governments and nonprofit organizations (e.g., Nutt, 2004; Salamon, 2002). For example, Christopher Hood and Helen Margetts (2007) propose a typology that asserts

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governments use tools for detection—to take in information—and to effect change outside government. Detectors and effectors can be passively or actively used (or somewhere in between) and aimed at particular individuals or groups or more broadly. Hood and Margetts argue there are just four broad categories of tools available for detecting information and effecting change. These include communication tools (nodality), the possession of legal or official power (authority), money and other fungible assets (treasure), and the ability to act directly via people, skills, and materials (organization).

The typology has the virtue of simplifying what otherwise can be a bewildering array of ways that governments can act in the world. The Hood and Margetts book is particularly good on discussing the ways information and communication technologies can help or hinder the work of governments. For example, variable road pricing in real time is changing the nature of tolling in many places (London, Singapore, Minneapolis, Miami), and digitized geospatially referenced data permits better ecosystem management, emergency responses, and weapons targeting. On the other hand, cybercrime and cyberterrorism are huge new challenges. The authors conclude, “In the digital age as in every other, the challenge for government is to find new ways of using a limited basic array of tools effectively and creatively, as technology and social patterns change” (p. 196). So when considering options, be especially attentive to options that information and communication and other technologies make possible.

David Osborne and Peter Plastrik (1997, 2000) offer a range of strategy options for public organizations. Exhibit 7.4 groups these strategies according to type and source of leverage. The core strategy focuses on clarifying purpose, direction, and roles. The consequences strategy makes use of incentives, forcing reliance on markets, competitive contracting, and benchmarking, and using performance-oriented rewards. Customer-focused strategies create accountability to key stakeholders by inducing competition for customers, offering customers choices, and emphasizing service quality. (But note that the customer language doesn't adequately

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take into account issues of co-production and citizenship.) The control strategy shifts power away from the top and center by empowering managers, frontline staff, and communities. Finally, the culture strategy emphasizes creation of an entrepreneurial and service-oriented culture. Osborne and Plastrik (2000) offer a superb source of practical advice on when and how to pursue these strategies.

Bryan Barry (1997/2013) presents an array of strategies typically pursued by nonprofit organizations (see Exhibit 7.5). Unlike Osborne and Plastrik's typology, the strategies are not grouped according to sources of leverage, but there are some clear similarities between the two lists. Barry also identifies the importance of attending to the environment; clarifying purpose, role, and market; doing the job well; being entrepreneurial and innovative when needed; and attending to key stakeholders.

Exhibit 7.4. David Osborne and Peter Plastrik's Typology of Public-Sector Strategies.

Type of Strategy

Source of Leverage

Approaches

Core strategy Clarifying purpose

Use strategic management to create clarity of direction Eliminate functions that no longer serve core purposes Clarify roles by separating policy-making and regulatory roles from service delivery and compliance roles; also separate service delivery from compliance

Consequences Making use of Use markets to create

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strategy incentives consequences Use competitive contracts and benchmarks

Use performance-oriented rewards as incentives

Customer strategy

Making public organizations accountable to their key stakeholders

Induce competition

Offer customers choices Emphasize service quality

Control strategy

Shifting power away from the top and center

Give managers the power to manage

Give frontline employees the power to improve results Give communities the power to solve their own problems

Culture strategy

Developing an entrepreneurial and service- oriented culture

Change habits by introducing new experiences

Create emotional bonds among employees Change employees' mental models

Source: Adapted from Osborne and Plastrik (1997, 2000).

Exhibit 7.5. Bryan Barry's Typology of ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Typical Nonprofit Strategies.

Sharpen the organization

Gain greater clarity about mission and goals, program effectiveness, accountability, funding and resource management, and marketing

Rekindle the fire Reinvigorate the organization around purpose and mission

Find a niche Clarify the organization's role and market Focus on one or two success factors

Be a leader around one or two factors critical for success

Plan the mix of programs and funding

Carefully plan the mix of programs and funding to keep programs fresh and enhance responsiveness to community needs

Gain advantages associated with size

Pursue growth, including through alliances and mergers

Simplify or downsize

Eliminate activities that are not directly related to the core; wisely deploy the remaining resources

Replicate Build on proven approaches and best practices and do not reinvent the wheel

Balance exploration with getting it done

Balance innovation in new and unproven areas with refining performance in time- tested strategy areas

Make relationships central

Concentrate on building strong relationships with staff, board, and other key stakeholders

Engage the community as an ally

Tap the resources of the community through better working relationships

Focus on root Focus on prevention, research, advocacy,

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causes of social problems

community organizing, or public policy work to get at root causes

Become entrepreneurial

Undertake new ventures or increase earned income

Become “chaos pilots”

Emphasize responsiveness and adaptability by creating flexible organizational designs and cultures and hiring people who thrive on ambiguity

Pay attention to your organization's stage of development

Attend to issues of founding, growth, institutionalization, and leadership transition

Note sweeping trends

Focus on big changes and whether the organization is catching the wave, on the crests, or about to be in outwash; decide what to do about it

Source: Adapted from Barry (1997/2013, pp. 65–69).

Miles and Snow's (1978/2003) seminal typology asserts there are four major categories of strategy: (1) prospectors, (2) defenders, (3) analyzers, and (4) reactors. These are referred to by Boyne and Walker (2004) as strategy stances, or how an organization chooses to position itself in relation to its environment. Prospectors are innovators; defenders guard and invest in their existing positions; analyzers use a mixture of prospecting and analyzing; and reactors have no real strategy other than to respond to immediate circumstances.

Based on a review of 25 studies of public organizations using this framework, Walker (2013) reaches several conclusions. First, organizations do better when they pursue a mix of strategies rather than just one category of strategy. In other words, their responses are contingent on the situation. Second, prospectors and defenders outperform reactors. Third, prospecting and incremental strategies

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can lead to organizational success. Fourth, defending, more rational processes, and centralized structures lead to higher organizational performance. Fifth, it is hard to be effective in unstable environments because it can be hard to adapt strategies to rapidly changing environments. Lastly, incremental implementation approaches (or small wins approaches; see below) work best in complex and dynamic environments.

Finally, governments and nonprofits should consider branding as an element of strategies for their organizations, initiatives, programs, products, or services. In business, branding is the process of fashioning a unique name and image for a product or service that resonates positively in the consumer's mind. Branding helps the product or service stand out among its competitors and is useful for attracting and retaining loyal customers.

Good brands simplify choice by standing in for detailed descriptions. They offer reassurance of reliability, which generates and maintains trust with stakeholders. They essentially promise a benefit to the consumer, user, or participant. Finally, they present themselves as authentic and value-based, meaning there is coherence and correspondence between the nature of the organization and what it is offering (Needham, 2006, p. 179).

Place-based branding is becoming increasingly common as governments and nonprofits seek to draw residents, visitors, customers, and businesses to the places they serve. For example, the City of Minneapolis for decades has called itself the City of Lakes, which draws attention to the city's 11 lakes and nationally award-winning park system, which owns virtually all of the lakes. The logo of the City of Minneapolis, which is a part of its brand, includes three elements: a stylized sailboat, the word Minneapolis, and the words City of Lakes.

The brand emphasizes an attractive setting that draws people to the “good life” (Needham, 2006, p. 179). The brand in this case helps reinforce the good reputation that Minneapolis has nationally as a desirable place to live—which, as a resident for 40 years, I certainly believe it is! It also, not coincidentally, draws

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attention away from the issues the city faces in terms of racial and wealth disparities—issues MEDA seeks to address.

Good place-based marketing involves an interaction between culture, identity, and image (the brand) (Kavaratzis & Hatch, 2013). The result is an emotional connection throughout a relational network with the place and the organizations that represent it (Eshuis, Klijn, & Braun, 2014; Hankingson, 2004).

Positive branding is especially important these days for governments because they often have to counter an idea voiced by Ronald Reagan on January 20, 1981, in his inaugural address—and since pushed relentlessly in spite of any qualifications or countervailing evidence by some superwealthy conservatives, right- wing media outlets, and conservative think tanks (Mickelthwait & Woodridge, 2005; Schulman, 2014). He said, “In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” That sentence has typically been taken out of context— by forgetting the introductory prepositional phrase—and become essentially a “governing fable” for many, especially those on the political right (Borins, 2011). Unfortunately, like most governing fables, it is highly problematic in terms of its accuracy. Survey after survey indicates that the vast majority of Americans evaluate quite favorably their most recent encounter with a government. It is only when they are asked about government as a whole that their assessments turn negative (Rainey, 2014).

So governments must differentiate themselves from “all governments” and brand themselves as committed to what the people want, to citizen engagement and satisfaction, and to goal achievement. But they must also be value-based and authentic when they do so or they will simply feed citizen cynicism and disengagement—and ultimately undermine the ideals of democracy on which the country was founded. We will no longer be government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

3. Consider using a three-step search process to find desirable strategies for addressing particularly troublesome issues, especially those involving considerable complexity (Crosby & Bryson, 2005,

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pp. 252–255). The process allows the strategic planning team to unearth a range of strategy components and then narrow them down to feasible alternatives that may be assembled into an effective strategy. The process consists of the following steps:

a. A broad scan within and outside normal search channels to gain an understanding of the general area within which strategy components might be found. Information and communication technologies and social media can offer considerable help with such searches, but so can going to conferences and reading trade publications

b. A narrow-gauge search within the most promising areas to find specific strategy components likely to be effective, ethical, and acceptable to key stakeholders

c. Detailed exploration of identified strategy components

The City of Minneapolis and MEDA use an informal version of this process as they develop their strategies.

Technologies of various kinds may show up in the search process, and care must be taken in assessing them. Francis Bacon in his 1627 book The New Atlantis imagined a time when technology would help create the perfect human society. Mary Shelley's 1818 book Frankenstein showed what could happen when technology runs amok. Times thus haven't changed much: Technologies can produce good and ill effects; thus, the use of technologies, particularly unfamiliar ones, must be carefully thought through.

Similarly, different kinds of experts may be consulted during the search process and, again, care must be taken in assessing what they say. For one thing, you must make sure you have the right expert for the task at hand. For another, experts can be rather quirky—and just plain wrong—in the application of their knowledge, particularly when asked to think and act quickly (Gawande, 2010; Kahneman, 2013). So maintain an independent view of both technologies and experts.

4. Remember that guided or logical incrementalism can be very effective, but sometimes a big win is the way to go.

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Incrementalism guided by a sense of mission and direction can result in a series of small decisions that can accumulate over time into major changes. Karl Marx is perhaps the progenitor of this line of thought with his observation that in social systems, changes in degree can lead to changes in kind. Indeed, Mintzberg et al. (2009) indicate that most strategic changes in large corporations are in fact small changes that are guided by and that result in a sense of strategic purpose. And Neustadt (1990, p. 192) in his seminal study of U.S. presidential power observes, “Details are of the essence in the exercise of power, day by day, and changes of detail foreshadow institutional development; they cumulate and thus suggest the system's future character.” In general, realization of a new future is easier if it can be shown to be a continuation of the past and present, even if the new future ultimately is qualitatively different (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005).

In effect, there are two sets of polar opposite strategies—big wins and small wins (Bryson, 1988) and knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation (March, 1991; O'Reilly & Tushman, 2013). I will consider the big win–small win dichotomy first. A big win is “a demonstrable, completed, large-scale victory” (Crosby & Bryson, 2005, p. 276), and a small win is “a concrete, completed, implemented outcome of moderate importance” (Weick, 1984, p. 43).

Because it highlights what is fundamental, the strategic planning process outlined in this book may tempt organizations to always go for the big win. Sometimes big-win strategies can work, but they also can lead to big failure. Julius Caesar had a penchant for big- win strategies, even when his chances of succeeding were not good. As he said, “If fortune doesn't go your way, sometimes you have to bend it to your will” (quoted in Freeman, 2008, p. 267). But we all know what happened to Caesar when he tempted fate once too often on the Ides of March and died in the Roman Senate at the hands of Marcus Brutus and other conspirators. The hubris that led him to persistently pursue big wins—often by bending or breaking the rules and needlessly affronting key stakeholders— frequently blinded him to the risks and consequences such

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strategies often entail, including needlessly making enemies, and led him to minimize the need to effectively manage those risks and consequences.

Although big-win moves should be considered, the organization also should look at how a whole series of small wins might add up to big wins over time. A small-win strategy reduces risk, eases implementation, breaks projects into doable steps, quickly makes change seem real to people, releases resource flows and human energy, empowers people, encourages participation, boosts people's confidence and commitment, provides immediate rewards, and preserves gains (Kouzes & Posner, 2017).

Nonetheless, a big-win strategy may be best when a small-win strategy is unworkable or undesirable for some reason. Big wins might also be pursued when the time is right—for example, when the need is obvious to a large coalition, the proposed strategy will effectively address the issue without any concomitant ill effects, solution technology is clearly understood and readily available, resources are available, and there is a clear vision to guide the changes (Crosby & Bryson, 2005, pp. 274–279). Big wins probably must be controlled by senior decision makers in fairly hierarchical organizations though they may emerge through the loosely coordinated actions moving in the same direction of many people at same the operating level (Mintzberg et al., 2009). Similarly, a big win in a collaborative setting may require the relatively tightly coordinated efforts of senior leaders (Popp, Milward, MacKean, Casebeer, & Lindstrom, 2015) but in a community setting may emerge from the relatively loosely coordinated efforts of many organizations (e.g., Kornberger & Clegg, 2011).

The second pair of opposing strategies is knowledge exploitation and knowledge exploration. Knowledge exploitation involves getting the most out of existing technologies (broadly conceived). Major repositioning is not required in terms of the core business, major stakeholders, basic strategies, or key practices. Most of the decision premises can be inferred from much of current practice. Strategy improvement in these circumstances depends primarily on systematic pursuit of process and quality improvements via

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better process management—meaning mapping processes, improving the processes, and adhering to systems of improved processes (Benner & Tushman, 2003). Issues of knowledge exploitation tend to be more operational than strategic (see Figure 6.1).

In contrast, issues requiring knowledge exploration tend to be more strategic and involve tensions that pull the organization in many directions (Scharmer, 2016). Changes implied by the knowledge exploration activities of the organization—or provoked by the results of knowledge exploration by other organizations— often require substantial repositioning in terms of the core business, key stakeholders, basic strategies, and important practices (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2013).

Organizations get into trouble when they invest excessively in knowledge exploitation activities to the detriment of knowledge exploration. A key point is that an adaptive organization must preserve a balance between the two. Too much knowledge exploitation will blind the organization to impending frame- breaking changes in its environment and cripple it when the changes do occur. Too much knowledge exploration won't pay the bills fast enough because almost by definition, a lot of effort will be wasted before the effective answers or operational formulas can be found. To paraphrase Benner and Tushman (2003, p. 242), an organization's dynamic capabilities depend on simultaneously exploiting current technologies and resources to gain efficiency benefits and creating new possibilities through exploratory innovation.

5. Effective strategy formulation can be top-down or bottom-up. The organizations that are best at strategic planning indeed seem to deftly combine these two approaches into an effective strategic planning system (Bryson & Edwards, 2017; Mintzberg et al., 2009). Usually, some sort of overall strategic guidance is given at the top, but detailed strategy formulation and implementation typically occur deeper in the organization. Detailed strategies and their implementation may then be reviewed at the top for consistency across strategies and with organizational purposes. Chapter 10

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contains more information on strategic management systems.

6. Decide how to link strategy development with the strategic issues identified in Step 6. Planners need to determine whether strategies should be formulated to respond to strategic issues, to achieve goals, or to realize a vision. Issues also need to be addressed at the appropriate level in the system (see Exhibit 6.1). Most organizations probably will choose to develop strategies in response to strategic issues, at least at first. Smaller, single- function, or hierarchically organized organizations; organizations that have engaged in strategic planning for some time; or communities with significant value consensus may find it easier to develop strategies to achieve goals or a vision. Nonprofit organizations are more likely than governments or public agencies to be able to develop strategies in response to goals or a vision. But other organizations too may decide that they need more clarity about goals or visions before proceeding very far with strategy development. A collaboration might benefit by having guiding principles in place first before moving to strategy development.

It is important to repeat a point made in the previous chapter: The various ways of developing strategies are interrelated. For example, an organization can start by developing strategies in response to strategic issues identified directly or indirectly or through the vision of success approach, visual strategy mapping, tensions approach, or systems analysis, and then develop goals based on its strategies. Goals then would represent the strategy-specific desired states to result from effective strategy implementation. Mission, goals, and strategies then can be used as the basis for development of a full-blown vision of success.

Alternatively, an organization may go through several cycles of strategic planning using various approaches to issue identification and strategy development before it decides to develop a vision of success (if indeed it ever chooses to do so) to guide subsequent rounds of issue identification and strategy development. Or an organization may start with the vision sketch or ideal scenario approach and expand the scenario into a full-blown vision of success after it completes the strategy development step. Or the

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organization may identify strategic issues using various means and then develop goals or vision sketches to guide strategy development in each issue area.

No matter which approach is chosen, the five-part process outlined in this chapter provides an effective way to formulate strategies, particularly if the snow card technique is employed in each step. The questions will change only slightly depending on the approach. The strategic planning team may wish to assign different questions to different groups or individuals. If, for example, the team wishes to identify major alternatives and barriers to their achievement, it could ask task forces to develop major proposals and work programs to achieve the alternatives or to overcome the barriers. The visual strategy mapping process is also an effective way to develop strategies to deal with issues, achieve goals, or realize visions. The team may wish to develop the broad outlines of a strategy map and then delegate detailed development of strategies and work programs to individuals or task forces.

7. Describe strategic alternatives in enough detail to permit reasonable judgments about their efficacy and to provide reasonable guidance for implementation. For example, strategy descriptions may be required to include the following information or some specific subset of it:

Intended results or outcomes, along with performance measures

Principles to guide implementation, especially when the strategy involves experimental initiatives in complex situations where there are no existing models

Principal components or features, including necessary capabilities or competencies

Timetable for implementation

Organizations and people responsible for implementation

Resources required (staff, facilities, equipment, information technology, training)

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Costs (startup, annual operating, capital)

Estimated savings, if any, over present approaches

Flexibility or adaptability of strategy

Effects on other organizations, departments, people, or communities

Effects on other strategies

Rule, policy, or statutory changes required

Procedures for “debugging” the strategy during implementation (that is, formative evaluation plans when there is a model that can be followed and developmental evaluation plans when there is a need to develop a model) and for subsequent evaluations to see whether the strategy has worked (summative evaluation) (Patton, 2008, 2011)

Associated risks and how they might be managed

Other important features

Financial costs and budgets deserve special attention. Readers are encouraged to look at the section on budgets in Chapter 9.

8. Evaluate alternative strategies against agreed-upon criteria prior to selection of specific strategies to be implemented. As a set, the criteria should indicate the extent to which possible strategies are:

Politically acceptable: for example, to key decision makers, stakeholders, and opinion leaders and to the general public

Administratively and technically workable: in terms, for example, of technical feasibility; coordination or integration with other strategies, programs, and activities; cost and financing; staffing, training, information technology requirements, facilities and other requirements; flexibility and adaptability; timing; and risk management

Results-oriented: for example, in terms of consistency with mission, values, philosophy, and culture; achievement of goals; relevance to the issue; client or user impact; long-term impact;

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availability or at least possibility of performance measures; and cost-effectiveness

Legally, ethically, and morally defensible: for example, in accord with all applicable laws, rules, policies, and guidelines; justifiable in terms of commonly held ethical and moral frameworks and standards

The bottom line is that adopted strategies must meet the requirements for effectively addressing the issues, achieving the goals, or realizing the vision while also satisfying key stakeholders. Those involved in strategy formulation or adoption, or both, should probably agree in advance what criteria will be used to judge alternatives. But even if the criteria are agreed upon in advance, be cognizant of people's ability to ignore them when they want to. As Benjamin Franklin observed, “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do” (quoted in Kay, 2010, p. 90). Being a “reasonable creature” in Franklin's sense can at times be a good thing, but don't count on it!

Keep in mind a very important caveat—which has been emphasized previously—that sometimes you need to take action in order to figure out what the real issues, goals, or vision are. The process of strategy formulation is likely to have helped the team and key stakeholders better understand the challenges and opportunities by figuring what possibly might be done about them. Modifications to issues, goals, and visions are to be expected as a consequence of better understanding strategy possibilities. But occasionally, the best you can do is have a conscious strategy of strategic learning (or purposeful wandering as described in Chapter 2) involving experiment and discovery that will help reveal what the actual issues, preferred goals, and desired visions should be. As Kay (2010, p. 62) says, “Successes and failures and the expansion of knowledge lead to reassessment of our goals and objectives and the actions that result.”

9. Consider development of a formal strategic plan. Such a plan may not be necessary, but as the size and complexity of the organization

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grows, a formal, written strategic plan is likely to become increasingly useful. The members of the strategic planning team should agree on major categories and approximate length so that the actual preparer has some guidance. Indeed, a general agreement on the form of the strategic plan probably should be reached during the negotiation of the initial agreement (Step 1), so that key decision makers have some general sense of what the effort is likely to produce and surprises are minimized. It is conceivable, of course, that preparation and publication of a formal strategic plan would be unwise politically. Incompatible objectives or warring external stakeholders, for example, might make it difficult to prepare a rational and publicly defensible plan. Key decision makers will have to decide whether a formal strategic plan should be prepared given the circumstances the organization faces.

10. Even if a formal strategic plan is not prepared, the organization should consider preparing a set of interrelated strategy statements describing grand strategy; subunit strategies; program, service, product, project, or business process strategies; and functional strategies. To the extent they are agreed upon, these statements will provide extremely useful guides for action by organizational members from top to bottom. Again, remember that it may be politically difficult or dangerous to prepare and publicize such statements.

11. Use a normative process to review strategy statements and formal strategic plans. Drafts typically should be reviewed by planning team members, other key decision makers, governing board members, and at least selected outside stakeholders. Review meetings need to be structured so that the strengths of the statements or plan are recognized and modifications that would improve on those strengths are identified. Review sessions can be structured around the following agenda (Crosby & Bryson, 2005, pp. 237–238):

1. Overview of plan.

2. General discussion of plan and reactions to it. Is it in the ballpark?

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3. Brainstormed list of plan strengths. What do people like?

4. Brainstormed list of plan weaknesses. What are problems, soft spots, or omissions?

5. Brainstormed list of modifications that would improve on strengths and minimize or overcome weaknesses.

6. Agreement on next steps to complete the plan.

All modifications that actually improve the statements and plans should be accepted. At least by the time the review process is nearing completion, planning team members and key decision makers should make a point of asking themselves what risks are entailed in the plan. They then should ask whether the level of risk is acceptable, what can be done about the risks, and if nothing can be done, whether the plan should go forward.

12. Discuss and evaluate strategies in relation to key stakeholders. Strategies that are unacceptable to key stakeholders probably will have to be rethought. Strategies that do not take stakeholders into consideration are almost certain to fail. A variety of stakeholder analysis techniques can help, including Stakeholder Support Versus Opposition Grids, Stakeholder Role Plays, and Ethical Analysis Grids. More information on these techniques can be found in Resource A.

13. Have budgets and budgeting procedures in place to capitalize on strategic planning and strategic plans. This may include making sure that monies tied to implementation of strategic plans are flagged so that they always receive special attention and treatment. It also can mean attempting to develop a special contingency fund to allow bridge funding so that implementation of all or portions of strategies can begin out of sequence with the normal budgeting process. Having a stop agenda can provide needed funds (but note the need to think through strategically how to stop doing things so that minimal damage occurs). Most important, however, is the need to make sure that strategic thinking precedes, rather than follows, budgeting. This is the key idea behind performance- informed budgeting and results-based budgeting (Willoughby,

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2014). Unfortunately, the only strategic plans many organizations have are their budgets, and those budgets have typically been formulated without benefit of much focused strategic thought. Attention to creating public value, mission, mandates, situational assessments, strategic issues, and strategies should precede development of budgets.

14. Be aware that the strategy formulation step is likely to proceed in a more iterative fashion than previous steps because of the need to find the best fit among elements of strategies, different strategies, and levels of strategy. Additional time and iterations are likely to be needed when a collaboration or community-based strategic planning effort is involved (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015; Spee & Jarzabkowski, 2017). Strong process guidance and facilitation, along with pressure from key decision makers to proceed, probably will be necessary in order to reach a successful conclusion to this step. Process sponsors and champions, in other words, will be especially needed if this step is to result in effective strategies.

The issue often is one of appropriately aligning new strategies with existing strategies, and some special planning sessions may be needed to work things out. For example, it is very important that information technology, human resources, and financial strategies support the organization's overall strategy and supporting strategies. Barry (1997/2013, pp. 59–60) suggests a four-step process:

1. Provide a written or graphic depiction (such as a logic model or visual strategy map) of existing and proposed strategies in terms of their mission and desired impacts, programmatic elements, and required support and resources.

2. Identify what is working well with existing strategies and what needs adjusting, and identify what will need to work well with proposed strategies and what adjustments might be needed. Focus as well on the integration of existing with new strategies

3. Determine how the needed adjustments can be made.

4. Incorporate these revisions into the strategy statements or

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strategic plan.

This same process is often very useful in Step 9, implementation, when issues of alignment often became apparent.

15. Allow for a period of catharsis as the organization moves from one way of being in the world to another. Strong emotions or tensions are likely to build up as the organization moves to implement new or changed strategies, particularly if they involve fairly drastic changes and challenge the current organizational identity and culture (Rughase, 2007). Indeed, the buildup may prevent successful implementation. These emotions and tensions must be recognized, and people must be allowed to vent and deal with them (Marris, 2016; Schein, 2016). People need time to grieve for the past they are giving up, even if they prefer the future being offered. Such emotions and tensions must be a legitimate topic of discussion in strategic planning team meetings. Sessions designed to review draft strategy statements or strategic plans can be used to vent emotions and to solicit modifications in the statements or plans that will deal effectively with these emotional concerns.

16. Remember that completion of the strategy development step is likely to be an important decision point. The decision will be whether to go ahead with strategies or a strategic plan recommended by the strategic planning team. When a formal strategic plan has not been prepared, a number of decision points may ensue. The strategies proposed to respond to various issues are likely to be presented to the appropriate decision-making bodies at different times. Thus, there would be an important decision point for each set of strategies developed to deal with each strategic issue.

17. Ensure that key decision makers and planners think carefully about how the formal adoption process should be managed, particularly if it involves formal arenas. Formal arenas typically have specific rules and procedures that must be followed. These rules must be attended to carefully so that the plan is not held hostage or overturned by clever opponents. Bargaining and negotiation over the modifications and inducements necessary to

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gain support and minimize opposition are almost certain to be needed. Obviously, any modifications that improve the proposal should be accepted, and agreements reached through bargaining and negotiation should not sacrifice crucial plan components.

18. Provide some sense of closure to the strategic planning process at the end of the step 7, or else at the end of Step 6 if no formal plan is prepared. Formal adoption of a strategic plan provides a natural occasion for developing such a sense of closure. But even without a strategic plan, some sort of ceremony and celebration may be required to give process participants the sense that the strategic planning effort is finished for the present and that the time for sustained implementation is at hand.

19. When the strategic planning process has been well-designed and faithfully followed, and the strategies and plans are nevertheless not adopted, consider the following possibilities:

The time is not yet right.

The draft strategies and plans are inadequate or inappropriate.

The issues the strategies and plans purport to address simply are not that “real” or pressing.

The organization (or collaboration or community) cannot handle the magnitude of the proposed changes, so they need to be scaled back.

The strategies and plans should be taken to some other arena, or the arena should be redesigned in some way.

SUMMARY This chapter has discussed strategy formulation and adoption. Strategy is defined as a pattern of purposes, policies, programs, actions, decisions, or resource allocations that defines what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why it does it. Strategies can vary by level, function, and time frame; they are the way an organization relates to its environment.

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Three approaches to developing strategies were outlined: a five-part process, the visual strategy mapping process, and principles-focused strategizing. The chapter also offers suggestions for the preparation of formal strategic plans, though once again I emphasize that strategic thinking, acting, and learning are the most important results rather than any particular approach to strategy formulation or the preparation of a formal strategic plan. Suggestions also were offered to guide the formal adoption of the plan when that step is necessary or desirable.

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CHAPTER EIGHT Establishing an Effective Organizational Vision for the Future

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, poet

The purpose of Step 8 in the strategic planning process is to develop a clear and succinct description of what the organization (program, collaboration, or community) should look like as it successfully implements its strategies, achieves its full potential, and creates significant and lasting public value. This description is the organization's vision of success. Typically, this vision of success is more important as a guide to implementing strategy than it is to formulating it. For that reason, the step is listed as optional in Figure 2.1, and it comes after strategy and plan review and adoption. However, Figure 2.1 also indicates that under the right circumstances, visioning might occur at many places throughout a strategic planning and management process (see also Figure 2.3).

Although many—perhaps most—public and nonprofit organizations have developed clear and useful mission statements in recent years, fewer have clear, succinct, and useful visions of success. Part of the reason is that a fully developed vision, though it includes it, goes well beyond mission. A mission outlines the organizational purpose; a vision goes on to describe how the organization should look when it is working extremely well in relation to its environment and key stakeholders. Developing this description is more time-consuming than formulating a mission statement (Senge, 2006). It is also more difficult, particularly because most organizations are coalitional (Bolman & Deal, 2013); thus, the vision must usually be a treaty negotiated among competing interests.

Other difficulties may hamper construction of a vision of success. People may be afraid of how others will respond to their vision. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Professionals are highly vested in their jobs and to have one's vision of excellent organizational performance criticized or rejected can be trying (Rughase, 2007). Additionally, people may be afraid of that part of themselves that can envision and pursue excellence. First of all, we can be disappointed in our pursuit, which is itself painful. Our own competence can be called into question. And second, being true to the vision can be a very demanding discipline involving hard work that we may not be willing to shoulder all the time.

Key decision makers, and those they may involve in the process, must be courageous in constructing a compelling vision of success. They must imagine and listen to their best selves in order to envision success for the organization as a whole. And they must be disciplined enough to affirm the vision in the present and to work hard through conflicts and difficulties to make the vision real in the here and now. As novelist Richard Powers (2001, p. 130) says, “The mind is the first virtual reality….It gets to say what the world isn't yet.” But saying yes to the vision is only a step—albeit an important one—in the persistent stream of action required to realize the vision.

It may not be possible, therefore, to create an effective and compelling vision of success for the organization. And indeed, most organizations do not have one. The good news, however, is that though a vision of success can be very helpful, it may not be necessary to improve organizational performance. Agreement on strategy is more important than agreement on vision or goals (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009). Simply finding a way to frame and deal with a few of the strategic issues the organization faces often markedly improves organizational effectiveness.

DESIRED IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES AND LONGER-TERM BENEFITS Even though it may not be necessary to have a vision of success to improve organizational effectiveness, it is hard to imagine a truly high- performing organization that does not have at least an implicit and widely shared conception of what success looks like and how it might be achieved (see, for example, Goodsell, 2010; Rainey & Steinbauer, ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

1999). Indeed, it is hard to see an organization surviving in the long run without some sort of vision to inspire it—hence the merit of famous filmmaker Federico Fellini's comment, “The visionary is the only realist.” Recall as well the admonition in Proverbs 29:18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Thus, a vision of success might be advantageous.

Assuming key decision makers wish to promote superior performance, the following immediate outcomes might be sought in this step. First, if it is to provide suitable guidance and motivation, the vision should probably detail the following attributes of the organization:

Mission

Basic philosophy, core values, and cultural features

Goals, if they are established

Basic strategies

Performance criteria (such as those related to critical success factors and basic strategies)

Important decision-making rules

Ethical standards expected of all employees

The vision should emphasize purposes, behavior, performance criteria, decision rules, and standards that serve the public and create public value rather than serve the organization alone. The guidance offered should be specific and reasonable. The vision should include a promise that the organization will support its members' pursuit of the vision. Further, the vision should clarify the organization's direction and purpose; be relatively future-oriented; reflect high ideals and challenging ambitions; and capture the organization's uniqueness and distinctive competence as well as desirable features of its history, culture, and values (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). The vision should also be relatively short and inspiring.

Second, the vision should be widely circulated among organizational members and other key stakeholders after appropriate consultations, reviews, and sign-offs. A vision of success can have little effect if organizational members are kept in the dark about it. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Third, the vision should be used to inform major and minor organizational decisions and actions. Preparing the vision will have been a waste of time if it has no behavioral effect. If, however, copies of the vision are always handy at formal meetings of key decision makers and prominently displayed on the organization's website and performance measurement systems are explicitly attuned to the vision, then the vision can be expected to affect organizational performance.

At least a dozen longer-term (and overlapping) benefits can flow from a clear, succinct, inspiring, and widely shared vision of success. First, a fully developed vision of success provides an abbreviated future- oriented theory of how and why the organization can achieve success by altering the world in some important way (Bryson, Gibbons, & Shaye, 2001). The vision helps organizational members and key stakeholders imagine and create sustainable new circumstances by understanding the requirements for success—that is, why and how things should be done. Knowing the basic theory allows organizational members to act effectively without having everything spelled out in detail and without needing rules to cover every possible situation. As the great psychologist Kurt Lewin observed, “Nothing is as practical as a good theory” (1951, p. 169).

Beyond that, the organization's vision (or abbreviated theory) of success articulates the way in which people can participate in creating a new and more desirable order. The vision thus represents a kind of “persuasive and constitutive storytelling about the future” (Throgmorton, 2003, p. 146) that starts out as a form of fiction (from the Latin fictionem, meaning a fashioning or feigning) that, through concerted action and organizational change, may become more factual. The vision doesn't need to be wholly accurate—it is not a street map—it just needs to provide a reasonable basis for action and learning in desired directions.

Second, organizational members are given specific, reasonable, and supportive guidance about what is expected of them and why. They see how they fit into the organization's big picture. Too often the only guidance for members—other than hearsay—is a job description (which is typically focused on the parts and not on the whole). In addition, key decision makers are all too likely to issue conflicting ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

messages to members or simply tell them, “Do your best.” A widely accepted vision of success records enough of a consensus on ends and means to channel members' efforts in desirable directions while at the same time providing a framework for improvisation and innovation in pursuit of organizational purposes (Goodsell, 2010). In this way, the vision serves primarily as an aid to strategy implementation rather than formulation.

Specifically, the two things that most strongly determine whether goals are achieved appear to be the extent to which the goals are specific and reasonable and the extent to which people are able and committed to achieving them. In fact, “given ability as well as commitment, the higher the goal, the higher a person's performance” (Latham, Borgogni, & Petitta, 2008, p. 386). It seems reasonable to extend the same argument to a vision of success and claim that the more specific and reasonable the vision, and the more able and committed organizational members are in pursuit of the vision, the more likely the vision will be achieved or realized.

Third, as we noted earlier, conception precedes perception (Weick, 1995). People must have some conception of what success and desirable behavior look like before they can actually see them and strive toward achieving them. A vision of success makes it easier for people to discriminate between preferred and undesirable actions and outcomes and thus produce more of what is preferred.

Fourth, if there is an agreement on the vision, and if clear guidance and decision rules can be derived from the vision, the organization will gain an added increment of power and efficiency. Less time will need to be expended on debating what to do, how to do it, and why, and more time can be devoted to simply getting on with it (Pfeffer, 2010).

Fifth, a vision of success provides a way to claim or affirm the future in the present and thereby invent one's own preferred future. If the future is at least in part what we make it, then development of a vision outlines the future we want to have and forces us to live it—create it, realize it—in the present. Nobel Prize–winning physicist Neils Bohr apparently said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” What is being said here is different: A vision of success helps

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not with predicting the future but with creating it.

Sixth, a clear yet reasonable vision of success creates a useful tension between is and ought—the world as it is and the world as we would like it. If goals are to motivate, they must be set high enough to provide a challenge but not so high as to induce paralysis, hopelessness, or too much stress. A well-tuned vision of success can articulate reasonable standards of excellence and motivate the organization's members to pursue them. The vision can provide the language that makes hope for a better future reasonable.

Seventh, a well-articulated vision of success will help people implicitly recognize the barriers to realizing that vision. (In this way, the vision acts in much the same way as the first step in the five-part strategy formulation process outlined in Chapter 7.) Recognizing barriers is the first step in overcoming them.

Eighth, an inspiring vision of success can supply another source of motivation: clarification of a vocation tied to a calling. When a vision of success becomes a calling, jobs and careers can become vocations that release enormous amounts of individual energy, dedication, power, and positive risk-taking behavior in pursuit of the vision of a better future. A vocation creates meaning in workers' lives and fuels a justifiable pride. Noted theologian Frederick Buechner defines vocation as “the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need” (quoted in Palmer, 2000, p. 16).

Consider, for example, the most remarkable of nonprofit organizations, the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), founded in l534 in Paris by Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Their vision was first formulated in Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises (Guibert, 1964). The worldwide success (in general) of order members as missionaries, teachers, scholars, and spiritual directors is a tribute to how much they have been guided by their ideal: to be a disciplined force on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. The fact that they have succeeded for so long against often incredible odds and trials is in part due to the power of their vision. They clearly have been called for a very long time to their vocation.

The references to vocation and calling may seem odd to some, but it is becoming increasingly clear that attention to the broadly spiritual

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aspects of work matters enormously (Bolman & Deal, 2011). Public and nonprofit organizations that inspire others and do good work consistently give witness to a deep and abiding faith, albeit a usually secular one (Goodsell, 2010). In other words, it may well be that doubt is overvalued in management thought and guidance and belief is seriously undervalued. Or as Karl Weick (1995) might say, believing is seeing, not the reverse. A well-crafted vision can provide a shared statement of belief—a creed—that starts out as a fiction and becomes a fact through action.

Ninth, a clear vision of success provides an effective substitute for leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). People are able to lead and manage themselves if they are given clear guidance on the organization's direction and behavioral expectations. More effective decision making can then occur at a distance from the center of the organization and from the top of the hierarchy.

Although constructing a vision of success may be difficult in politicized settings, the task may nonetheless be worth the effort, leading to a tenth benefit. An agreed-upon vision may contribute to a significant reduction in the level of organizational conflict. A set of overarching goals can help rechannel conflict in useful directions and make it more manageable (Fisher & Ury, 2011; Thompson, 2014).

Eleventh, depending on its content, the vision can help the organization stay attuned to its environment and develop its capacities to deal with the almost inevitable crises characteristic of organizational life these days. The vision can promote the useful learning and adaptation to a changing environment typically necessary to avoid catastrophic failure (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). In particular, a good vision should help the organization distinguish between strategic issues and operational ones. Catastrophes are perhaps more likely when what are in fact strategic issues are mistaken for operational issues and, therefore, not brought to the attention of key decision makers soon enough.

A good vision, in other words, can help an organization be really clear about what is most important and, therefore, help that organization thrive over the long term by being ambidextrous—good at both

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strategy implementation and strategy formulation, both knowledge exploitation and knowledge exploration, both making routine changes within the existing architecture and changing the architecture, both maintaining their identity and subtly changing it, both avoiding decision failures and learning from their mistakes, and at being very serious but not taking itself too seriously (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2013). A good vision will provide the kind of overarching framework and details necessary to allow the organization to purposefully yet flexibly respond to changes in its environment—to hold tightly to its core while being willing to change the rest (Light, 2005).

And twelfth, to the extent that the vision of success is widely shared, it lends the organization an air of virtue. It is not particularly fashionable to talk explicitly about virtue, but most people wish to act in morally justifiable ways in pursuit of morally justified ends (Frederickson, 1997; Goodsell, 2010). A vision of success therefore provides important permission, justification, and legitimacy to the actions and decisions that accord with the vision at the same time it establishes boundaries of permitted behavior. The normative self-regulation necessary for any moral community to survive and prosper is thereby facilitated (Mandelbaum, 2000), and the legitimacy of the organization in the broader community can be enhanced (Suddaby, Bitektine, & Haack, 2017).

AN EXAMPLE Of the three cases featured in this book, the City of Minneapolis's strategic plan comes the closest to being a vision of success. The 2014– 2017 strategic plan includes the following elements (see Exhibit 7.1):

A succinct statement of the city's vision

A statement of the city's values

A characterization of how the city wants to go about working

A list of goals and strategic directions

In terms of the elements I think should be included in a vision of success, most are covered here at least in part or implicitly. For

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example, the city's vision statement may be thought of as a mission statement for the city as a place, but there is not an explicit mission statement for the city as a public corporation. That purpose remains implicit at present and consists of what is in Minnesota law governing cities and in the City of Minneapolis's charter as a home rule city. Minnesota law describes cities as the type of government that “most efficiently provides governmental services in areas intensively developed for residential, commercial, industrial, and governmental purposes” but offers no overarching statement of purpose. Nor will one be found in the city's charter though a host of narrow purposes will be found attached to titles and subordinate chapters in the charter.

That said, the city government's statement of values might be thought of as a kind of mission statement as the values are virtuous, aspirational, and inspiring. Similarly, the combination of the values and ways of working may be seen as expressing the city's basic philosophy, core values, and cultural features. Goals and basic strategies are explicitly included, but performance criteria are not covered except as they are implied by the values and ways of working. The same goes for important decision-making rules and ethical standards expected of all employees.

The city's strategic plan thus does not fully cover all of the elements of a full-blown vision of success, but it certainly represents substantial progress toward doing so. Since adoption of the strategic plan, the city has continued to put substantial effort into developing performance indicators at the community, program, and individual employee levels that will help align efforts toward achieving the goals. The city is also working on ways to use performance information to inform its annual budgeting process.

It is worth noting that there may be a number of good reasons for leaving out performance criteria. First, there are likely to be too many to list in a short document. Second, it can be hard to develop really good performance criteria that do not inadvertently produce undesirable consequences. Third, publishing performance criteria— particularly when they must be met through collaborative work with outsiders—can leave an organization hostage to fortune. Further ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

negotiations with involved and affected stakeholders can be necessary before the city is willing to own a number of key collaborative performance indicators (Moynihan, 2008). Once collaborative performance indicators are developed and agreed upon, a logical next step might be to produce a set of complementary dashboards or scorecards (balanced or otherwise) to further clarify the operational aspects of the vision—that is, to clarify exactly what realizing the vision should mean in terms of performance.

It is also important to emphasize that the city's strategic plan (or framework)—and vision of success in the making—is no mere public relations ploy. Key decision makers and opinion leaders are committed to it. The vision and plan not only codify much of what the city already does, but they also chart some new agreed-upon directions necessary to achieve excellence. In addition, this serves as the basis for its annual business planning cycle. It informs in various ways all that the city does. In short, the plan is a prime source document for further efforts at developing a more aligned and effective city government.

PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES The following guidelines are intended to help a strategic planning team formulate a vision of success.

1. Remember that in most cases a vision of success is not necessary to improve organizational effectiveness. Simply developing and implementing strategies to deal with a few important strategic issues can produce marked improvement in the performance of most organizations. An organization, therefore, should not worry too much if developing a vision of success seems unwise or too difficult. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that an organization can achieve truly superior performance without a widely shared, or at least implicit, vision of success—what theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called “a great hope held in common” (1964, p. 83).

2. In most cases, wait until the organization goes through one or more cycles of strategic planning before trying to develop a full- blown vision of success. Most organizations need to develop the habit of thinking about and acting on the truly important aspects of

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their relationships internally and externally with their environments before a collective vision of success can emerge. In addition, it is likely to require more than one cycle of strategic planning for a consensus on key decisions and an ability to resolve conflicts constructively to emerge, and both are necessary for developing an effective vision of success.

Of course, this guideline may not apply if the organization has decided to proceed with strategic planning using the vision sketch or idealized scenario or goals approaches, and if the organization has developed and is implementing effective strategies based on those approaches. If key decision makers have enough capacity for consensus to make either of these approaches possible, then the organization also may succeed in developing a viable, detailed vision of success.

3. Include in a vision of success the items listed earlier in this chapter as part of the first desired outcome. The vision itself should not be long—preferably no more than 10 double-spaced pages, ideally less, and with good graphics. The online version should also be fairly short and feature good graphics. The vision should be clearly externally focused on the better world that will result from the organization successfully implementing its strategies and fully realizing its mission. Organizations should think about making the published versions of their strategic plans serve as a vision of success, as the City of Minneapolis does in effect.

4. Ensure that the vision of success grows out of past decisions and actions as much as possible. Past decisions and actions provide a record of pragmatic consensus about what the organization is and should do. Basing a vision on a preexisting consensus avoids unnecessary conflict. Also, the vision should effectively link the organization to its past. Realization of a new future is facilitated to the extent that it can be shown to be a continuation of the past and present (Schultz & Hernes, 2013; Weick, 1995). However, a vision of success should not be merely an extension of the present. It should be an affirmation in the present of an ideal and inspirational future. It should encourage organizational members to extrapolate backward from the vision to the present; this will

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help them determine which actions today can best help the organization achieve success tomorrow. A vision of success also should encourage organizational members to keep their eyes open for new knowledge and changes in their environment.

5. Remember that a vision of success should be inspirational. It will not move people to excel unless it is. And what inspires people is a clear description of a desirable future backed by real conviction. An inspirational vision (Kouzes & Posner, 2017):

Focuses on a better future

Encourages hopes, dreams, and noble ambitions

Builds on (or reinterprets) the organization's history and culture to appeal to high ideals and common values

Clarifies purpose and direction

States positive outcomes

Emphasizes the organization's uniqueness and distinctive competence

Emphasizes the strength of a unified group

Uses word pictures, images, and metaphors

Communicates enthusiasm, kindles excitement, and fosters commitment and dedication

Just listen again to Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech, and you will have a clear example of an inspirational vision of success focused on the better future of an integrated society.

6. Remember that an effective vision of success will embody the appropriate degree of tension to prompt effective organizational change. On the one hand, too much tension will likely cause paralysis. On the other hand, too little tension will not produce the challenge necessary for outstanding performance. If there is not enough tension, the vision should be recast to raise organizational sights.

7. Consider starting the construction of a vision of success by having

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strategic planning team members draft visions of success (or at least relatively detailed outlines) individually, using the worksheets in Bryson and Alston (2011). The team may find it useful to review the discussion of the vision of success approach to strategic issue identification in Chapter 6 and visionary leadership in Chapter 11 before starting their individual drafts. Team members should then share and discuss their responses with one another. After the discussion, the task of drafting a vision of success should be turned over to one individual, because an inspirational document is rarely written by a committee. Special sessions may be necessary to develop particular elements of the vision of success. For example, the organization's performance criteria or success indicators may not be fully specified. They might be developed out of the mandates, stakeholder analyses, SWOC/T analysis, strategy statements, or snow card technique or visual strategy mapping activities. Wherever there are gaps in the vision, special sessions may be necessary to fill them.

8. Use a normative process to review the vision of success. Drafts typically are reviewed by planning team members, other key decision makers, governing board members, and at least some selected outside stakeholders. Review meetings need to be structured to ensure that the vision's strengths and any possible improvements are identified and listed. Review sessions can be structured according to the agenda suggested for the review of strategic plans (see Chapter 7).

9. Be aware that consensus on the vision statement among key decision makers is highly desirable but may not be necessary. It is rarely possible to achieve complete consensus on anything in an organization, so all that can be realistically hoped for is a fairly widespread general agreement on the substance and style of the vision statement. Deep-seated commitment to any vision statement can emerge only slowly over time.

10. Arrange for the vision of success to be widely disseminated and discussed. This makes it more likely that the vision will be used to guide organizational decisions and actions. The vision statement probably should be published on the organization's website, as a

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booklet, and given to every organizational member and to key external stakeholders. Discussion of the statement should be made a part of orientation programs for new employees, and the statement should be discussed periodically in staff meetings.

A vision of success can become a living document only if it is referred to constantly as a basis for discerning and justifying appropriate organizational decisions and actions. If a vision statement does not regularly inform organizational decision making and actions, then preparation of the statement was probably a waste of time.

SUMMARY This chapter has discussed developing a vision of success for the organization. A vision of success is defined as a description of what the organization will look like after it successfully implements its strategies and achieves its full potential. A vision statement should include the organization's mission, basic philosophy and core values, basic strategies, performance criteria, important decision rules, and ethical standards. The statement should emphasize the important social purposes that the organization serves and that justify its existence. In addition, the statement should be short and inspirational.

For a vision of success to have a strong effect on organizational decisions and actions, it must be widely disseminated and discussed, and it must be referred to frequently as a means of determining appropriate responses to the various situations that confront the organization. Only when the statement is used as a basis for organizational decision making and action will it have been worth the effort of crafting it.

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CHAPTER NINE Implementing Strategies and Plans Successfully

Strategy without tactics is the longest road to success. Tactics without strategy is the quickest road to failure.

—Attributed to Sun Tzu, ancient Chinese military strategist

Well-executed implementation (Step 9) furthers the transition from strategic planning to strategic management by incorporating adopted strategies throughout the relevant system. Creating a strategic plan can produce significant value—especially in terms of building intellectual, human, social, political, and civic capital—but that is not enough. Developing effective initiatives, programs, projects, action plans, budgets, and implementation processes will bring life to the strategies and create more tangible and intangible value for the organization (collaboration or community) and its stakeholders as mandates are then met and the mission fulfilled (see Figure 2.4).

Initiatives, programs, projects, action plans, and budgets are necessary in order to coordinate the activities of the numerous executives, managers, professionals, technicians, and frontline practitioners likely to be involved. The implementation process itself should allow for adaptive learning as new information becomes available and circumstances change. Such learning will lead to more effective implementation and to the cognitive, emotional, and practical basis for emergent strategies and new rounds of strategizing. Recall that realized strategies are a blend of what is intended with what emerges in practice (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009).

PURPOSE AND DESIRED IMMEDIATE AND LONGER-TERM OUTCOMES The purpose of implementation is to incorporate adopted strategies throughout the system and for real value to be created for the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

organization and its stakeholders. In addition, implementation should build capacity for sustaining the strategies, continued goal achievement, and ongoing learning and readjustment based on that learning (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). The process should also include building capacity for the next round of strategic planning.

The most important long-term outcome that leaders, managers, and planners should aim for in this step is real added public value resulting from the reasonably smooth and rapid achievement of the organization's goals and heightened stakeholder satisfaction. To paraphrase Karl Weick (1995, p. 54), a desired order of greater public value becomes a tangible order “when faith is followed by enactment.” The value proposition embodied in the strategic plan moves from being a hypothetical story to being a true story (Alford & Yates, 2014).

The further and deeper this process reaches, the more a desired strategy change will have become part of what people take for granted. As Mintzberg et al. (2009, p. 17) note, “We function best when we take some things for granted. And that is the major role of strategy in organizations: it resolves the big issues so that we can get on with the little details.” Of course, what they call “the details” may not be so little, but their point is still well taken. Meanwhile, the reasonably smooth and rapid introduction of the strategies throughout the relevant system typically requires using a broad repertoire of approaches in order to bring all necessary entities on board—or at least to get them to do what needs doing (see, for example, Bolman & Deal, 2013; Borins, 2014; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015).

This transition to new order will be achieved via more instrumental outcomes. The most important of these outcomes may well be the creation and maintenance of the coalition necessary to support and implement the desired changes. The coalition may already exist; if not, it will have to be created. The size and shape of this coalition will vary depending on the nature of the changes being sought. In any case, implementing the easiest elements with the most supportive stakeholders is likely to make implementing the harder elements with the least supportive stakeholders easier.

The second of these subordinate desired outcomes is in many ways the

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reverse of the most important desired outcome—namely, the avoidance of the typical causes of failure. Beyond bad or ineffective leadership and bad policy or program design, these causes are legion but include the following (Hill & Hupe, 2014; Light, 2016; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015):

Failure to maintain or create the coalition necessary to protect, support, and guide implementation

Resistance based on attitudes and beliefs that are incompatible with desired changes. Sometimes these attitudes and beliefs stem simply from the resisters not having participated in strategy or plan development

Personnel problems such as inadequate numbers, poorly designed incentives, inadequate orientation or training, or people's overcommitment to other activities or uncertainty that involvement with implementation can help their careers

Incentives that fail to induce desired behavior on the part of implementing organizations, units, individuals, and co-producers

Preexisting commitments of implementing organizations' or units' resources to other priorities and a consequent absence of resources to facilitate new activities; in other words, there is little slack with which to fulfill requirements for success

The absence of administrative support services

The absence of rules, resources, and settings for identifying and resolving implementation problems

The emergence of new political, economic, or administrative priorities

The third subordinate outcome is, therefore, the development of a clear understanding by implementers of what needs to be done, when, why, and by whom. Statements of principles to guide implementation, goals and objectives, a vision of success, clearly articulated strategies, and educational materials and operational guides all can help. If they have not been created already, they may need to be developed in this step. These statements and guides will help concentrate people's

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attention on making the changes that make a difference as adopted strategies are reconciled with existing and emergent strategies.

A fourth subordinate outcome is the use of a debugging process to identify and fix difficulties that almost inevitably arise as a new solution is put in place. As political scientist and anthropologist James Scott (1998, p. 6) notes, “Designed or planned social order is necessarily schematic; it always ignores essential features of any real, functioning social order.” Or to put it in less academic terms, implementers should recall the well-known administrative adage Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. They should also recall the quip, “Murphy was an optimist!”

The earlier steps in the process are designed to ensure, as much as possible, that the adopted strategies and plans will outline and help meet the requirements for success and do not contain any major flaws. But it is almost inconceivable that some important difficulties will not arise as strategies are put into practice. Key decision makers should pay regular attention to how implementation is proceeding in order to focus attention on any difficulties and to plan how to address them. Frequent on-site visits can be very valuable for gathering information and helping solve difficulties on the spot. Adaptive learning should be part of the process (Borins, 2014; Simons, 1995). Also, as mentioned briefly in Chapter 7, a conscious formative or developmental evaluation process is needed to help implementers identify obstacles and steer over, around, under, or through them to achieve—or if necessary, modify—policy goals during the early stages of implementation. A good formative or developmental evaluation will also provide useful information for new rounds of strategizing (Patton, 2008, 2011).

Fifth, successful implementation is likely to include summative evaluations (Patton, 2008) to find out whether strategic goals have actually been achieved once strategies are fully implemented. Summative evaluations often differentiate between outputs, outcomes, and impacts. Outputs are the actual actions, behaviors, products, services, or other direct consequences produced by the policy changes. Outcomes are the benefits of the outputs for stakeholders and the larger meanings attached to those outputs. Impacts are more distant, ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

long-term, and typically indirect effects of outcomes. The causal chains from outcomes to impacts are typically very hard to untangle. In other words, outputs are substantive changes, whereas outcomes are both substantive improvements and symbolic interpretations, and impacts are more distant consequences. Certainly outputs and outcomes are important in determining whether a change has been worth the expenditure of time and effort, whereas attending to impacts can help clarify the full public value benefits (or not) of ventures (Alford & Yates, 2014). Summative evaluations may be expensive and time-consuming. Further, they are vulnerable to sabotage or attack on political, technical, legal, or ethical grounds. Nonetheless, without such evaluations, it is difficult to know whether things are better as a result of implemented changes and in precisely what ways.

A sixth subordinate desired outcome is retention of important features of the adopted principles, strategies, and plans. As situations change and different actors become involved, implementation can become a kind of moving target. It is possible that mutations developed during the course of implementation can do a better job of addressing the issues than would the original adopted principles, strategies, or plan. In general, however, it is more likely that design distortions will subvert the avowed strategic aims and gut their intent, so it is important to make sure that important design features are maintained, or, if they are not, that such changes are desirable.

Seventh, successful implementation likely requires creation of redesigned organizational (or program or collaborative or community) settings that will ensure long-lasting changes. These settings are marked by the institutionalization of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and incentives; the stabilization of altered patterns of behaviors and attitudes; and the continuation or creation of a coalition of implementers, advocates, and supportive interest groups who favor the changes. For example, the City of Minneapolis continues to make needed changes to its Results Minneapolis strategic management system. Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA) has made adjustments internally to the way its senior leadership team functions and to its overall management system while externally it is trying to reshape the entire

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ecology of support for minority-owned businesses through the Minority Business Development Cohort, a partnership with six other minority business support organizations. The International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) is working to help individual countries' SAIs help build their governments' implementation of the U.N.'s sustainable development goals.

If the redesign of the settings is significant, the result may in fact be a new regime. Regime construction is not easy and, therefore, will not happen unless relevant implementers believe the changes are clearly worth the effort. A variety of new or redesigned settings that allow the use of a range of tools, techniques, and incentives (including positive and negative sanctions) may be necessary in order to shape behaviors and attitudes in desired directions. Regime construction is quite often necessary when substantial collaboration among organizations is involved (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015; Morgan & Cook, 2014; Provan & Kenis, 2009). A vision of success (discussed in Chapter 8) may be highly desirable for outlining what the new regime would look like if the purpose of the changes is realized and strategies are fully implemented.

The eighth and final subordinate desired outcome is the establishment or anticipation of review points during which strategies may be maintained, significantly modified, or terminated. The Strategy Change Cycle is a series of loops, not a straight line. Politics, problems, and desired solutions often change (Kingdon, 2010). There are no once-and-for-all solutions, only temporary victories. Leaders, managers, and planners must be alert to the nature and sources of possible challenges to implemented strategies; they should work to maintain still-desirable strategies, replacing them with better ones when possible or necessary and terminating them when they become completely outmoded.

If real public value has been created via these subordinate outcomes, then additional outcomes are also likely to be produced. One of the most important is increased support for, and legitimacy of, the leaders and organizations that have successfully advocated and implemented the changes (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). Real issues have been identified and effectively addressed; public value has been created. That is what ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

public and nonprofit organizational or community leadership is all about. In addition, leaders who advocate for and implement desired changes may reap career rewards. Their formal or informal contracts may be extended. They may receive pay raises or other perks, as well as attractive job offers from elsewhere. Further, because organizations are externally justified by what they do to address basic social or political problems or needs, the advocating organizations should experience enhanced legitimacy and support.

Second, individuals involved in effective implementation of desirable changes are likely to experience heightened self-efficacy, self-esteem, and self-confidence (Kelman, 2005; Scharmer, 2016; Schein, 2016). If a person has done a good job of addressing real needs and of creating real public value, it is hard for him or her to not feel good about it. Effective implementation thus can produce extremely important “psychic income” for those involved.

Finally, organizations (or communities) that effectively implement strategies and plans are likely to enhance their capacities for action in the future. They acquire an expanded repertoire of knowledge, experience, tools, and techniques and an expanded inventory of capital (intellectual, human, social, political, civic)—and, therefore, are better positioned to undertake and adapt to future changes.

For these benefits to accrue, a number of implementation vehicles are likely to be necessary. These include performance measurement and management, programs, projects, and budgets.

Performance Measurement and Management Performance measurement and management are becoming standard practice in public and nonprofit organizations but not necessarily in the ways their advocates envisioned. The adage that what gets measured gets managed may be true, but more often than not, performance information is ambiguous, subjective, and rarely comprehensive. Not surprisingly, performance information is part of the politics of strategy change and is embedded in political language and used as a political tool (Lusk & Birks, 2014; Mulgan, 2009).

Actual performance-enhancing and value-creating use of performance ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

information by governments depends on a number of factors. These include: support from elected officials, citizens, and senior organizational leaders; the information being accessible, credible, understandable, and usable; the presence of a culture that values learning and collaboration and is goal-oriented; and routines that encourage people to use performance-related information as part of ongoing learning. It also helps if the implementers have been involved in developing the assessment measures. And it helps if the users have some decision-making flexibility, are supportive of performance measurement, are prosocially motivated, and are active networkers (Kroll & Moynihan, 2015, pp. 197–199).

Two good examples of the use of performance indicators come from the City of Minneapolis—the first at the community level and the other at the departmental level. The first concerns what the city calls “big picture measures” that are meant to “reflect the realities being experienced in our communities. Though the outcomes of these metrics are beyond any single agency's entire control, they are useful in helping guide our City work to advance community-level goals” (City of Minneapolis, 2015).

Recall that when they adopted the city's strategic framework, the mayor and council directed the city coordinator “to develop measures for Minneapolis' adopted Values, Goals, and Strategic Directions and report at least annually…on goal progress” (see Exhibit 7.1). The City Coordinator's Office responded to the charge by launching the year- long Community Indicators Project. The project began with a review of current Minneapolis measures and nationally recognized measures. This resulted in a draft set of indicators. In the next step, more than 1,500 community members were engaged in a process of developing city-specific measures for tracking goal achievement. In the final step, the measures were discussed and refined by city staff and elected officials. They were formally adopted by the city council in October 2015 and are presented in Exhibit 9.1.

Exhibit 9.1. City of Minneapolis Community

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Indicators.

Strategic goal: Living well Title Indicator Level of

detail Commute mode share

(i) Percentage of Minneapolis residents driving alone, (ii) percentage of Minneapolis workers driving alone, (iii) percentage of Minneapolis residents carpooling, (iv) percentage of Minneapolis residents using public transportation, (v) percentage of Minneapolis residents walking, (vi) percentage of Minneapolis residents taking a taxicab or motorcycle

Geographic area

Cost-burdened households

Percentage of households that pay more than 30 percent of their gross income for housing at (i) less than 30 percent area median income, (ii) 31 percent to 50 percent area median income, (iii) 51 percent to 80 percent area median income

Race, geographic area

Quality housing infrastructure**

Percentage of residents living in quality housing, including infrastructure condition

Geographic area

Complete and livable neighborhoods**

Percentage of residents living in close proximity to amenities and services, potentially including frequent transit service, schools, healthy food, and parks or green spaces

Geographic area

Safety* Two measures: Race, geographic

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Resident perception of safety

Number of violent crimes

area, sex

Creative vitality Measures the impact of the creative sector, including the regional share of jobs, spending, and organizations

Citywide

Strategic goal: One Minneapolis Title Indicator Level of

detail Unemployment Rate of unemployment Race,

geographic area, sex

Poverty Poverty rate Race, geographic area, sex

Resident trust of Minneapolis City government*

Rating of trust Minneapolis residents feel toward Minneapolis City government through a Resident Survey question similar to the following: “How much trust do you have that in interactions with Minneapolis City government…

a. You will be treated with respect

b. You will be treated fairly

c. Important information will be made public

d. Your participation in City decision making can make a difference”

Race, geographic area, sex

Healthy food access

Percentage of residents living in Low Healthy Food Access Areas, which must meet poverty, vehicle access,

Geographic area

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and year-round healthy food source criteria

Equitable justice system

Low-level crime arrests Race

Reading proficiency

Percentage of third grade students who meet or exceed proficient reading levels

Race, geographic area

Asthma Rate of hospitalization from asthma Geographic area

Infant mortality

Infant mortality rate Race and mother's country of birth

Strategic goal: A hub of economic activity and innovation Title Indicator Level of

detail Employment Number of individuals employed in

the 20 largest employment sectors in Minneapolis

Employment sector, race, sex, geographic area

Sales Minneapolis sales and use tax revenue

Geographic area

Business startups

Number of employees employed by startups

Employment sector, sex, age, education, race

Educational attainment

Percentage of adults aged 25 and older with a high school diploma (or

Race, geographic

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equivalent), some college, and a college degree

area, sex

Wages Average monthly earnings of employees with stable jobs

Employment sector, sex, age, education, race

Strategic goal: Great places Title Indicator Level of

detail Air quality Days with air pollutant concentrations

exceeding health-based levels Citywide

Healthy lakes, streams, and rivers

Two measures:

Lake Aesthetic and User Recreation Index (LAURI): Public health, aesthetics, habitat quality, water clarity, recreational access for Minneapolis's eight swimming lakes

The number of impairments of Minneapolis surface-water bodies (includes lakes, creeks, wetlands, and Mississippi River)

Geographic area Geographic area, type of impairment

Garbage and recycling

Total waste stream and disposal method (garbage, recycling, organics)

Citywide

Greenhouse gas emissions

Citywide greenhouse gas emissions by activity

Citywide

Access to parks and green space*

Two measures:

Resident rating of proximity to quality parks

Geographic area, race, sex Geographic

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Resident access to public green space and tree canopy at three tiers: good, limited, and low

area

Quality of roads and bridges

Average Pavement Condition Index ratings and bridge condition information

Type of street (MSA and residential)

Strategic goal: A city that works Title Indicator Level of

detail Quality of city services*

Resident rating of overall satisfaction with city services

Geographic area, race, sex

City employee engagement

City of Minneapolis overall employee engagement (composite measure)

Citywide

Access to city information

Resident rating of ability to get information about city services and programs

Geographic area, race, sex

Diversity of city workforce

Percentage of females and people of color in city of Minneapolis workforce

Job classification

Value for tax dollar

Resident rating of value for tax dollar Geographic area, race, sex

*2016 Minneapolis Resident Survey question

** Formulation of this indicator will be undertaken as part of Minneapolis' upcoming comprehensive planning process

Source: Adapted from City of Minneapolis (2015).

The second example shows how goals, objectives, and performance

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measures can be integrated at the departmental level and is presented in Exhibit 9.2, which comes from the City of Minneapolis Fire Department's 2014–2017 business plan. The exhibit shows how one of the department's goals, “All neighborhoods are safe,” fits with three of the City of Minneapolis's strategic directions (see Exhibit 7.1). The exhibit then shows how the departmental goals are operationalized by objectives, targets, tactics, and measures.

Exhibit 9.2. City of Minneapolis Fire Department Goals, Objectives, and Tactics, 2014–2017.

City of Minneapolis Strategic Directions

Fire Department Goal

Fire Department Objectives and Targets

Fire Department Tactics and Targets

All neighborhoods are safe, healthy, and uniquely inviting

All Minneapolis residents, visitors, and employees have a safe and healthy environment

City operations are

All neighborhoods are safe

Objective: Increase effectiveness of emergency response and recovery

Target: Decrease the number of civilian injuries from 27 to 10 by 2018

Target: Increase resident

1. Tactic: Maintain emergency response levels

A. Target: Formalize calculations to match national response standards by 2015

B. Target: 14 firefighters on scene within 9 minutes and 20 seconds 90 percent of the

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efficient, effective, results-driven, and customer- focused

satisfaction to 98 percent by 2018

time

C. Target: By 2017, maintain depth as related to staffing to have four firefighters per rig

2. Tactic: Evaluate pilot EMS program for increased efficiencies in EMS services

A. Target: Evaluation completed by end of 2014

3. Tactic: Implement the High School Career Opportunity Program

A. Target: 70 percent of students graduating from the program after the first two years

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B. Target: Determine success measures including percentage of students taking EMS exam, percentage graduating program, and the change in percentage of students interested in a career with public service/as a firefighter by May 2015

4. Tactic: Evaluate all new response models

A. Target: Complete evaluation of new response model programs within six months of the first completed year

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5. Tactic: Maintain minimum standards on apparatus and equipment

A. Target: Stable funding lined up by 2018 budget cycle

6. Tactic: Support and maintain both our internal and external partnerships (Unions, MPD, St. Paul, Hospitals, etc.)

A. Target: Strengthen and formalize partnership expectations on a routine basis

Objective: Increase prevention efforts

A. Target: Decrease fire incidents from 11,218 to 10,500 by

1. Tactic: Enhance our public education and community outreach programs

A. Target: Reduce the number of cases of fires set by

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2018

B. Target: Decrease number of civilian injuries from 27 to 10 by 2018

C. Target Decrease the number of civilian deaths from 10 to 0 by 2018

juveniles from 10 to 0 by 2016

B. Target: Increase safety information distribution from 4,000 to 6,000 individuals, households, and businesses by 2016

2. Tactic: Increase building safety

A. Target: Formalization of how building familiarization violations reported to FIS from 250 to 400 by 2015

B. Target: Increase the number of code and safety violations reported to FIS from 250

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to 400 by 2015

C. Target: Increase number of smoke alarm/CO2 alarms distributed in designated geographic areas from 3,000 to 4,000 by 2018

3. Tactic: Strengthen internal and external partnerships

A. Target: Identify three collaboration opportunities related to safety, response, and prevention by Spring 2015

B. Target: Collaborate with five community agencies that work with high risk

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adults by 2018

4. Tactic: Prepare targeted messaging for non-English- speaking populations

A. Target: Identify areas and populations most in need of fire prevention services by 2016

Source: Department Business Plan 2014–2017, Minneapolis Fire Department, pp. 6– 7. Accessed June 23, 2017, at http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/www/groups/public/@citycoordinator/documents/webcontent/wcms1p- 142299.pdf.

In contrast to these examples, the circumstances in which performance information is unlikely to lead to significant value creation are also fairly clear. Value creation is unlikely when the use of performance information is purely symbolic, when its only purpose is to cut costs and assign blame, where there are not enough resources and capacity to ensure data quality and adequate analysis, and when complex services are paired with strong incentives, which will lead to gaming the system (Heinrich & Marschke, 2010). Although meritorious performance can lead to favorable budget outcomes, it is hardly surprising that partisan politics can override the effects (Gilmour & Lewis, 2005).

Nonetheless, there is fairly clear evidence that performance measures in many cases can make a positive difference in influencing the direction of change efforts and learning from them (for example, Kroll

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& Moynihan, 2015; Patton, McKegg, & Wehipeihana, 2015). Use of performance measures is one key to high performance of individuals, including leaders, organizations, and collaborations (Latham, Borgogni, & Petitta, 2008). Increasingly, communities and states are developing performance measures and using them to assess how well they are doing as places and to help produce alignments among the various organizational and citizen efforts to contribute to desirable outcomes (for example, Andrews, Jonas, Mantell, & Solomon, 2008; Epstein, Coates, Wray, & Swain, 2005).

Performance information, however, must always be treated with a certain amount of skepticism. Leaders and managers should deliberate carefully about what will be measured, how, and why in order to make sure that indicators help rather than undermine effective performance (Van Dooren, Bouckaert, & Halligan, 2015). For example, all too frequently, indicators fail to take into account a policy's or program's complex feedback effects (Moynihan & Soss, 2014); the problematic mapping of cross-agency programs onto agency budgets, differential policy, or program effects on stakeholders by race and gender (Soss, Fording, & Schram, 2008); policy or program effects on citizenship (Wichowsky & Moynihan, 2008); and at least some important regime values, such as transparency and freedom of information (Piotrowski & Rosenbloom, 2002).

In addition, leaders and managers must make sure goal displacement does not occur in which the means to an end—the measures—become the end (Merton, 1940; Schön, 1971). Indicator use should help clarify what the ends actually are or should be, and the measures should be changed if necessary. Measures are as close as we can get to clearly specifying organization, collaboration, community, policy, program, or project goals, and debates about measures are in effect debates about the goals. Careful deliberations about goals and appropriate measures are needed to ensure the measures enhance actual goal achievement and do not result in goal displacement.

PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS Strategic plans are often implemented via yearly or multiyear business

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plans, program plans, or project plans. For example, the City of Minneapolis requires its departments to create four-year business plans that are integrated with, and show their part in implementing, the city's four-year strategic plan. Business plans are to be updated yearly. They are posted online at http://www.minneapolismn.gov/coordinator/strategicplanning/wcmsp- 199681.

In addition, programs and projects are a component of many strategic change efforts. The City of Minneapolis, MEDA, and INTOSAI all are making use of a variety of programs and projects, which is a way of breaking big changes down into smaller pieces to address specific issues.

Program and project management can help clarify the overall design of a change initiative, provide a vehicle for obtaining the necessary reviews and approvals, and provide an objective basis for evaluation of progress. Programs and projects also can focus attention on strategic initiatives, facilitate detailed learning, build momentum behind the changes, provide for increased accountability, and allow for easier termination of initiatives that turn out to be undesirable (Project Management Institute, 2013). When drawing attention to the changes is unwise for any reason, decision makers can still use a program or project management approach, but they will need an astute public relations strategy to defuse the ire of powerful opponents.

Program and project plans are a version of action plans and should have the following components:

Definition of purpose

Clarification of program or project organization and mechanisms for resolving conflicts

Articulation of the logic model or strategy-specific map guiding the initiative—that is, clarification of the process by which inputs are to be converted to outputs, outcomes, and impacts

Calculation of inputs desired, including financial, human resources, information technology, and other resources

Definition of outputs to be produced ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Identification of target clientele

A timeline of activities and decision points

Specification of objectively verifiable indicators of key aspects of the logic model

Indicators of assumptions that are key to the success of the program, including presumed requirements for success

THE SPECIAL ROLE OF BUDGETS Budget allocations have crucial, if not overriding, significance for the implementation of strategies and plans. Budgets often represent the most important and consequential policy statements that governments or nonprofit organizations make. Not all strategies and plans have budgetary significance, but enough of them do that public and nonprofit leaders and managers should consider involving themselves deeply in the process of budget making. Doing so is likely to be a particularly effective way to have an impact on the design, adoption, and execution of strategies and plans (Willoughby, 2014).

The difficulty of using budgets for planning purposes results partly from the political context within which budgeting takes place. The hustle, hassle, and uncertainty of politics means that budgeting typically tends to be short-term, incremental, reactive, and oriented toward tracking expenditures and revenues—rather than long-term, comprehensive, innovative, proactive, and oriented toward accomplishment of broad purposes, goals, or priorities. The politicized nature of budgeting is likely to be especially pronounced in the public sector, where adopted budgets record the outcomes of a broad-based political struggle among the many claimants on the public purse (Rubin, 2009). But the same difficulties emerge (though perhaps in more muted form and for somewhat different reasons) in the private and nonprofit sectors as well.

Another fundamental reason for the gap between budgeting and planning is that planning for control and planning for action are so fundamentally different, as Mintzberg (1994, pp. 67–81) argues, that a great divide exists between them. What can be done about the great ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

divide, as both performance control and strategies and programs are important? Several suggestions are possible:

1. Have strategic planning precede the budget cycle (Poister, Aristigueta, & Hall, 2015). Budgeting is more likely to serve overall organizational purposes if environmental assessments, strategic issue identification, and strategy formulation precede rather than follow it. The City of Minneapolis, among many others, is moving in this direction.

2. To make this happen, gain control of the master calendar that guides formal organizational planning and budgeting efforts. As Lynn argues in his classic treatment of budgeting (1987, pp. 203– 205), “the master calendar is the public executive's most important device for gaining ascendancy over the process of budget making in the organization….[because it] puts public executives in a position to spell out the assumptions, constraints, priorities, and issues they want each subordinate unit to consider in developing its program, budget, and policy proposals. In the process, they can define the roles of the various staff offices…and indicate when and how they will make decisions and hear appeals.”

3. Build a performance budgeting system (using the master calendar and any other available tools and resources). As Osborne and Plastrik (2000, p. 43) note, “performance budgets define the outputs and outcomes policymakers intend to buy with each sum they appropriate….This allows both the executive and the legislature to make their performance expectations clear, then track whether they are getting what they paid for. It also helps them learn whether the strategies and outputs they are funding are actually producing the outcomes they want. If not, they can ask for an evaluation to examine why—and what to do about it.” A key point, however, is that in general, policy makers should stop if possible at direction setting, budgeting, and evaluation—that is, performance control (Simons, 1995)—and leave the detailed specification of strategies and actions—action planning—to the managers responsible for producing the outputs and outcomes.

4. Prior strategic planning efforts can provide many of the premises

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needed to try to influence budgeting in strategic directions. In addition, the short-term, incremental nature of budgeting actually can be a source of opportunity, rather than constraint, for the strategically minded public and nonprofit leader and manager (Barzelay & Campbell, 2003; Willoughby, 2014). The system is a natural setting for organizing a series of small wins informed by a strategic sense of direction—especially when some of that direction can come from prior planning efforts.

5. Pick your budget fights carefully. Given the number of players that budgeting attracts, particularly in the public sector, you cannot win every battle. Focus your attention on those budget allocation decisions that are crucial to moving desired strategies forward. Use the master calendar and preexisting decision premises to anticipate when and how potential budgetary fights are likely to arise. Lynn (1987, pp. 208–209) argues that there are three basic approaches to budgetary allocations. Each has a different effect on the way issues are raised:

Each budget issue can be treated separately. This typically means that issues are framed and forwarded by subunits. Therefore, cross-issue or cross-unit comparisons are avoided, and it may be possible to hide particular choices from broad scrutiny. If resolution of the individual issues leads to exceeding the total resources available, across-the-board cuts or selective comparisons on the margin are possible.

Particular issues can be selected in advance for detailed consideration during budget preparations. The strategic planning process would be a likely source of candidate strategic issues for careful review. The typical incremental nature of budgeting might be influenced by the general sense of direction that emerges from addressing these issues.

Budgetary issues can be examined in the light of a comprehensive analytical framework, benchmarks or performance measures, or strategy. Here the attempt is to influence budgetary allocations based on a larger strategic vision. This approach is most likely to work when the strategic

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planning process can be driven by broadly shared goals, a vision of success, comprehensive scorecard or set of performance indicators, or another boundary-spanning, integrative device and when there is strong leadership in place to follow through with the more detailed vision of success or scorecard that is likely to result (Osborne & Hutchinson, 2004).

6. Consider implementing entrepreneurial budgeting concepts to advance strategic purposes. A number of governments around the world are experimenting with reforms meant to facilitate implementation of intended strategies, help new strategies emerge via innovation, enhance managerial autonomy along with accountability for results, and promote an entrepreneurial culture (Osborne & Hutchinson, 2004; Scott & Boyd, 2017; Willoughby, 2014). The approach can involve creating flexible performance frameworks that split policy making from implementation and then use written agreements to spell out the implementing organization's or department's purposes, expected results, performance consequences, and management flexibilities (Osborne & Plastrik, 2000, pp. 124–148).

Governments using these approaches begin by establishing broad strategic goals and then set overall expenditure limits, along with broad allocations for specific functions, such as health, public safety, or roads. Then operating departments are given substantially increased discretion over the use of funds in order to achieve their portion of the strategic goals though they need to stay within legal and prudential bounds. This move significantly decentralizes decision making.

In a further shift from traditional practice, departments may be allowed to keep a significant fraction of the funds left at the end of the fiscal year without having their budget base cut. Cost savings and wise management can be rewarded, and the phenomenon of foolish buying sprees at the end of the year, spurred by use-it-or- lose-it policies, is avoided. In a further move to enhance cost savings and wise management, some governments add to employees' paychecks a fraction of any savings they produce.

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The final feature of entrepreneurial budgeting is an emphasis on accountability for results. In return for increased discretion, higher-level decision makers want greater evidence of program achievement and efficiency gains. An almost contractual agreement is negotiated between policy makers or the central budget office and the operating departments in which each department lists and ranks its objectives, specifies indicators for measuring the achievement of those objectives, and quantifies the indicators as much as possible. If objectives are not achieved, serious questioning of managers by policy makers can ensue.

Entrepreneurial budgeting thus involves a blend of centralization and decentralization. Control over broad-scale goal setting and monitoring for results is retained by policy makers, and managerial discretion over how to achieve the goals is decentralized to operating managers. Authority is delegated without being relinquished; policy makers and managers are each therefore better able—and empowered—to do their jobs more effectively (Carver, 2006). In effect, as Cothran (1993, p. 453) observes, “entrepreneurial budgeting, and decentralized management in general, can lead to an expansion of power, rather than a redistribution of power.” The changes that entrepreneurial budgeting are intended to induce are so profound that a shift in organizational culture is likely to result. Indeed, a major reason for moving to entrepreneurial budgeting is to create a culture of entrepreneurship, particularly in government. This change in culture itself needs to be thought about in a strategic fashion.

One must be very cautious, however, about pursuing approaches such as these. Careful studies in the United Kingdom and the United States find that they are very difficult to implement in practice and results are decidedly mixed. This should not be surprising, given that the approaches conflict with traditional notions of accountability and frequent demands by politicians to get into the details (Hood & Dixon, 2015; Moynihan, 2008). Nonetheless, at least when cross-agency collaboration is required, setting clear targets and regular reporting requirements, along with allowing flexibility in how agencies go about collaborating, can

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produce very positive results (Scott & Boyd, 2017).

7. Make sure you have good analysts and wily and seasoned veterans of budgetary politics on your side. Budgeting is a complicated game, and having a good team and good coaches can help. There is really no substitute for having a savvy insider who can both prepare and critique budgets effectively. But just as it is important to have good analysts and advisers, it is also important not to become their captive. The wise leader or manager will make sure that a sense of the organization's desired strategy informs the analysts' and advisors' work.

8. Develop criteria for evaluating the budgets for all programs— preexisting and new—and then to the extent possible, make budgetary allocations on the margin away from lower-priority existing programs (the stop agenda) toward higher-priority new initiatives. This is one way of coping with the enormous difficulty in tight budgetary times of getting adequate funds for new programs approved without first sacrificing worthy existing programs—and then running the risk of losing both.

9. Finally, involve the same people in both strategy formulation and implementation if you can. Doing so can help bridge the action– control gap. There are two approaches to doing this—one centralized, the other decentralized (Mintzberg, 1994, pp. 286– 287). On the one hand, in the centralized approach, which is most closely associated with strong entrepreneurial or visionary leaders of small organizations, the formulator does the implementing. By staying in close contact with the intimate details of implementation, the formulator can continuously evaluate and readjust strategies during implementation. The decentralized approach, on the other hand, is more suitable for highly complex situations in which many more people are involved and where “strategic thinking cannot be concentrated at one center” (pp. 286–287). In this case, the implementers must become important formulators, as when street-level bureaucrats determine a public service agency's strategy in practice (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003). At the extreme, this becomes what Mintzberg (1994, pp. 287–290) refers to as a “grass-roots model of strategy formation.”

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In both the centralized and decentralized versions, clear guidance from a shared mission, vision, and principles is very helpful.

PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES Successful implementation of strategies and plans will depend primarily on the design and use of various implementation structures that coordinate and manage implementation activities, along with the continuation or creation of a coalition of committed implementers, advocates, and supportive interest groups (Hill & Hupe, 2014; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). These structures are likely to consist of a variety of formal and informal settings and mechanisms to promote implementation-centered deliberation, decision making, problem solving, and conflict management. New attitudes and patterns of behavior must be stabilized and adjusted to new circumstances, particularly through the institutionalization of shared expectations among key actors around a set of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures; positive and negative sanctions and incentives; and the continuation or creation of a supportive coalition.

The following leadership guidelines should be kept in mind as the adopted strategies or plans move to implementation. After the general guidelines, additional guidelines are offered for managing communication and education, personnel, and direct and staged implementation.

General Guidelines 1. Consciously and deliberately plan and manage implementation in

a strategic way. The change implementers may be very different from the members of the advocacy coalition that adopted the changes. This is often the case when changes are imposed on implementers by legislative or other decision-making bodies. Implementers thus may have little interest in making the process flow smoothly and effectively. Even if they are interested in incorporating adopted changes within their respective systems, any number of things can go wrong. Implementation, therefore, is

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hardly ever automatic. As former president Harry Truman famously said, “You give an order around here, and if you can figure out what happens to it after that, you're a better man than I am.” Alternatively, consider famous historian Arnold Toynbee's observation that “Some historians think that history is one damn thing after another.”

Implementation, therefore, must be explicitly considered prior to the implementation step as a way of minimizing later difficulties, and it must be explicitly considered and planned for during the implementation step itself. Change implementers, particularly if they are different from the change formulators, may wish to view the changes as a mandate (Step 2) and go through the process outlined in Chapters 2 and 4 to figure out how best to respond to them. This process should include efforts to understand and accommodate the history and inclinations of key individuals and organizations. After all, as William Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” Accommodating history also means fitting efforts into preexisting policy fields of stakeholders and authority and budget flows (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015).

Initiatives, programs, and projects must be organized carefully in order to effectively implement desired strategies. Performance indicators that operationalize key change goals must be developed. Budgets will also need to be given careful attention. If implementation will occur in a collaborative setting, a great deal of time and effort will be necessary to plan and manage it in a strategic way (Agranoff, 2012; Clarke & Fuller, 2010).

In all three of the cases featured in this book, the sponsors, champions, and planning groups thought quite strategically about implementation during the strategy and plan formulation and adoption steps. In each case, key implementers were engaged in various ways throughout the process. Each planning group was willing to deal with resistance in pursuit of desirable ends, but also thought carefully about how to anticipate and accommodate stakeholder concerns in a constructive way, so as not to needlessly undermine the change effort.

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2. Develop implementation strategy documents—including key indicators—and action plans to guide implementation and focus attention on necessary decisions, actions, and responsible parties. Recall that strategies will vary by level. Below the constitutive level, where the rules for making rules are decided, the four basic levels are the organization's or network's grand or umbrella strategy; strategy statements for constituent units; the program, service, product, project, or business process strategies designed to coordinate relevant units and activities; and the functional strategies, such as finance, human resources, information technology, communications, facilities, and procurement strategies, also designed to coordinate units and activities necessary to implement desired changes. It may not have been possible to work out all of these statements in advance. If not, the implementation step is the time to finish the task in as much detail as is necessary to focus and channel action without also stifling useful learning. Recall also that strategies may be long-term or short-term. Strategies provide a framework for tactics—the short- term adaptive actions and reactions used to accomplish fairly limited objectives. (Do remember, of course, that tactics can embody emergent strategies as well as implement intended strategies, making it difficult at times to know what the difference is between strategies and tactics.)

Action plans are statements about how to implement strategies in the short term (Howlett, Mukerjee, & Raynor, 2015; Project Management Institute, 2013). Typically, action plans cover periods of a year or less. They outline:

Specific expected results, objectives, and milestones

Roles and responsibilities of implementation bodies, teams, and individuals

Specific action steps

Schedules

Resource and support requirements and sources

A communication process, including who, how, and for what

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purpose

A review and monitoring process

Accountability processes and procedures

Without action planning, intended strategies are likely to remain dreams, not reality. The intentions will be overwhelmed by already implemented and emergent strategies.

3. Try for changes that can be introduced easily and rapidly. Implementers may have little room for maneuvering when it comes to the basic design of and requirements for the proposed changes and the accompanying implementation process. Nonetheless, they should take advantage of whatever discretion they have to improve the ease and rapidity with which changes are put into practice while still maintaining the basic character of the changes. Implementation will flow more smoothly and speedily if the changes (Heath & Heath, 2010; Rogers, 2003; Tilly, 2006):

Are conceptually clear

Are based on a well-understood theory of cause–effect relations

Fit with the values of all key implementers and tap their emotional commitments to those values

Can be demonstrated and made “real” to the bulk of the implementers prior to implementation (in other words, people have a chance to see what they are supposed to do before they have to do it)

Are relatively simple to grasp in practice because the changes are not only conceptually clear but also operationally clear

Are administratively simple, entailing minimal bureaucracy and red tape, minimal reorganization of resource allocation patterns, and minimal retraining of staff

Allow a startup period in which people can learn about the adopted changes and engage in any necessary retraining, debugging, and development of new norms and operating routines

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Include adequate attention to payoffs and rewards necessary to gain wholehearted acceptance of implementers (in other words, incentives clearly favor implementation by relevant organizations and individuals)

Can be summarized in a compelling story

Of course, some changes will not be implemented very smoothly and will take considerable time. For example, the City of Minneapolis's efforts to develop a more fully integrated strategic management system has been a work in progress for years. MEDA's efforts to substantially change the ecology of support for minority-owned businesses will take several years. And INTOSAI's aim of building the capacities of its member SAIs to help their governments implement the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals also will take years to fully achieve.

4. Use a program and project management approach wherever possible. Chunking the changes by breaking them down into clusters or programs of specific projects is typically an important means of implementing strategic changes. It also makes it easier to tie resources to those specific programs or projects and, therefore, gain budget approval for the efforts. Use standard program and project management techniques to make sure the chunks actually add up to useful progress (Project Management Institute, 2013).

5. Build in enough people, time, attention, money, administrative and support services, and other resources to ensure successful implementation. If possible, build in considerable redundancy in places important to implementation so that if something goes wrong—which it no doubt will—there is adequate backup capacity. Almost any difficulty can be handled with enough resources— though these days, budgets typically are exceedingly tight unless money can be freed from other uses (back to the stop agenda). Think about why cars have seatbelts, airbags, and spare tires, jetliners have copilots, and bridges are built to handle many times more weight than they are expected to carry: It is to ensure there is enough built-in capacity to handle almost any unexpected contingency.

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Tight resources are an additional reason to pay attention to the earlier steps in the Strategy Change Cycle. In order to garner sufficient resources, the strategic issue(s) must be sufficiently important, the adopted strategies must be likely to produce desirable results at reasonable cost, and the supportive coalition should be strong and stable. If these elements are present, the chances of finding or developing the necessary resources for implementation are considerably enhanced. Nonetheless, those who must supply the resources may resist, and considerable effort may be needed to overcome that resistance. In almost every case, careful attention will need to be paid to budgeting cycles, processes, and strategies.

Implementation plans should include resources for:

Key personnel

Fixers—people who know how things work and how to “fix” things when they go wrong (Bardach, 1977)

Additional necessary staff

Conversion costs

Orientation and training costs

Technical assistance

Inside and outside consultants

Adequate incentives to facilitate adoption of the changes by relevant organizations and individuals

Necessary expansions and upgrades of information and communication technologies

Support of learning forums to understand what is working and what is not and how things might be improved

Formative evaluations to facilitate implementation of a fairly well-developed model; summative evaluations to determine whether the changes expected from the model were produced; and developmental evaluations when strategic initiatives are meant to create a model (Patton, 2011)

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Unforeseen contingencies

6. Link new strategic initiatives with ongoing operations. Establishing new initiatives, units, programs, projects, products, or services with their own organizational structures and funding streams is a typical strategy in the public sector. That way, overt conflicts with ongoing operations can often be minimized. But in an era of resource constraints, new initiatives often must compete directly with, and be merged with, ongoing programs, projects, products, services, and operations. Unfortunately, the implications of a strategic plan for an organization's ongoing operations may be very unclear, particularly in the public sector where policy-making bodies may impose rather vague (or even conflicting) mandates on operating agencies (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). Somehow new (and often unclear) initiatives must be blended with ongoing operations in such a way that internal support is generated from those persons charged with maintaining the organization's ongoing activities. However, the people working in existing operations are likely to feel overworked and undervalued already, and they will want to know how the changes will help or hurt them. Typically, they must be involved directly in the process of fitting desired strategic changes into the operational details of the organization, both to garner useful information and support and to avoid sabotage (Kelman, 2005).

One effective way to manage the process of blending new and old activities is to involve key decision makers, implementers, and perhaps representatives of external stakeholder groups in evaluating both sets of activities using a common set of criteria. At least some of these criteria are likely to have been developed earlier as part of the strategic planning process; they may include key performance indicators, client and organizational impacts, stakeholder expectations, and resource use. Once new and old activities have been evaluated, it may be possible to figure out how to fit the new with the old, what part of the new can be ignored, and what part of the old can be dropped. Again, recall that realized strategy will consist of some combination of the strategic plan, ongoing initiatives, and unexpected occurrences along the way.

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Worksheets that may help with this process will be found in Bryson and Alston (2011) and Bryson, Anderson, and Alston (2011). Process Guideline 13 in Chapter 7 provides additional guidance on how to align new strategies with existing ones.

7. Work quickly to avoid unnecessary or undesirable competition with new priorities. Those who remember the recessions of the early 1980s, early 1990s, and early and late 2000s know that there always can be damaging downturns. In addition, tax revolts, tax indexing, tax cuts, and large state and federal deficits have greatly constricted public funds for new initiatives. For these and other reasons, it is wise to build in excess implementation resources to provide slack. A poverty budget can turn out to be a death warrant. Cheapness should not be a selling point. Instead, program designers and supporters should sell cost-effectiveness—that is, the idea that the program delivers great benefits in relation to its costs.

A change in the policy board or administration also is likely to bring a change in priorities (Kingdon, 2010; Schein, 2016). New leaders have their own conception of which issues should be addressed and how. For example, the new Minneapolis mayor and city council decided to make attention to equity and greater citizen engagement an important part of their 2014 strategic plan for the city. The board of MEDA was clear when they hired Gary Cunningham as their new executive director that they wanted him to take MEDA to “the next level”—though they were not very clear about what that meant. The decision by the United Nations to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals prompted the board of INTOSAI to organize their 2016–2020 strategic plan around increasing their member nations' capacity to achieve the goals.

Further, the anticipation of a new administration often paralyzes any change effort. People want to see what will happen before risking their careers by pushing changes that may not be desired by new leaders. Thus, once again, leaders and managers must move quickly to implement new strategies and plans before actual or impending change in the economy or the authorizing environment.

8. Focus on maintaining or developing a coalition of implementers,

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advocates, and interest groups intent on effective implementation of the changes and willing to protect them over the long haul. One of the clear lessons from the past three decades of implementation research is that successful implementation of programs in shared- power situations depends upon developing and maintaining such a coalition (Hill & Hupe, 2014; Sabatier & Weible, 2014; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). Coalitions are organized around ideas, interests, payoffs, and relationships, so leaders and managers must pay attention to aligning these elements in such a way that strong coalitions are created and maintained. Strong coalitions will result if those involved see that their interests are served by the new arrangement. The literature on organizational change in general assumes there will be substantial resistance to any changes. As a result, three general prescriptions are offered for helping align people's sense of their interests with the changes being advocated. First, persuasion and discussion may help. Second, continuous pressure from leaders may be necessary. And third, a sense of crisis or urgency may prompt change if people see not changing as more threatening than changing (Fernandez & Rainey, 2006; Kotter, 2012; Rochet, Keramidas, & Bout, 2008).

But Kelman (2005) points out that there may be many people who are not resisting but are instead discontent with the status quo and would welcome changes that make their lives easier, engage them more effectively, and advance the common good. Here, the prescription is simply to activate the discontented and work to build momentum by promoting successful experience with the changes and the spreading and strengthening of prochange attitudes and behaviors. Kelman's careful study of procurement reform in the Clinton administration makes a strong case for this hopeful view of what he calls “unleashing change.”

9. Be sure that legislative, executive, and administrative policies and actions facilitate rather than impede implementation. It is important to maintain a liaison with decision makers in arenas such as state legislatures, governors' offices, city councils, and key administrators' offices if their decisions can affect the implementation effort. Leaders and managers must also pay

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attention to implementers' development and use of supplemental policies, regulations, rules, ordinances, articles, guidelines, and so on that are required for implementation to proceed. Efforts should be made to create green tape—rules that facilitate effective implementation—as opposed to the sort of red tape that gets in the way (DeHart-Davis, 2017).

Operational details must be worked out, and many of these ancillary materials will need to pass through specific processes before they have the force of law. For example, before implementing regulations can become official at the federal level, they must be developed following the procedures outlined in the Administrative Procedures Act (Cooper, 2015; Rosenbloom, 2015). States have their own administrative procedures and localities, and nonprofit organizations may have analogous routines. Change advocates should seek expert advice on how these processes work and attend to the ways in which supplemental policies are developed. Otherwise, the promise of the previous steps may be lost in practice.

10. Think carefully about how residual disputes will be resolved and underlying norms enforced. This may mean establishing special procedures for settling disputes that arise. It may also mean relying on the courts. It is preferable to rely on alternative dispute resolution methods, if possible, to keep conflicts out of formal courts and to encourage all-gain solutions that increase the legitimacy and acceptance of the policy, strategy, or plan and the outcomes of conflict management efforts (Fisher & Ury, 2011; Thompson, 2014). It is also important to remember that the court of public opinion is likely to be important in reinforcing the norms supporting the new changes.

11. Remember that major changes, and even many minor ones, entail changes in the organization's culture. Changes in strategy almost inevitably prompt changes in basic assumptions about how to respond to changes in the internal and external environments. Leaders, managers, and planners should facilitate necessary changes in cultural symbols and artifacts, espoused values, and underlying assumptions, recognizing that it is far easier to change

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the first two than it is to change the third. Indeed, heavy-handed attempts to change underlying assumptions are more likely to promote resistance and rejection than acceptance (Hill & Lynn, 2009; Schein, 2016).

12. Emphasize learning. The world does not stop for planning. Nor does it stop once the planning is done. Situations change; therefore, those interested in change must constantly learn and adapt if their organizations (initiatives, programs, collaborations, communities) are to remain vital and useful to their key stakeholders. Moynihan (2005) provides guidance and examples of how learning forums might be designed and used on a regular basis to foster learning—in other words, how their use might become a habit and part of the culture. Formative and developmental evaluations can also facilitate necessary learning (Patton, 2008, 2011). Said differently, strategies are hardly ever implemented as intended. Adaptive learning is necessary to tailor intended strategies to emergent situations so that appropriate modifications are made and desirable outcomes are produced.

13. Think carefully about how information and communication technologies and social media can help support implementation and ongoing learning efforts. Implementation websites, blogs, wikis, tweets, e-mail, podcasts, electronic tutorials, and other ICT and social media applications all may facilitate implementation efforts both by transferring information and building and sustaining coalitions. Implementers should carefully think through how best to make use of the potential inherent in ICT and social media.

14. Create an accountability system that assures key stakeholders that political, legal, and performance-based accountability needs are met. Efforts to build strong relationships with key stakeholders will help, as will legal advice. So too is a good performance measurement and management system that includes vertical integration of goals, strong strategic guidance for implementation efforts, a balance between top-down direction and bottom-up efforts and learning, use of performance information in decision making, and strong leadership and commitment such that good

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results are maintained and better ones produced (Moynihan & Ingraham, 2003; Page, Stone, Bryson, & Crosby, 2015). Of course, accountability may not always be clear-cut—for example, when a collaborative works with other collaboratives. Additionally, collaborating organizations may have their own accountability frameworks that conflict with the collaboration's accountability approach. Nonetheless, efforts to demonstrate accountability for results, the wise stewardship of resources, the satisfaction of key stakeholders, and ongoing learning and improvement are typically always in order.

15. Hang in there! Successful implementation in complex, multiorganizational, shared-power settings typically requires large amounts of time, attention, resources, and effort (Hill & Hupe, 2014; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). Fortunately, as long as on- balance positive benefits are being produced, change momentum may build simply as time goes by, supportive norms are developed, prochange attitudes are produced, and the winning coalition is created (Kelman, 2005). Implementers still may need considerable courage to fight resisters. The rewards, however, can be great— namely, effective actions addressing important strategic issues that deeply affect the organization (program, collaboration, or community) and its stakeholders. The result can be the creation of substantial and sustained public value.

Communication and Education Guidelines 1. Invest in communication activities. This means attention to the

design and use of communication networks and the messages and messengers that comprise them. Particularly when large changes are involved, people must be given opportunities to develop shared meanings and appreciations that will further the implementation of change goals. These meanings will both guide and flow out of implementation activities. People must hear about the proposed changes, preferably in the same messages across multiple channels many times, to increase the chances that the messages will sink in. As winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature André Gide said, “Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have

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to keep going back and begin all over again.” Further, people must be able to talk about the changes in order to understand them, fit them into their own interpretive schemes, adapt them to their own circumstances, and explore implications for action and the consequences of those actions. Websites, social media, educational programs, information packets, and guidebooks can help establish a desirable frame of reference and common language for addressing implementation issues (Garnett, 2015; Mergel, 2012, 2015; Nabatchi & Leighninger, 2015).

2. Work to reduce resistance based on divergent attitudes and lack of participation. Actions likely to reduce resistance on the part of implementers include providing them with orientation sessions, training materials and sessions, problem-solving teams, one-on- one interactions, and technical assistance. Ceremonies and symbolic rewards to reinforce desired behaviors are also helpful. Recognize as well that unleashing those who do not like the status quo can help turn the tide (Burke, 2013).

3. Consider developing a guiding vision of success if one has not been developed already. Developing a vision of success is an exercise in symbolic and rhetorical leadership (Bolman & Deal, 2013). Chapter 8 discusses visions of success and offers guidance on how to develop one.

4. Build in regular attention to appropriate indicators. This will ensure attention to progress—or lack thereof—against the issues that prompted the strategic planning effort. The City of Minneapolis already has a number of key indicators it pays attention to and is developing more. MEDA has developed measures tied to each of its strategic goals. INTOSAI has made substantial progress in developing indicators. Many public and nonprofit organizations are creating scorecards or dashboards to help them pay attention to key performance indicators (Poister et al., 2015).

Personnel Guidelines 1. As much as possible, fill leadership and staff positions with highly

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qualified people committed to the change effort. As noted, changes do not implement themselves—people make them happen. This is particularly true for major changes. When minor changes are required, systems and structures often can be substitutes for leadership. But when significant changes are involved, there are no substitutes for leadership of many kinds. People—intelligent, creative, skilled, experienced, committed people—are necessary to create the new order, culture, systems, and structures that will focus and channel efforts toward effective implementation. In order to attract and retain such people, at least three things are necessary:

The jobs must be designed in such a way that the work is intrinsically motivating, which typically means jobs that are challenging and meaningful and that provide a sense of accomplishment. Alternative work schedules can also help (Perry, Mesch, & Paarlberg, 2006; Vendenabeele and Van Loon, 2015).

People must be adequately compensated for their work. Fortunately, compensation does not always have to mean money. Psychic income—the rewards that come from doing good and being part of a new and important adventure—can count as well. Such income is traditionally extremely important in parts of the nonprofit world, and the fact that people are often willing to commit themselves to altruistic pursuits, even when it might disadvantage them personally, is one of its distinguishing features (Wright, Christensen, & Isett, 2013).

People must see how their careers can be advanced by involvement in implementation. The most intelligent and able people are likely to take a long view of their careers and will avoid what may be dead-end jobs. Instead, they are likely to choose jobs that can improve their skills, responsibilities, and long-term prospects (Raelin, 2003, 2010).

People want to have viable escape routes if things go bad or if they want to leave on their own. Many mechanisms can achieve this end—for example, an option of returning to prior jobs,

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outplacement services, or generous severance packages.

2. Give the planning team the task of planning and managing implementation, or establish a new implementation team that has a significant overlap in membership with the planning team. As indicated, successful implementation typically requires careful planning and management. In complex change situations, a team is likely to be necessary to help with this effort. Including some planning team members on implementation teams ensures that important learning from earlier steps is not lost during implementation. The planners (broadly conceived) and implementers overlapped in important ways in the City of Minneapolis, MEDA, and INTOSAI cases.

3. Ensure access to, and liaison with, top administrators during implementation. This task is easy when the change advocates themselves are or become the top administrators. But even if this is not the case, the implementation team may find that administrators are interested in maintaining regular contact with them.

4. Give special attention to the problem of easing out, working around, or avoiding people who are not likely to help the change effort for whatever reason. A standard practice in the public sector, of course, has been to start a new agency or unit rather than give implementation responsibilities to an existing agency or unit whose mission, culture, personnel, and history are antagonistic to the intent of the changes. As management theorist Frederick Herzberg has said, “It is easier to give birth than to resurrect.” Even if a new organization is started, however, leaders and managers may still be stuck with personnel who might be detrimental to achievement of the policy goals.

There are several options for dealing with people who will not help the change effort. First, help them get jobs to which they are more suited. This may take considerable time initially—for establishing people's skills, ascertaining their goals, and writing favorable letters of recommendation—but the resulting increase in the remaining staff's morale and productivity is likely to be worth the

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effort. Second, have a policy of awarding merit pay only to people who actively implement policy goals. Third, place them in jobs where they cannot damage the change effort. Fourth, buy them off with early retirement or severance packages. And finally, if all else fails, work around them or ignore them.

Direct Versus Staged Implementation Guidelines There are two basic approaches to implementation—direct and staged. Direct implementation incorporates changes into all relevant sites essentially simultaneously, whereas staged implementation incorporates changes sequentially (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Patton, 2011; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015).

1. Consider direct implementation when the situation is technically and politically simple, immediate action is necessary for system survival in a crisis, or the adopted solutions entail some lumpiness that precludes staged implementation. When situations are simple, direct implementation can work if enough resources are built in to cover costs and provide sufficient incentives and if resistance to change is low. Leaders and managers must still try to reduce any resistance to change based on divergent attitudes and lack of earlier participation, while also unleashing those already supportive of desired changes.

A crisis can simplify a situation politically in that people become more willing to defer to top positional leaders and accept centralized decision making (Hunt, Boal, & Dodge, 1999; Rochet et al., 2008). Thus, a crisis often makes direct implementation feasible. However, strategies adopted to address crises must still be technically feasible, or at least practical enough so that difficulties can be worked out without weakening people's support for change. Unfortunately, few organizations have effective crisis management policies and systems in place (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015).

Finally, “lumpy” solutions may demand direct implementation. For example, new buildings, information technology systems, and products or services often must be created all at once rather than piecemeal.

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2. In difficult situations, consider staged implementation. Staged implementation presumes that implementation will occur in stages or waves.

There are two kinds: one for when models already exist and the other for when models must be invented along the way.

If models already exist, there will be the initial adopters who will be followed by later adopters, and finally, even most of the laggards will adopt the changes. The result is the familiar S-shaped curve associated with the adoption of most innovations over time. Early on, there are few adopters, so the area under the curve is small. As time progresses and more and more adoptions occur, the area under the curve increases geometrically and it begins to assume an S shape. Later, fewer and fewer adoptions occur, partly because there are fewer people, units, or organizations left to adopt the changes and partly because of deep-seated resistance on the part of the laggards. The curve levels off as the top of the S is completed (Gladwell, 2002; Rogers, 2003).

The exact nature of the staged process will depend on the difficulties faced. Sometimes various adaptive management efforts aimed at innovation, rapid prototyping, and ongoing learning are necessary in order to develop a model that can be implemented (Scharmer, 2016). This approach will be needed when facing adaptive challenges in a complex, shared-power system involving many feedback effects, many organizations, unclear goals, and unproven technologies. Prototyping involves producing various ideas, sketches, models, or other early versions of what might be implemented. When there is no preexisting model, developmental, principles-focused evaluations are crucial to developing the model (Patton, 2011).

When facing technical difficulties after a prototype has been developed, consider beginning with a pilot project designed to discover or prove cause–effect relations between particular solutions and particular effects. The more technically difficult the situation is, the more necessary it is to have a pilot project to figure out what interventions do and do not work. Once the technical

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difficulties are resolved, transfer of the implementation process to the remaining potential implementers can be pursued. For example, in the United States, pilot tests of new agricultural products and services occur regularly at experiment stations that involve universities, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and often businesses in cooperative partnerships.

When facing political difficulties after a prototype has been developed, consider beginning staged implementation with demonstration projects to make it clear that solutions known to work in benign and controlled conditions can work in typical implementation settings. Once the applicability of the changes is demonstrated, transfer to remaining implementers can be pursued.

Demonstration projects are most likely to work when existing or potential opposition is not well-organized; changes can then be put in place before effective opposition can materialize. When there is organized opposition to the proposed changes, demonstration projects may work as a way of convincing at least some opponents of the merits of the changes and thereby dividing the opposition. But when there is a well-organized and implacable opposition, direct and massive implementation efforts may be warranted to expand the front and overwhelm opponents rather than giving them a limited number of smaller targets to oppose. For example, in World War II, the D-Day invasion of Normandy was postponed for two years in order to gather the overwhelming force and material needed make a successful assault—and even then victory was not guaranteed (Brewer, 2009). Although trying to overwhelm opponents—the so-called shock-and-awe approach—may be the best choice, the chances of success in such situations still may not be great (Bryson & Bromiley, 1993).

When facing both technical and political difficulties, consider beginning with prototyping, if needed, then a pilot project, followed by demonstration projects, followed by additional efforts to transfer the changes to the rest of the pool of implementers. In general, the more difficult the situation, the more important it is to promote education and learning, offer incentives for desired changes, and develop a shared sense of commitment to successful

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implementation and long-term protection of the changes among all interested parties.

3. Design pilot projects to be effective. Consider doing the following:

Test the scientific validity of the proposed changes, probably using experimental or quasi-experimental designs. In other words, test whether the proposed changes actually produce the desired effects (Newcomer, Hatry, & Wholey, 2015; Rossi, Lipsey, & Freeman, 2003).

Perform the test in a safe and controlled environment with access to a rich set of resources. Finding such a benign setting, of course, can be difficult. The ideal test for causation matches a control group against an experimental group that differs from the control group only in that it will experience the policy change, or treatment, being tested. Only with such controlled trials can plausible rival hypotheses be ruled out.

Test several possible changes and search for their different strengths and weaknesses.

Use skilled technical specialists to evaluate cause–effect relations. If the specialists' credibility is a concern, consider using outside experts or an inside-outside team whose objectivity will not be questioned.

Design tests that are concerned with the effectiveness of the changes, not their efficiency. In other words, tests should measure whether the changes produce the desired effects, not whether they do so cheaply. Attention should be on both outputs and outcomes (as defined earlier in this chapter).

4. Design demonstration projects to be effective by employing the following procedures:

Test for the applicability of the proposed changes to typical implementer settings, probably through the use of quasi- experimental designs. True experiments are rarely possible in the field, but it is still important to have some sort of control group, if possible, to determine what works under what circumstances and why.

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Test in easy, average, and difficult implementation settings to gauge the robustness of the changes and the possibilities for handling a range of implementation difficulties.

Test several possible changes to determine their comparative strengths and weaknesses.

Use a two-cycle process, in which implementers learn how to work with the changes in the first cycle and the effects of the changes are monitored in the second cycle.

Include a qualitative evaluation (Patton, 2014), along with quantitative studies, to show different solution strengths and weaknesses. Pay attention to outcomes as well as outputs.

Remember that what is being tested in the demonstration stage is a process that is already known to work in a technical sense— that is, it can produce the desired effects.

Assemble a special monitoring team, if necessary, to carry out the monitoring task.

Provide opportunities for future implementers to witness the demonstrations.

Develop a media strategy to communicate the desirability of the changes and the best way they might be implemented.

5. Carefully transfer tested changes to other implementers. Follow these steps:

Commit substantial resources to communication tactics, including cycling in observers likely to influence subsequent implementer adoptions and to facilitate word-of-mouth information exchanges.

Promote the visibility of the demonstration projects.

Produce, emphasize, and disseminate educational materials and operational guides designed to make adoption and implementation easier.

Develop credible and easily understood models that show clearly how the desired changes work and how they can be

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implemented.

Provide additional resources for technical assistance and problem solving.

Provide incentives for adopting the changes.

Be flexible.

6. Finally, when the implementation process is staged, give special attention to those who will implement changes in the early stages. In the early stages, when the practical nature of the changes still needs to be worked out, it is important to attract people with enough experience, skill, and desire to make the changes work. People who are likely to do so will have firsthand experience with the issue and the need for an adequate response; above-average ability; and experience with prior major change efforts. Further, later adopters will be watching to see whether they wish to embrace the changes or resist them. Therefore, early implementers should be valued and persuasive role models—connectors, to use Malcolm Gladwell's term (2002)—who can draw others into the change effort. They are more likely to be effective salespeople for change if they do not mindlessly charge after every new whim and fad that comes over the horizon. Instead, they should be seen as courageous, wise, able, and committed to addressing the issue in a reasonable way. Further, they should be able to describe their experience to effectively educate the next wave of adopters.

SUMMARY Desired changes are not completed with the formal adoption of strategies and plans. Without effective implementation, important issues will not be adequately addressed and lasting tangible public value will not be created. Implementation, therefore, should be viewed as a continuation of the Strategy Change Cycle toward the ultimate goal of addressing the issues that prompted change in the first place in such a way that real public value is produced.

Implementation must be consciously, deliberately, and strategically planned, managed, and budgeted. Further, if major changes are ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

involved, successful implementation typically involves creation of a new regime to govern decisions and behavior. Elements of the new regime will include new or redesigned settings; implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures; supportive budgets, including both substantive and symbolic incentives promoting the new arrangements; institutionalization of altered patterns of behavior and attitudes; and a supportive coalition of implementers, advocates, and interest groups. The new regime may incorporate a widely shared vision of success.

Successful implementation introduces desired changes quickly and smoothly and overcomes the typical causes of implementation failure. These strategies may involve either direct or staged implementation. Direct implementation works best when the time is right, the need is evident to a strong coalition of supporters and implementers, critical issues and adopted strategies are clearly connected, solution technology is clearly understood, adequate resources are available, and a clear vision guides the changes. (These are also the conditions that favor big-win strategies.) Staged implementation is advisable when there is no preexisting model to be implemented and policy makers, leaders, and managers are faced with technical or political difficulties.

In situations where no preexisting models exist, implementation can involve developing and testing prototypes or approaches that might be implementable. Once such models are developed, pilot projects may be necessary to determine or to prove the cause–effect relations between particular solutions and desired effects, or demonstration projects, to show the applicability of adopted solutions to typical implementer settings and to diffuse knowledge to later waves of adopters. Staged implementation involves organizing a series of small (or relatively small) wins.

Learning is a major theme underlying successful implementation efforts. It is not possible or desirable to plan everything in advance. People must be given the opportunity to learn new procedures and adapt them to actual situations (Patton, 2008, 2011; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). More effective implementation is likely to result, and the next round of strategizing is likely to be better informed. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

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CHAPTER TEN Reassessing and Revising Strategies and Plans

What's past is prologue. —William Shakespeare

The Strategy Change Cycle is not over once strategies and plans have been implemented. Ongoing strategic management of strategy implementation must ensue to take account of likely changes in circumstances—in part to ensure that strategies continue to create public value and in part as a prelude to the next round of strategic planning (see Exhibit 1.1). Times change, situations change, and coalitions change.

Strategies that work must be maintained and protected through vigilance, adaptability, and updated plans. Stability matters and is an important determinant of organizational success (Meier & O'Toole, 2009), particularly when networks are needed for successful strategy implementation. For example, Popp Milward, MacKean, Casebeer, & Lindstrom, R. (2015) found that networks that are more stable are more likely to perform better than those that are always changing. Thus, ironically, if you want things to change, you should also want many other things to remain the same. But not all strategies continue to work as well as they should. These strategies must be bolstered with additional resources, significantly modified or succeeded by a new strategy, or else terminated. In each case, “What's past is prologue.” In addition, ongoing strategic management these days also often means building and maintaining an organization-wide strategic management system.

Strategies cease to work for four main reasons. First, a basic strategy may be good but have insufficient resources devoted to its implementation, and, therefore, insufficient progress is made toward resolving the issue. The City of Minneapolis, the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA), and the International ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) have all had to worry about making sure their strategies were sufficiently well resourced to succeed. Second, problems change, typically prompting a need for new strategies, on the one hand, and making what was once a solution itself a problem, on the other hand. MEDA concluded it had to change the whole ecology of support for minority entrepreneurship if it was to “go to the next level” as its board demanded. INTOSAI decided it needed to focus on building capacity for the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals. Third, as substantive problem areas become crowded with various policies and strategies, their interactions can produce results that no one wants and many wish to change. Indeed, the need to sort out the various inconsistencies, misalignments, and unintended consequences of crowded policy and strategy areas is one of the compelling reasons for creating an organization-wide performance management system.

And fourth, the political environment may shift. As strategies become institutionalized, people's attention may shift elsewhere. Or supportive leaders and managers may be replaced by people who are uninterested or even hostile to the strategy, and they may change elements of it or appoint other people who undermine it. Or people may reinterpret history, ignoring the facts to support their position; in this case, as Voltaire apparently said in a 1757 letter to a friend, “History is nothing but a pack of tricks we play on the dead.” For any of these four reasons, policy and strategy can become their own cause—the proximate reason for the initiation of a new round of strategy change.

Many organizations now are building and maintaining an organization-wide strategic management system (SMS) as a way of fostering greater rationality, coherence, and cost effectiveness in their strategies and operations. (Strategic management systems are often called performance management systems or results management systems.) An SMS may be thought of as an organizational design for strategically managing the implementation of agreed-upon strategies, assessing the performance of those strategies, reconciling inconsistencies and misalignments, and formulating new or revised strategies. An SMS in practice will describe the organization and its possibilities or capabilities for the future. The focus should be on

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increasing the overall technical rationality and political reasonableness of the organization as a whole and its constituent parts —no easy task in the best of circumstances. And the SMS should ensure that maximum public value is and continues to be created. There are many different kinds of SMSs, and these are discussed in this chapter.

PURPOSE AND DESIRED OUTCOMES The purpose of this phase of the Strategy Change Cycle is to review implemented policies, strategies, plans, programs, or projects and to decide on a course of action that will ensure that public value continues to be created. Desired outcomes include maintenance of good strategies, modifications of less successful ones through appropriate reforms or plan revisions, and elimination of undesirable strategies. In many cases, a second desired outcome is construction and maintenance of a strategic management system to ensure ongoing effective strategic management of the organization. A third desired outcome is often the mobilization of energy and enthusiasm to address the next important strategic issue that comes along.

Several additional desired outcomes flow from successful action in this phase. The first is the assurance that institutionalized capabilities remain responsive to important substantive and symbolic issues. Organizations often become stuck in permanent patterns of response to old issues. When the issues change, the institutions often do not and, therefore, become a problem themselves (Schön, 1971; Wilson, 1989). A sort of goal displacement occurs, in which the institutions cease to be a means to an end and instead become an end in themselves (Merton, 1940; Schön, 1971). Ensuring that organizations remain responsive to real issues and problems—and therefore produce better services and get better results—takes considerable effort. Periodic studies, reports, conferences, hearings, fact-finding missions, on-site observation, and discussions with stakeholders are necessary to stay in touch with the “real world” (Scharmer, 2016; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015).

The second is the resolution of residual issues that occur during

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sustained implementation. Even if implemented strategies remain generally responsive to the issues that originally prompted them, inevitably there will be a host of specific difficulties that must be addressed if the strategies are to be really effective. Attention and appropriate action over the long haul are necessary to ensure that strategies in practice remain as effective and efficient as they were in concept.

The third is the continuous weeding, pruning, and shaping of crowded strategy areas. Although there may be an appropriate micrologic to individual strategy elements, element piled upon element often creates a kind of unintended and unwanted macrononsense (Peters & Waterman, 1982). Public and nonprofit leaders and managers must discover how to talk about the system as a whole in order to figure out what should stay, what should be added, and what should be dropped so that greater alignment results between desired public value, mission, mandates, strategies, and operations.

The fourth is improved organizational knowledge and collaboration across all levels of the organization. Information on progress and achievement should result in better identification of remaining or new issues, better networks of interaction among key actors, more effective decision making, and generally increased organizational learning that should be useful in this step and in the next round of strategic planning.

A fifth and related benefit is increased ability to tell the organization's story to internal and external audiences about what it does, how it does it, and what the results are.

Finally, this step should foster development of the energy, will, and ideas for significant reform of existing strategies. Minor difficulties can be addressed through existing administrative mechanisms, such as regular staff meetings, management-by-exception routines, administrative law courts, periodic strategy review and modification exercises, and routine access channels to key decision makers for advocates and advocacy groups. Major change, however, will not occur without development of a substantial coalition in favor of it. And such a coalition will not develop unless there are real issues to be addressed

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and the energy, will, and ideas for doing so can be harnessed. However, this is the step in which the beginning of such a coalition is likely to emerge; in other words, this end to the Strategy Change Cycle is often the beginning of the next Strategy Change Cycle.

Each of the three cases in this book were prompted in large part by changes in energy, will, and ideas for change. The City of Minneapolis knew that there would be a new mayor and council seeking change. MEDA's board was disturbed by growing inequality in the Twin Cities, especially between white and black communities. And INTOSAI's strategic planning process was a response to the United Nation's overwhelming endorsement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

BUILDING A STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEM Strategic management systems (or performance management systems or results-based management systems) are ongoing organizational designs or arrangements for strategically managing the implementation of agreed-upon strategies, assessing the performance of those strategies, and formulating new or revised strategies. These systems, in other words, are themselves a kind of organizational (or interorganizational) strategy for implementing policies and plans, reassessing those strategies, and coming up with new policies and plans. As Poister, Aristigueta, and Hall (2015) indicate, strategic management requires the following:

Continual monitoring of the “fit” between the organization and its environment and tracking external trends and forces that are likely to affect the organization

Emphasizing to both internal and external audiences the mission and vision guiding the unit

Creating mission- and vision-linked strategic agendas across the organization that serve as drivers for decision making

Guiding all other management processes in an integrated manner to support and enhance these strategic agendas

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There appear to be six main types of systems, though any strategic management system in practice probably will be a hybrid of the six types, which I am therefore calling a seventh type (Bryson & Edwards, 2017). The types, or designs, thus refer to dominant tendencies, which are:

1. Integrated units of management approach (or layered or stacked units of management approach)

2. Strategic issues management approach

3. Contract approach

4. Collaboration approach

Lead organization

Shared governance

Network administrative organization

5. Portfolio management approach

6. Goal or benchmark approach

7. Hybrid approach

Before describing each approach, I must express the ambivalence I have about attempts to institutionalize strategic planning and management. Although it often is important to create and maintain a performance management system, it also is important to guard against the tendency such systems have of driving out wise strategic thought, action, and learning—precisely those features that strategic planning (at its best) promotes. In practice, the systems often become excessively formal and bureaucratic, driven by the calendar and not by events or issues, numbers oriented, captured by inappropriate forecasts, and conservative. The reader therefore is advised to recall my admonition in Chapter 2: Whenever any strategic management system (or strategic planning process) threatens to drive out wise strategic thought, action, and learning, you should scrap the system (or process) and get back to promoting effective strategic thought, action, and learning.

It is also important to realize that each system embodies a set of ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

arrangements that empowers particular actors, makes particular kinds of issues more likely to arise than others, and makes particular strategies more likely to be pushed rather than others. It is, therefore, very important to think strategically about which kind of strategic management system to pursue based on an understanding of their comparative strengths and weaknesses.

Integrated Units of Management Approach (or Layered or Stacked Units of Management Approach) The purpose of this approach is to link inside and outside environments in effective ways through development and implementation of an integrated set of strategies across levels and functions of the organization. Figure 2.2 outlines a possible two-cycle integrated performance management system. It represents the classic, private sector, corporate-style top-down bottom-up strategic planning process. In the first cycle, there is a bottom-up development of strategic plans within a framework of goals, objectives, and other guidance established at the top, followed by reviews and reconciliations at each succeeding level. In the second cycle, operating plans are developed to implement the strategic plans. In each cycle, efforts are made to relate levels, functions, and inside and outside environments in effective ways. The process is repeated each year within the general framework established by the organization's grand or umbrella strategies. Periodically, these overarching strategies are reviewed and modified based on experience, changing conditions, and the emergence of new strategies that were not necessarily planned in advance.

Public and nonprofit organizations also have used variants of this approach to advantage (Poister et al., 2015; Van Dooren, Bouckaert, & Halligan, 2015). The City of Minneapolis, for example, is well on its way to such a variant of this system that also includes broad consultation with the public about appropriate goals; see Exhibit 10.1. The system remains a work in progress, however, and there are a number of challenges to making it work better.

Keep in mind that it is precisely this sort of system that is most prone to driving out strategic thought and action when it is excessively ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

formal and also underpinned by a belief that the future can actually be predicted accurately—a belief detached from the messiness of operational reality (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009). Such systems are likely to be blindsided by unpredictable events. Therefore, they must be used with extreme caution because they can take on a life of their own, promote incremental change when major change might be needed, and serve the interests only of the planners who staff them and the leaders and managers who wish to resist—not promote—major change.

Exhibit 10.1. The City of Minneapolis Strategic Management System. The City of Minneapolis has been working for a number of years on improving what it calls its Results Management Cycle. The cycle consists of four main elements, as illustrated below: strategic planning every four years; annually updated business and resource plans; regular performance monitoring, including Results Minneapolis progress meetings and business plan updates; and continuous improvement.

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Source: City of Minneapolis City Coordinator's Office.

Strategic planning includes establishing a vision and articulating values, goals, and strategic directions. Business planning is primarily department-based and focuses on strategy implementation, including resource planning for financial, infrastructure, and workforce needs. Over time, the performance management system has helped shift the city's focus away from tracking outputs and efficiencies toward measuring and improving progress toward achieving citywide goals, including broad community-level indicators. Continuous improvement focuses on operations and involves pursuing in practical ways a philosophy of always doing better in terms of strategy implementation and the production of desired outputs and outcomes. The following features of the system are worth noting:

The system is guided by the city's vision, values, goals, and strategic directions.

The system is meant to encompass the entire organization, which is seen holistically as consisting of interdependent parts.

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Attention is paid to developing and using performance measures to assess performance, especially in terms of desired results, and guide improvements.

Strategic and operational planning are incorporated into the system.

The meaning of accountability is intended to shift toward accountability for results. The idea is to hold areas, programs, departments, and individuals accountable for the best possible performance while ensuring that their performance is aligned with and supports overall efforts of the city as a whole.

The strength of linkages and coordination across the four elements varies, in part because city goals for Minneapolis as a place go beyond what the City of Minneapolis as a municipal government can achieve and because many goals require significant cross- departmental, intergovernmental, or cross-sector collaboration.

An important feature of performance monitoring is the Results Minneapolis progress planning and reporting process. There are two kinds of conferences, one focused on departments and the other focused on city goals. The Department Results Minneapolis conferences are meant to help senior decision makers know if departments “did what they planned to do, assess why anticipated results were or were not achieved, and use that information to adapt future work.” The newly redesigned process now integrates business plan updates and results reporting into a single process and report: “All departments are to work on and present their reports at the same time of year, prior to the budget process.” The formats of the departmental reports are “customizable by department.” The final documents are public, whereas the conferences are not, as a way of fostering candid discussions out of the limelight. (All quotes in this paragraph and below are from Charter Department Results Minneapolis, February 2, 2017)

As part of business plan development, the City Coordinator's Office (CCO) works with each department to develop performance measures to assess departmental progress toward achieving departmental goals and helping achieve citywide goals. The CCO

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then helps departments create comprehensive reports that combine data and narratives to help others understand successes and challenges in meeting the goals. These reports are uploaded for public review on the Results Minneapolis website at http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/coordinator/strategicplanning/WCMSP- 199683.

After the reports are finished, high-level management meetings are held. The group at the meeting consists of a “small group of elected officials, City Coordinator's Office leadership and department leadership.” At the meeting, the department makes a presentation featuring key highlights followed by a discussion. Having read the report and listened to the presentation, the group explores the report's substance and implications for action via questions, dialogue and deliberations, and advice and recommendations. “The full report and key highlights are to be made publicly available. Notes from the meeting are to be compiled and sent out to participants.” The reports provide an ongoing library of information available to anyone, including the general public and media.

City Goal Results Minneapolis conferences focus on broad topics such as housing quality and affordability and examine the way relevant city departments and other stakeholders can contribute to achieving citywide goals. Again, reports are prepared in advance. Elected officials, city staff, and community leaders are invited to discuss key findings in the reports and explore what might be done to enhance goal achievement.

As noted, Minneapolis's effort to build a strategic management system has been a work in progress for many years, with many incremental improvements made along the way. Given the size and complexity of Minneapolis city government and its broad action agenda, it is not surprising that a number of challenging issues emerged as part of the process of creating an integrated strategic management system. Three current issues include the need to address communication gaps; better align processes, including planning and budgeting; and enhance community engagement (Andreason et al., 2016; Dickens et al., 2015).

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Communications gaps. The CCO has produced a number of presentations, graphics, and documents that articulate the importance, content, and process of Results Management for the city as a place and municipal government. The CCO is also in regular contact with departments. The mayor and council members, CCO staff, department heads, planning analysts, and many others are up to date on what is happening in the city and why. In other words, there is certainly enough understanding to carry on with the work of strategic management. Additional benefits, however, might well be gained as a result of broader awareness among city employees, citizens, and other stakeholders about the approach. An enhanced, integrated, and multifaceted communications strategy could help produce those benefits.

Difficulties with process alignment. The Results Management process consists of a number of subprocesses that are not as well integrated as they might be. This is to be expected as experience with the process increases and areas for improvement are identified. There are four areas where alignment might be improved. The first is between department-level activities and enterprise-wide and citywide activities. In particular, the new emphasis on citywide goals and community indicators requires departments to expand their thinking about what they should be doing, how, and why. The City Goal Results Minneapolis conferences (see Chapter 2) can help, but the conversations need to extend back to the departments themselves and be reflected in business plans. Because the CCO has little authority over charter departments, the effort to produce better alignment in this area depends greatly on informal influence and persuasion. After years of tight budgets, adequate staff capacity to produce better alignment is also often lacking.

The second alignment challenge involves a need for better cross- departmental planning so as to better achieve enterprise-wide and citywide goals. Again, the City Goal Results Minneapolis conferences can be a prompt to interdepartmental collaboration. But again, the city's fragmented authority structure and staff capacity constraints can hamper the efforts.

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The third alignment challenge involves a need for better alignment between planning and monitoring. The Results Minneapolis conferences can occur out of sequence with departmental business planning and strategic directions conversations. The city is exploring changes to departmental business planning and monitoring to help address this challenge.

The fourth alignment challenge is particularly difficult, and that is incorporating more performance information into the budgeting process. In some ways, this is the least well-integrated part of the Results Minneapolis process. The newly redesigned Department Results Minneapolis planning and reporting process is meant to address this challenge head on by requiring reports be done before the budget process kicks in.

Community engagement. In earlier years, community engagement had not been a part of the Results Management Cycle. That changed with the election of Mayor Betsy Hodges and the new council. They asked for direct engagement with the public around developing the city's goals. The new philosophy involved embracing not just representative democracy but participative democracy as well. The change was from simply informing the public about goals to involving the public in the creation of goals and indicators. In 2015, the CCO completed a major community engagement process aimed at doing so. The process employed a variety of creative methods and worked at engaging typically underrepresented groups. As noted above, the alignment challenge involves ensuring that those goals and indicators directly influence the city government as a whole and individual departments and individuals within it.

Some outside help for addressing these issues will come from the Bloomberg Philanthropies' What Works Cities initiative designed “to enhance the use of data and evidence in the public sector” (https://whatworkscities.bloomberg.org/). In March 2017, the city was selected to join the initiative that ultimately will help 100 cities. The initiative will provide support from a variety of experts to help the city with two projects. The first is aimed at improving the Results Minneapolis process so that it better meets the city's

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needs through the use of performance information and analysis. The second project “will work to improve the efficiency of services and outcomes for residents by adopting results-driven contracting strategies and other best practices for key procurements” (City of Minneapolis, 2017).

Strategic Issues Management Approach Strategic issues management systems are the most common form of institutionalized strategic management system in public and nonprofit organizations. These systems do not attempt to integrate strategies across levels and functions to the extent that integrated units of management approaches do. The reason is that the various issues are likely to be on different time frames, involve different constituencies and politics, and need not be considered in the light of all other issues.

Figure 10.1 provides a schematic of a fairly standard strategic issues management system. In this system, strategic guidance is issued at the top, and units further down are asked to identify the issues they think are strategic. Leaders and managers at the top then select which issues they wish to have addressed, perhaps reframing the issues before passing them on to units or task forces. Task forces then present strategic alternatives to leaders and managers, who select which ones to pursue. Strategies are then implemented in the next phase. Each issue is managed relatively separately though it is necessary to make sure that choices in one issue area do not cause trouble in others.

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Figure 10.1. Strategic Issues Management Model.

As noted in Chapter 2, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and a number of other cities have institutionalized strategic issues management through use of a CitiStat or PerformanceStat system (Behn, 2008). In these systems, a central analysis staff uses data (often geographically coded) to spot trends, events, and issues that need to be addressed by line departments. The heads of the relevant units meet regularly with the mayor and his or her key advisers, including, for example, the heads of budgeting, finance, human resources, and information technology, to examine the data and address the issues face to face. Actions and follow-up procedures are agreed upon on the spot. Notable successes have occurred in cities using these systems in which better outcomes were produced, money was saved, teamwork and competence were enhanced, or all three.

Although many public and nonprofit organizations have several task forces in operation at any one time, fewer go the next step to design and use a strategic issues management system. They do not establish an overall framework of organizational goals or policy objectives, nor do they seek out issues to address or make sure that their various ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

issues management activities add up to increased organizational effectiveness. To make this approach work, organizational leaders and managers should consider taking this last step, keeping in mind that the resulting centralization of certain key decisions at the top is likely to draw the attention and resistance of those who do not want to see power concentrated in that way or who dislike the resulting decisions. Developing a strategic issues management system is often a prelude to creation of an integrated units of management system—as is the case in Minneapolis.

Contract Approach The contract approach is another popular system of institutionalizing strategic planning and management, especially in simple to moderately complex shared-power environments (see Figure 10.2). The contract model is employed for much of the planning and delivery of many publicly financed social services in the United States via either public or nonprofit service providers (Milward & Provan, 2003; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). The system is also used to institutionalize strategic planning and management in school districts with site-based management.

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Figure 10.2. Purchaser-Provider Contract Model.

In this system, there is a center that establishes strategic objectives for the jurisdiction or organization as a whole, negotiates contracts with individual units of management, monitors performance, and ensures the integrity of the system. In the language of economics and principal-agent models, the center is the principal and the individual units of management are the agents. In more practice-oriented language, the center steers while the units row. The contract between the center and a unit outlines the unit's expected performance, defines its resources, lists other support the unit can expect from the center, and describes a review and renegotiation sequence. Within the framework and legal strictures of the contract, general managers of individual units and their staffs are supposed to be free to do whatever they think is necessary or desirable to ensure adequate performance.

At its best, this approach allows both the center and the individual units to focus on what is important for them—both are empowered to do their jobs better. In such a system, there would be a strategic plan for the center and one for each of the units. Key system concerns would include the content and approach embodied in the center's ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

plan, the center's difficulties in acquiring adequate information, the proper alignment of incentives for the principal and the agents, the difficulties the center may have in exercising control in the face of a large number of contractors, and ways to ensure adequate investments by the units if they cannot be sure of a long-term contract.

Collaboration Approach Collaboration represents a fourth type of strategic management system. Like contracting, collaboration is increasingly being used to govern and manage shared-power environments. In fact, the contract system represents a classic form of collaboration, but there are many different (and often more complicated) approaches to collaboration that are more suitable than competitive contracting for situations involving moderate to high levels of complexity and ambiguity (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015; Klijn, Stijn, & Edelenbos, 2010).

Human service systems often embody contracting and additional collaboration approaches—contracts for what can be specified and governed with reasonable ease, and supplemental collaboration for those situations involving higher levels of complexity and ambiguity, therefore requiring greater reliance on trust, shared norms, professionalism, and learning by doing for effective governance and management (Romzek, LeRoux, & Blackmar, 2012).

Collaboration is particularly useful when addressing problems for which no organization is fully in charge (Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2015). Situations of this sort occur when, for example, there is a marked degree of separation between the source and use of funds; services are jointly produced (that is, service recipients are at least partly responsible for effective production, as in mental health services); or the key governance and management task is arranging networks rather than managing hierarchies (Popp et al., 2015; Verweij, Klijn, Edelenbos, & van Buuren, 2013).

Collaboration involves varying degrees of sharing power and resources (such as information, money, clients, and authority) between units to achieve common ends that could not be achieved separately. The gain beyond what could be achieved separately is called collaborative

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advantage (Huxham & Vangen, 2005), and the often elusive pursuit of this advantage is behind persistent calls for more collaboration. We will consider three different archetypal approaches to network collaboration (Provan & Kenis, 2009): the lead organization, shared governance, and network administrative organization.

In the lead organization approach, a single partner organization coordinates the major collaboration activities and key decisions. The lead organization has more power than the other partners, who typically are moderate in number. Milward and Provan (2003), in their longitudinal study of mental health service delivery networks, have found that network effectiveness is greatest when there is a strong central integrating unit, clear and consistent lines of authority and accountability embodied in contracts, aligned incentives that give everyone a stake in the success of the network, system stability, and munificent resources. These factors allow constructive norms, social capital, and network learning capabilities to develop and needed incremental investments and changes to be made.

Interestingly, the contracts in these situations are what economists call relational contracts, as opposed to competitive contracts. Relational contracting involves infrequent rebidding and instead focuses on maintaining an effective relationship between buyer and seller— because there are only a few sellers to begin with, the production function is ambiguous, and effective performance by the seller depends on trust, collaboration, and long-term investment in the network's infrastructure.

A key system concern with the lead organization approach is how to achieve the right balance between network stability and adaptability. Provan and Milward (1995; see also Milward & Provan, 2000, 2003) found that the highest performing mental health networks were the most stable in the sense that there were no significant changes in any structural feature or funding relationships, a finding confirmed by Raab, Mannak, and Cambré (2015). On the one hand, stability allows the all-important trust, shared norms, expertise, productive relationships, learning by doing, and long-term investments to occur. On the other hand, if a network is too stable, learning and responsiveness to environmental changes will diminish and the ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

network will be unlikely to respond effectively to unexpected changes (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). For example, Powell, Koput, and Smith- Doerr (1996) found that in the case of networks in the emerging and rapidly changing biotechnology field, flexibility and adaptability of networks related positively to performance. Because of the importance of stability to performance—at least when the technology is not changing rapidly—changes should be infrequent and incremental, if at all possible. Another key concern will be the continual need to make sure incentives are aligned properly so that participants have an incentive to maintain the network and high performance levels.

The shared governance approach is likely when no partner has significantly greater power and resources than the others and no external governance organization is formed or mandated. The viability of the approach depends on each organization's involvement and commitment as the partners are responsible for managing the internal and external relations. Viability also depends on reasonable goal consensus; exit is always an option for member organizations.

If the number of organizations participating in shared governance becomes too large, trust levels decline, goal consensus becomes a bit shaky, and the collaborators have limited collaboration abilities and may create a separate administrative entity—a network administrative organization (NAO)—to govern the collaboration and its activities and decision. The INTOSAI main office in Vienna, Austria, is an example of an NAO.

In their study of 39 networks, Raab et al. (2015) found that effective networks are centrally integrated, have been in existence for at least three years, and show a high degree of stability. They also either have substantial resources available or they have an NAO. Raab et al. observe that having an NAO may imply having greater resources, so the result doesn't mean that having an NAO by itself is sufficient even if adequate resources are absent. This research affirms the core findings of Provan and Milward's prior research, but note the caveat about the dangers of too much stability when technology is changing quickly.

Portfolio Management Approach ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

In the portfolio management approach, entities of various sorts (programs, projects, products, services, or providers) are arrayed against dimensions that have some strategic importance. The dimensions usually consist of the attractiveness or desirability of the entity (from high to low) and the capability of the organization or community to deliver what is needed (also from high to low). Portfolio methods are quite flexible in that any dimensions of interest may be arrayed against one another and entities mapped on to the resulting matrix. Portfolio methods also can be used at sub- and supraorganizational levels to assess options against strategically important factors (Bryson & Edwards, 2017). Unfortunately, few public and nonprofit organizations or communities utilize portfolio models in a formal way, even though many probably use portfolio methods in an informal way. The problem with using this method in a formal way, of course, is that it creates comparisons that may be troubling for politically powerful actors.

Goal or Benchmark Approach In general, the goal or benchmark approach is much looser than the integrated units of management models and is generally applied at the community, regional, or state level. It is designed to gain reasonable agreement on overarching goals, indicators, or benchmarks toward which relatively independent groups, units, or organizations might then direct their energies. This consensual agreement on goals and indicators can function somewhat like the corporate control exercised in integrative models though it is, of course, weaker.

This system's looseness means that calling it a strategic management system may be an overstatement. Nonetheless, when agreement can be reached and support for implementation can be generated, this approach can work reasonably well. Plus, in the fragmented, shared- power environments in which most public problems occur, the approach may be the only viable approach. For example, most community strategic plans are implemented via goal or benchmark models (Bryson & Schively Slotterback, 2016). Typically, large numbers of leaders and citizens are involved in the process of goal setting and strategy development. Then action plans outline what each

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organization might do to help implement the strategies and achieve the goals on a voluntary basis. The INTOSAI strategic management system is also mostly an example of a goal or benchmark approach (even though the Vienna office acts as an NAO) because INTOSAI has no direct authority over any country's supreme audit institution.

A variant of the approach might make use of principles rather than goals. This approach would be applicable in very complex situations where the challenges are adaptive, not technical; many organizations are involved, affected, or have some partial responsibility to act; power is shared; there are many feedback effects; goals and cause–effect relations are at best unclear; and technologies are at best unproven. Bottom-up adaptive management is necessary, and strategy will be emergent based on innovation, rapid prototyping, and ongoing learning. Principles can help guide the rapid prototyping and adaptive learning required to make progress and figure out what viable solution models are because they don't already exist. Developmental evaluation is needed to help inform the learning (Patton, 2011). Examples of such systems in practice may be found in Patton, McKegg, and Wehipeihana (2015).

Hybrid Approach As I suggested earlier, though there are six general types of strategic management systems, any actual system is likely to be a hybrid of all six types, which I am calling a seventh type. For example, the City of Minneapolis's main approach is an integrative units of management approach, but it also makes use of community-wide goals, issue management approaches, contracts, collaboration, and at least implicit portfolio assessments.

Virginia Performs provides a state-level example (Council on Virginia's Future, 2017) of a hybrid approach. It is a system initiated by the Council on Virginia's Future, which is chaired by the governor and includes state, business, and community leaders. The Council was established by the 2003 General Assembly to advise Virginia's leaders on development and implementation of a road map for the state's future. The road map includes a long-term focus on high-priority issues; creating an environment for improved policy and budget ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

decision making; increasing government performance, accountability, and transparency; and engaging citizens in dialogue about Virginia's future. The architecture of the system is outlined in Figure 10.3. The Council helps establish the long-term vision, goals, and performance indicators for the state and makes assessments of progress. The State's executive branch is responsible for performance, efficiency, and effectiveness. The vision and high-level goals established by the Council and championed by the governor are meant to serve as guides for state government decisions and actions and are also intended to influence the thinking and actions of other actors in the state.

Figure 10.3. The Architecture of the Virginia Performs System.

The Council's Vision for Virginia includes: ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Responsible economic growth

An enviable quality of life

Good government

A well-educated citizenry prepared to lead successful lives and to be engaged in shaping the future of the Commonwealth.

The Council's seven long-term goals for the state further define the vision and include the following. (The label in parentheses indicates a key to finding detail related to the goal on the Virginia Performs website.)

Being a national leader in the preservation and enhancement of our economy (Economy)

Elevating the levels of educational preparedness and attainment of our citizens (Education)

Inspiring and supporting Virginians toward healthy lives and strong and resilient families (Health and Family)

Protecting, conserving, and wisely developing our natural, cultural, and historic resources (Natural, Historic, and Cultural Resources)

Protecting the public's safety and security, ensuring a fair and effective system of justice, and providing a prepared response to emergencies and disasters of all kinds (Public Safety)

Ensuring Virginia has a transportation system that is safe, allows the easy movement of people and goods, enhances the economy, and improves our quality of life (Transportation)

Being recognized as the best-managed state in the nation (Government and Citizens)

Progress toward accomplishing the vision and long-term goals is measured by a set of 44 overall indicators broken down into seven goal areas (see Exhibit 10.2). State agencies are expected by the governor and legislature to plan and budget in light of the long-term goals and indicators and related and relevant indicators specifically connected to the agency's work.

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The Virginia Performs website provides a useful and visually appealing compendium of performance for the state as a whole, by goal area, and by agency (http://vaperforms.virginia.gov). The attempted linkage of state agency goals, plans, and budgets to the state's long-term goals is the tightest part of the system. The success of the state's system depends on continued broad-based, bipartisan political support.

Cities, counties, communities, and others throughout the state are also encouraged to do their part by making use of the state-level goals and indicators to develop their own indicators linked to the state's. The desire to make progress against individual indicators or sets of indicators also provides the basis for collaborative efforts throughout the state involving public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Exhibit 10.2. Virginia Performs Scorecard at a Glance.

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PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES The following guidelines should be kept in mind as leaders and managers review implemented strategies and ponder what to do about them. General guidelines are presented first, and then specific suggestions are offered for strategy maintenance, succession, and termination (for additional details, see Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Hill & Hupe, 2014; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). A final section presents guidelines for building a strategic management system.

General Guidelines 1. Stay focused on what is important. Pay attention to the

organization's mission and mandates and the social needs and political problems that justify its existence. Think about how to create public value. Pay attention to the fundamental challenges—

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strategic issues—that the organization faces as it tries to meet its mandates, pursue its mission, and create public value. Never let the organization and its strategies or plans become ends in themselves.

2. Focus on signs or indicators of success and failure. Attention should be paid to changes in signs or indicators that were used to argue for strategy changes in the first place, to new indicators that are important to key stakeholders and that shed light on implementation effectiveness, and to results of any formative, summative, or developmental evaluations.

3. Review the issue framings used to guide strategy formulation in the first place. Are they still accurate and useful interpretations of reality? Have they led to constructive issue descriptions, strategies, and plans? Or has some reality—political, economic, social, technological, internal, external, or otherwise—changed, making these issue framings into distortions that suggest unhelpful strategies and plans?

4. Use existing review opportunities or create new ones. Periodic policy reauthorization sessions, strategic issue identification exercises, and annual budget review periods, for example, provide regular review opportunities. Election campaigns and changes in top political or executive leadership provide predictable occasions for strategy reviews in public organizations. Similarly, board turnover or new executive appointments in nonprofit organizations provide occasions for review. However, leaders and managers can create strategy review opportunities almost anytime they wish. Conferences, hearings, study sessions or commissions, media events, investigative reporting, discussion groups, and so on can be arranged whenever leaders and managers wish to promote discussion and critique of strategies.

5. Create a review group. The composition of this group may vary considerably depending on the nature of the review. Legislation and policies requiring scheduled reviews may specify a particular group—for example, a legislative committee, city council, or nonprofit board of directors. Often, however, flexibility is possible in choosing participants, and it can be wise to include outsiders

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who do not have a vested interest in the status quo. They may be counted on to focus on important issues and can offer constructive suggestions for change.

6. Challenge institutional and organizational rules that favor undesirable inertia. Institutions have an uncanny ability to take on a life of their own, making constructive change extremely difficult (Scharmer, 2016; Wilson, 1989). There are many political routines that challenge anything new but do not subject what is already in place to a searching critique. These routines and other rules— embedded in the design and use of existing forums, arenas, and courts—often make present arrangements the taken-for-granted way things are. This can make a different future unlikely. If the future is to be what we want, these rules must be confronted and set aside when needed. For example, when MEDA's board hired Gary Cunningham and he commissioned Accenture to do a strategic assessment of the organization, a signal went out to key stakeholders and the community that many of the existing rules and routines would be examined and innovative strategies would be explored.

7. Remember that organizations usually outlive any particular strategy. Typically, therefore, it is easier to change the strategies than the organizations. Also, it is usually more productive to call into question or attack the strategies than the organizations. In other words, it is likely to be more effective to praise the intentions and goodwill of an organization while attacking its strategies than to attack its motives and goodwill directly.

Further, from a strategic standpoint, it is often wise to explore whether problems can be solved with existing organizational or network strategies because strategies may be created or changed more easily than organizations and networks. Moreover, it is wise to figure out how existing organizations and their adherents might benefit from possible changes in strategy so that allies, rather than opponents, can be created (Bryson, Cunningham, & Lokkesmoe, 2002). Sometimes, this simply means organizing support for new units or programs within existing organizations. But given the distressing inertia of many organizations, change advocates may

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conclude that new organizations and networks are required to solve important issues. Community planning efforts, for example, often involve developing at least partially new networks to frame and address key issues.

8. Stay fresh. Build energy and enthusiasm for continuing with good strategies and addressing new strategic issues. Avoid letting efforts go stale. Issues will not be formulated and addressed effectively unless leaders and managers take responsibility for doing so. As eighteenth-century conservative icon Edmund Burke allegedly said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

Strategy Maintenance Guidelines 1. To maintain existing strategies, seek little change in current

organizational (program, interorganizational, or community) arrangements. Any significant change is likely to undermine the regime established in the previous phase. It is important, however, to find occasions in forums to recall or reinvigorate the organization's mission and the vision that originally inspired it and to validate the results of previous strategy formulation efforts.

2. To maintain or marginally modify existing strategies, rely on implementers and focused input from users or consumers, and involve supportive advocates. For example, valuable information can be gained by providing easy-to-use methods for users to express their views about services and their delivery and to suggest possible ways to improve them. Broader involvement of elites and the public is likely to raise issues and conflicts that may require more fundamental policy changes (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009; Kingdon, 2010).

3. Invest in distinctive competencies and distinctive assets necessary for the success of the strategies. Continual investment is required to maintain the competencies and assets necessary for successful ongoing strategy implementation. Depending on the strategy, this may mean, for example, staff education and professional development, investment in physical or information technology

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infrastructure, nurturing networks of providers, or bolstering fundraising and marketing capabilities. If the organization must compete for resources, it is particularly important to invest in distinctive competencies and distinctive assets—that is, those that differentiate the organization from its competitors (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2007; Johnson, Whittington, Regnér, Scholes, & Angwin, 2017).

Strategy Change or Succession Guidelines 1. To facilitate a move to new strategies, significantly alter existing

arrangements. A new set of issues, decisions, conflicts, and policy preferences are then likely to emerge. The election of Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges and a new council also led to significant changes. The hiring of Gary Cunningham introduced major alterations to MEDA and its strategies.

2. Create occasions to challenge existing meanings and estrange people from them and to fashion new meanings and facilitate their enactment. Leaders and managers may wish to estrange people from the missions, mandates, policies, and strategies that support particular ways of being in the world for their organizations, networks, or communities (Marris, 2016; Scharmer, 2016). New ways of interpreting reality may supply the seed from which a different configuration of policies, plans, programs, projects, products, services, or resource allocations can grow. For example, a strategy reassessment may imply that a different set of external or internal categories, stakeholders, value judgments, signs or indicators, or comparisons is relevant. Change advocates may articulate a new or revised vision that inspires action.

Leaders and managers must use available occasions and settings to estrange people from existing meanings because it allows people to entertain possibility in the place of givenness. Often the estrangement will result after altering the way in which issues are formulated so that they highlight certain features of the internal and external environments and not others.

Even when change advocates are successful in challenging existing

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strategies on intellectual grounds, they should not expect new strategies to be adopted without a change in the political circumstances surrounding the strategy, particularly in public organizations. As Kingdon (2010) notes, these changes may include public opinion swings, election results, administrative changes, ideological or partisan redistribution in legislative bodies, and interest group pressure campaigns. Before new proposals for strategies can be adopted, key decision makers in arenas must be receptive, and changes in politics may be necessary before this is likely to occur. The successful adoption of the 2009 U.S. Affordable Care Act, and later efforts to “repeal and replace” it, hinged on the views of key decision makers.

Major change may also depend on a successful search for important ideas and methods for operationalizing them. For example, MEDA is continually exploring in detail the conceptual and practical meaning of a number of concepts, software, and applications that will help alter the ecology of support for minority- owned businesses. Ongoing workshops and discussions are necessary to figure out what changes might mean in practice (Sandfort & Quick, 2015).

3. Be aware that strategy succession may be more difficult than the adoption of the initial strategy because existing strategy is now likely to have a coalition of supporters. The embedding of existing policy due to its effect on stakeholders is an example of what is known as a policy feedback effect (Moynihan & Soss, 2014). Beyond that, the concessions and compromises in the existing strategy are likely to prevent major reforms, and reformers are likely to be disappointed with the gains achieved in relation to their efforts. Attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act are a case in point.

4. Remember that both implementers and beneficiaries of existing policies are more likely to be concerned with strategy implementation details than with policy innovation (Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). Policies themselves are often more symbolic than real. What counts is how they are implemented—what they mean in practice. That is where the real action is for implementers and

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beneficiaries. There is good news and bad news here. The good news for change advocates is that if the issues they are tackling stem mainly from existing policies, policy changes may be adopted before implementers and beneficiaries of the status quo know what is happening. The bad news is that they may be able to kill any policy they don't like during implementation. More good news for change advocates is that if the problem is not caused by existing policy, only policy implementers may need to be convinced of the virtues of the changes. The bad news is they may not be.

5. To make major strategy changes, rely on key decision makers, along with policy implementers and beneficiaries. In all likelihood, to make substantial changes, leaders and managers will need the support of a coalition different from the one that adopted and implemented existing strategies. A new constellation of ideas, stakeholder interests, and agreements will need to be worked out (Sabatier & Weible, 2014).

6. To achieve strategy succession, consider a move either to split aspects of the strategy or to consolidate strategies. Splitting means carving off and eliminating, revising, or phasing in aspects of a strategy. Consolidating means joining together previously separate strategies. Reframing the way issues and strategies are viewed can facilitate either, especially if key stakeholders believe it is in their interests. Splitting or consolidating can also resolve conflicts over areas of political influence by making either separate or combined budgetary allocations and, depending on the circumstances, making ambiguous or clear allocations of jurisdiction. For example, a move to budgeting depending on site- based management will sharpen some conflicts between a school district's headquarters and individual schools, particularly those related to the fairness of allocations across the district, but will redirect others to individual schools, particularly those conflicts involving allocations within each school. Conflicts over ideas are less easily resolved though good analysis may help. Still, there may be strong coalitions in support of each position, and no amount of analysis will convince them to reassess their positions (Sabatier & Weible, 2014; Thompson, 2014).

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7. Consider building a new system without dismantling the old one. The result is parallel, redundant, or competing systems, but there can be overall net social gains through better market segmentation and the benefits of competition. For example, the move to voucher systems and the creation of charter schools is a way to create a new educational system without directly taking apart the traditional public school system. Whether educational attainment overall is enhanced is obviously another question.

8. Invest in distinctive competencies and distinctive assets that continue to be relevant, and build the new competencies and assets that are needed. The main thrust of the INTOSAI strategic plan is to build the capacities of member SAIs to help their governments implement the Sustainable Development Goals. Put simply, you cannot get to where you are going without the ability to get there.

Strategy Termination Guidelines 1. Think of strategy termination as an extreme version of strategy

change. Many of the strategy change or succession guidelines outlined are applicable to strategy termination as well. And a new coalition organized around new ideas, stakeholder interests, and agreements is likely to be necessary. Given the probable resistance of current implementers and beneficiaries, leadership will be a crucial component of all strategy termination efforts; a fundamental leadership task will be to estrange important stakeholders from strategies to be terminated (Scharmer, 2016).

2. Engage in cutback management when programs need to be eliminated or severely reduced. Substantial literature has developed on how to manage cutbacks in general (Bozeman, 2010). The typical view is that there are two stages to cut back efforts in public organizations. In the first stage, the organization typically borrows against the future to cover the gap between current revenues and needed expenditures. Yet if revenues are not increased in the future, this tactic merely makes the adjustments to retrenchment worse by postponing the second stage, or day of reckoning, when major cuts and redesigns are made. The following

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steps would appear to be important cutback management tasks— although useful, they obviously provide no panacea or quick fix (Behn, 1983; Nutt & Hogan, 2008):

Take a long-term view

Dramatically slow down the pace of change if possible by strategically waiting for opportunities to pursue downsizing and make changes wisely without making big mistakes

Develop the support of key leaders, decision makers, and constituencies, including legislators, if necessary, in the public sector

Emphasize the mission, vision, and values to be adhered to, but also attend to the need to create at least a partially new identity for the downsized organization

Develop clear guidelines and goals for making reductions

Emphasize the importance of focusing on results, accountability, and integrity

Use strategic assessments and performance measures to know what to cut and what to reward

Rely on transparent communications to aid understanding of the problems to be faced and to build cooperation among affected units, unions, employees, and other stakeholders

Maintain morale, in part by indicating what is off-limits to cuts

First accommodate people being let go before taking steps to assimilate those left to operate the scaled-down system—but still attract and keep quality people, which may be particularly difficult if they think the ship is sinking

Reinvest and redeploy staff based on a strategic vision; create opportunities for innovation; emphasize continuous improvement in what remains

Create incentives for cooperation

Avoid mistakes

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Be compassionate

Guidelines for Building a Strategic Management System Building an effective strategic management system is an evolutionary process and typically builds on several successful cycles of strategic planning. The following guidelines are adapted from the approach followed by Hennepin County, Minnesota (the county that contains Minneapolis), and the City of Minneapolis itself:

1. Apply the system to the whole organization. The system should provide a framework for linking strategic goals and performance indicators to operational results. It should provide a way to cascade high-level measures down to more specific operational measures and allow the rollup of operational results to higher levels where they can be analyzed and used to support strategic decision making.

2. Build on performance measurement and management approaches already in use. Don't reinvent any more wheels than you need for an effective vehicle.

3. Focus on a relatively small number of key results and indicators. A few should be identified at each level of the organization. Using scorecards or dashboards is one way to do this as they also typically rely on a few key indicators. Development of the indicators should make use of stakeholder input, facilitate the identification of strategic issues, and allow for the measurement of success.

4. Use a common set of categories for performance measures. Again, use of scorecards can facilitate adoption of a common set of performance indicators, as illustrated by the Virginia Performs scorecard. A common set of categories will help the organization measure short- and long-term progress toward results and how best to allocate resources across strategies, functions, and levels.

5. Connect performance measures to specific programs, services, and activities. The performance measures should tell a story about the purpose of the activity, its implementation, and the effect on or benefit to the user. Again, the Virginia Performs system provides a

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good example.

6. Support linking organizational and individual performance. The use of a consistent and complementary set of performance indicators helps promote alignment throughout the organization and facilitates the linkage of individual goals and performance to the organization's strategic goals and performance.

7. Use the strategic management system to support planning, decision making, budgeting, evaluation, and learning. A good system should provide a stream of strategic and operational data for planning, decision making, and budgeting purposes. The data should be available to inform regularly scheduled as well as ad hoc management processes and events. The system, in other words, should become a part of the way the organization does business and should underpin a culture of excellent performance. This will happen more quickly and effectively if the system is easy to use and makes ongoing evaluation and learning possible.

8. Review and update the system on a regular basis. The system should be adjusted as necessary based on experience, changes in the organization, and changes in the environment.

SUMMARY In the last step in the Strategy Change Cycle, leaders, managers, and other stakeholders review strategies that have resulted from previous steps or emerged along the way to determine whether they should be maintained, significantly altered, or terminated. This chapter has discussed why strategies cease to work and outlined the benefits of moving successfully through this step. The most important benefits are assurance that strategies remain responsive to important issues, resolution of residual implementation difficulties, generation of needed energy for strategic renewal, and pruning of areas that are overcrowded with bits and pieces of assorted strategies. The step also includes attention to building an effective strategic management system.

Leaders and managers should focus on the issues that prompted the

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strategy under review and decide whether those issues are still relevant. They should rely on indicators of strategy success or failure to help them decide what should be maintained, reformed, or terminated. If the strategies have not been effective or the situation has changed, it may be necessary to identify new strategic issues and modify or eliminate particular strategies. Whatever the cause of this changed approach, it may also be necessary to revise the understandings that underlie the adopted strategies. Leaders and managers also must recognize that working within existing organizational structures, rather than trying to change or replace them, may be productive at this point. A review group and review opportunities must be established and institutional inertia must be overcome, however, in order to review and perhaps revise existing strategies.

The design and use of formal and informal forums, arenas, and courts in this step will vary, depending on whether the new strategy is to be maintained, reformed, or terminated. In order to maintain and incrementally improve the strategy, leaders and managers should seek little change in the existing settings. They may be able to involve mainly implementers and beneficiaries in the strategy review. If significant change is needed, the design and use of the pertinent forums, arenas, and courts will have to be significantly altered. Leaders and managers will have to create or redesign forums to allow challenges to existing meanings and enactment of new meanings. Once again, implementers and beneficiaries are the most likely participants in the review though some key decision makers and probably a new supportive coalition will have to be enlisted as well.

Possible approaches to strategy succession involve splitting or consolidating strategy elements or developing a parallel system. Strategy termination is an extreme version of strategy succession. Leaders and managers will need to employ cutback management and strategies and techniques to minimize the resulting pain and dislocation and to make sure the organization continues to create public value. Finally, leaders and managers should renew their own energy for working on the important issues their organizations or communities face.

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Strategic management systems (or performance management systems or results-based management systems) are organizational arrangements meant to ensure ongoing strategic management of organizations and their strategies. There are a variety of types of strategic management systems, but virtually every system in practice is some hybrid version of two or more of the types. Construction, maintenance, and revision of a strategic management system is almost always an evolutionary process that unfolds as the organization gains more experience with strategic planning, results-based budgeting, performance management, and strategic measurement and evaluation. It usually takes years of experience to build a really effective and vital system and to build the culture of outstanding performance that goes along with it.

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PART THREE MANAGING THE PROCESS AND GETTING STARTED WITH STRATEGIC PLANNING Strategic planning is in no way a substitute for leadership. Nor does strategic planning implement itself. It is simply an approach consisting of a set of concepts, procedures, tools, and practices designed to help an organization's (collaboration's or community's) leaders, managers, planners, staff, and other stakeholders to think, act, and learn strategically. People who want to use strategic planning must attend to a wide range of leadership concerns. This section focuses on these needs.

Chapter 11 addresses the leadership roles and tasks in making strategic planning work. These include the need to understand the context; understand the people involved; sponsor and champion the process; foster collective leadership; design and use formal and informal settings for discussion, deliberation, decision making, and conflict management; and put it all together over the course of the Strategy Change Cycle. Many different people will need to lead and follow at different times to accomplish these tasks. When strategic planning does work, it is a collective achievement.

In Chapter 12, the book's final chapter, the three major examples of strategic planning used throughout this book—the City of Minneapolis, Metropolitan Economic Development Association, and International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions—are reviewed and lessons are drawn from their experiences. Then a number of process guidelines are presented to help organizations (collaborations and communities) get started with their own strategic planning processes.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN Leadership Roles in Making Strategic Planning Work

BARBARA C. CROSBY and JOHN M. BRYSON

Leaders perform political, spiritual, and intellectual functions as well as managerial and group-maintenance tasks. These range from providing vision and strategies for change, to mobilizing a constituency, to facilitating group decisions or creating coalitions.

—Charlotte Bunch, Passionate Politics

The world is not changing if you don't shoulder the burden of responsibility.

—Ai Weiwei, Chinese artist and social activist

As has been pointed out before, strategic planning is not a substitute for effective leadership. There is no substitute for effective leadership (and committed followership) when it comes to planning and implementation. Instead, strategic planning is simply a set of concepts, procedures, and tools designed to help executives, managers, and others to think, act, and learn strategically on behalf of their organizations and their organizations' stakeholders. At its best, strategic planning and strategic management help leaders pursue virtuous ends in order to create significant public value and advance the common good. At its worst, strategic planning drives out strategic thought, action, and learning; makes jobs more difficult; and keeps organizations from meeting their mandates, fulfilling their missions, and creating public value. Whether strategic planning helps or hurts depends on how formal and informal leaders and followers at all organizational levels use it—or misuse it.

In the cases featured in this book, policy makers, executives, managers, and others had the ability to think, act, and learn strategically. They used strategic planning to tap this ability, canvass ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

diverse views, build coalitions and commitment, and identify and address key organizational issues in order to enhance organizational performance in the eyes of key stakeholders. They used strategic planning to help their organizations proceed with some certainty amid plenty of ambiguity, unpredictability, and complexity. Without inclusive, collaborative leadership focused on both content and process concerns, strategic planning simply would not have happened.

So what is leadership? We define it as “the inspiration and mobilization of others to undertake collective action in pursuit of the common good” (Crosby & Bryson, 2005, p. xix). This suggests that leadership and leaders are not the same thing. Effective leadership in public and nonprofit organizations and communities is a collective enterprise involving many people playing different leader and follower roles at different times, as the opening quotation from Charlotte Bunch emphasizes. Often the word leader is applied to individuals in formal, and top, positions of authority—for example, CEO, board chair, senior manager, president, executive director—within an organization. We apply the term to people who use both formal and informal authority, as well as other assets, to help achieve worthy outcomes and contribute to societal well-being. Indeed, the same people will be leaders and followers at different times over the course of a strategy change cycle.

The following interconnected leadership roles or tasks are important if strategic planning and implementation are to be effective:

Understanding the context

Understanding the people involved, including oneself

Sponsoring the process

Championing the process

Facilitating the process

Fostering collective leadership

Using dialogue and deliberation to create a meaningful process, clarify mandates, articulate mission, identify strategic issues, develop effective strategies, and possibly develop a vision of

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success

Making and implementing policy decisions

Enforcing rules, settling disputes, and managing residual conflicts

Putting it all together and preparing for ongoing strategic change

In the sections that follow, we elaborate on what these tasks involve. See Exhibit 11.1 for how Gary Cunningham worked to perform these roles in the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA) case.

Exhibit 11.1. How Gary Cunningham Has Worked to Fulfill the Leadership Roles in Making Strategic Planning and Implementation Work. Gary Cunningham has helped lead the strategic planning and implementation efforts of the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA), including helping create and lead the Minority Business Development Cohort. His efforts fit with each of the categories discussed in this chapter. These include:

Understanding the context

Cunningham saw a window of opportunity open when he was asked to head the Metropolitan Economic Development Association. He has been widening that window through his work at MEDA and with the Minority Business Development Cohort (MBDC). MBDC is a partnership with six other minority business support organizations who have agreed to work together to fundamentally alter and improve the ecology of support for minority business support.

Cunningham saw how the mandate from the board and the organization's mission were in line with his larger and lifelong agenda around addressing racial and economic

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disparities. He has used that mandate to help make MEDA more effective, but he is also using it to change the entire ecosystem of support for minority-owned businesses.

Cunningham is very knowledgeable in general and has made use of and expanded his extensive network to gain additional knowledge about the context and the possibilities for change.

Understanding the people involved, including oneself

Cunningham actively engages in professional and personal development.

He makes use of his extensive network of relationships to learn more and to advance his agenda.

He has demonstrated through his actions a commitment to remedying inequities and opening up opportunities, especially to people of color.

He has a proven track record of being able to turn big organizations around and help them perform better and create more public value. He is putting that set of competencies to work at MEDA and with the MBDC.

He makes use of interpersonal and cross-cultural skills to work effectively with majority and minority communities.

He is able to laugh at himself and at the occasional absurdities he encounters in making change.

Sponsoring the process

The board mandated change to take MEDA to the next level but left the exact nature of the change open. Cunningham has taken the mandate and run with it.

Cunningham has also acted as a sponsor, including helping the board understand more about what being a sponsor meant in this case (e.g., by bringing in Accenture). In effect, he helped create his own mandate to act.

Cunningham was the initial sponsor of the MBDC process. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

By writing and getting proposals funded to support the work of the cohort, he helped create a mandate from the foundations that have funded it. The MBDC work grows directly out of MEDA's strategic plan, which calls on MEDA to “build prestige and funding through media promotions, partnerships and endorsements.”

Championing the process

Cunningham pursued strategic planning persistently without knowing exactly where it would end up, meaning he championed the process, not any specific solution.

He also is the strongest champion of the strategy change agenda and pushes harder and more consistently than any other person.

He had challenges in creating additional champions in MEDA for the broader vision of ecosystem change; he has had to keep working during the implementation process to find ways to have more MEDA staff more actively support the broader vision represented by the MBDC work.

He has engaged external consultants to champion and facilitate the MBDC strategy change process.

Facilitating the process

Cunningham doesn't hesitate to bring in professional facilitation for meetings, nor does he hesitate to change facilitators when they don't work out well.

He doesn't hesitate to bring in outside consultants to help move the work along.

Fostering collective leadership

Cunningham has worked hard to get the right team in place —this includes letting some people go.

He has hired a chief of strategic initiatives to keep all the strategy change projects on track.

He has struggled to find the right team structure and ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

process to have everyone on board.

The MBDC is a key approach to developing collective leadership to change the ecosystem of support for minority entrepreneurs.

Using dialogue and deliberation to create a meaningful process, clarify mandates, articulate mission, identify strategic issues, develop effective strategies, and possibly develop a vision of success

Cunningham was careful about how much of his vision to divulge in advance because he wasn't sure exactly what it ought to be and because he didn't want to encourage resistance.

He created a dialogue with the board to help them understand what going to the next level might mean in practice. He engaged Accenture to help advance that dialogue by giving proposed changes increased credibility and legitimacy.

He got MEDA to focus specifically on entrepreneurs of color and not entrepreneurs generally as the way to resolve the “identity crisis” identified by Accenture.

The creation of the MBDC was a result of reframing the challenge as one of changing the entire ecology of support for entrepreneurs of color and minority-owned businesses. Cunningham championed the reframing.

He is beginning the effort to reframe work of MEDA and MBDC as social business work, not charity work.

Making and implementing policy decisions

Cunningham has a very consultative style but is not afraid to make tough decisions when they need to be made.

He is creating a new decision arena with the MBDC work that will help guide changing the ecosystem.

Enforcing rules, settling disputes, and managing residual

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conflicts

Cunningham upholds organizational norms that promote honesty, accountability, as much transparency as possible, respect, competence, and good business practices.

He has let go, or not included, people who do not uphold those norms themselves.

He has encouraged the MBDC to adopt similar norms.

Putting it all together and preparing for ongoing strategic change

Cunningham is an orchestrator.

He has several agendas, and he pushes ahead each one whenever it makes sense.

UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT Leaders should help constituents view their organization and organizational change in the context of relevant social, political, economic, technological, and ecological systems and trends. They should take a long view backward over the organization's history and even its prehistory in order to help people in the organization think more wisely about the future. Such a perspective helps people look further forward into possible futures (Schultz & Hernes, 2013).

At the same time, leaders must avoid being captured by that history. They must see history as the interplay of continuity and change and recognize how best to balance these forces in a given context. They need insight about how today's major global developments—such as the global marketplace, the information revolution, climate change, clashes over immigration, nationalist populism, the push and counterpush for democratization and human rights, and attention to multiculturalism—affect their organizations. They also must have an intimate knowledge of their organizations in order to make sense of the organizations in relation to the broader context (Bolman & Deal, 2013). ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Leaders' understanding of the external and internal context of their organizations is important for recognizing emergent strategies, understanding how strategic planning might help their organizations, tailoring the process to the organizations' circumstances, negotiating the initial agreement, framing issues effectively, developing viable strategies for addressing them, and getting those strategies adopted and implemented. The leaders in each of our three cases were very attentive to their organization's internal and external contexts, their historical roots, and the possibilities for change presented by the context.

External and internal organizational assessments, stakeholder analyses, and special studies all are designed to attune strategic planning participants to important specifics of the context within which the organization exists. Those explorations typically occur after the process has started. Leaders also need some understanding of the context before the process begins in order to know when the time is right to initiate strategic planning, how to organize it, and how to promote it.

When an organization is beset by an immediate crisis or severe internal conflicts, immediate actions—for example, responding to an opportunity, curtailing a service, or reassigning people—may be needed. At the same time, crisis and conflict may help leaders make the case that strategic planning is urgently needed if the organization is to thrive because of its participatory nature, future orientation, and focus on the common good.

Leaders can stay attuned to the organization's external and internal environment through personal contacts and observation, attention to diverse media, continuing education, use of the organization's monitoring systems, and reflection (Kroll, 2013). Leaders at the top of an organization or organizational unit should ensure that accurate information is flowing upward from frontline experts who typically know important things about the environment that top managers do not.

Leaders should be especially attentive to the possibilities for rather dramatic strategic change. Pressures and opportunities for significant

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change can come from the political context (for example, a change of government), social context (for example, a demographic shift), economic context (for example, loss of a funding stream), technological context (for example, opportunities and threats embedded in ICT or social media), or ecological context (for example, a natural or man-made disaster). Additionally, major shifts within the organization—for example, an anticipated wave of retirements—can signal the need for rethinking.

Organizational strategies typically remain stable over reasonably long periods and then can suddenly change all at once in response to cumulative changes in their environments (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009; Ferlie & Ongaro, 2015). Leaders should be in touch with the possibilities for significant change in order to know whether strategic planning should be used to help formulate major intended strategy changes—typically through raising the visibility and priority of particular strategies already present in nascent form—or whether it will be primarily a tool to program improvements in stable strategies. Without some intuitive sense of whether big or small changes are in the cards, leaders may raise hopes for big changes when they are not possible or waste time on programming strategies when drastic change is needed.

UNDERSTANDING THE PEOPLE INVOLVED, INCLUDING ONESELF Understanding oneself and others is particularly important for developing the strength of character and insight that invigorates leadership and increases the chances that strategic planning and implementation will help the organization. Leaders should seek to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the people who are or should be involved in strategic planning and implementation, including themselves. Perhaps the most important strength is a passion for fulfilling the organization's mission and contributing to the well-being of multiple stakeholders. Yet this strength must be coupled with a degree of humility and open-mindedness if a leader is to avoid the descent into self-righteousness and rigidity (Crosby & Bryson,

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2005).

In addition, personal strengths include professional or technical competencies, interpersonal skills and networks, and a feel for complexity—that is, the ability to view the organization from multiple perspectives and choose from a repertoire of appropriate behaviors (Bolman & Deal, 2013). In strategic planning, the personal qualities of moral integrity, self-efficacy, compassion, and courage are especially important in helping participants develop the trust and determination to take risks, explore difficult issues and new strategies, and pursue what might be unpopular causes.

Additional personal leadership assets include a sense of humor, awareness of one's habitual ways of learning and interacting with people, commitment to continual learning, power and authority, supportive personal networks, ability to balance competing demands, and awareness of how leadership is affected by one's location in major social hierarchies (based on race/ethnicity, class, gender, age, religion, physical ability, and the like). Of these, a sense of humor, supportive networks, and balance may be especially important for the persistence and resilience needed to cope with the often protracted ups and downs of a strategic planning effort.

Helpful approaches to understanding oneself and others range from formal assessments in leadership development programs to deep study and reflection to informal storytelling (Crosby, 2017). Feedback from others, especially skilled coaches and mentors, is often highly useful. The process of understanding oneself and others can be used to establish personal development plans, choose team members, and gear messages and processes to different styles of learning and interacting.

Effective strategic thinking, acting, and learning seem to depend a great deal on intuition, creativity, and pattern recognition, none of which can be programmed, though they may be recognized, facilitated, and encouraged (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009). Thus, finding people who are effective strategists is not an exact science; gathering information about potential leaders from a variety of sources and betting on the basis of past performance may be the most

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reliable approach.

SPONSORING THE PROCESS Process sponsors typically are top positional leaders. They have enough prestige, power, and authority to commit the organization to undertaking strategic planning and to hold people accountable for doing so. Sponsors are not necessarily involved in the day-to-day details of making strategic planning work—the champions do that— but they do set the stage for success and pay careful attention to the progress of the process. They have a vested interest in a successful outcome and do what they can to make sure it happens. They also typically are important sources of knowledge about key strategic issues and effective strategies for addressing them. The information they have about the organization and its environment is invaluable. They also are likely to be especially knowledgeable about how to fit the process to key decision points so that strategic planning dialogue and discussion can inform decisions in the relevant arenas. As Kelman (2005) points out, when organizations are under pressure to change, some people within the organization may already be discontent with the status quo and thinking strategically about needed changes, but these latent supporters for strategic planning may be activated only when a powerful sponsor endorses the change process.

Sponsorship varied in the cases featured in this book. In the City of Minneapolis, the City Coordinator's Office was the initial sponsor, but the city council and mayor quickly signed on after the election. MEDA's board and Gary Cunningham, the president and CEO, acted as sponsors of the strategic planning process. The International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) board was the sponsor of the organization's 2017–2022 strategic planning process.

Leaders interested in sponsoring a strategic planning process should consider the following guidelines:

1. Articulate the purpose and importance of the strategic planning effort. Many participants will need some convincing about why the organization should undertake a strategic planning effort. Leaders can start by outlining their views of the organization's past,

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present, and future. They should invoke powerful organizational symbols as they link the strategic planning effort to the organization's mission and values and to the best aspects of the organization's culture (Bolman & Deal, 2013; Schein, 2016). They also can highlight core organizational competencies, key changes in the environment, significant strategic issues that the organization faces or will face, the importance of creating public value, possible actions the organization will need to consider, and the likely consequences of failure to engage in strategic planning.

Based on this sketch, leaders should outline in general how they want the organization to engage in strategic planning and what they hope the outcomes and benefits of doing so will be. Emphasizing the importance and potential payoffs of the strategic planning effort is vital not only at the outset but also at points along the way when enthusiasm is dwindling and spirits need to be raised and energies restored.

2. Commit necessary resources—time, money, energy, legitimacy— to the effort. A crucial way of making the process real is through allocating resources to it. Nothing will demonstrate leaders' seriousness (or lack thereof) about strategic planning more than that.

3. Emphasize at the beginning and at critical points that action and change will result. This is another crucial way of making the process real for participants and getting them to take it seriously. If they see that strategic planning has real consequences, they will invest the necessary effort in the process.

4. Encourage and reward creative thinking, constructive debate, and multiple sources of input and insight. Sponsors should emphasize the importance of creativity, constructive debate, and the value of strategically significant ideas no matter their origin. They should identify the people who are ready to change, authorize champions, and reward those who supply creative ideas. Otherwise, the leaders will be viewed as hypocrites and important sources of energy and new ideas and information will be cut off.

Encouraging constructive debate and deliberation also means

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anticipating where conflicts might develop and thinking about how those conflicts might be addressed productively. In particular, leaders must think about which conflicts can be addressed within the existing rules of the game and which can be managed effectively only if the rules of the game are changed.

In an organization in which past strategic planning efforts have failed, coleaders and followers are likely to require signals from sponsors that this time will be different.

5. Be aware of the possible need for outside consultants. Outside consultants can help design the process, facilitate aspects of it, do various studies, or perform other tasks. It is a sign of strength to ask (and pay) for help when you need it. In the MEDA case, Gary Cunningham used the performance management class he cotaught with John Bryson to help understand MEDA better. Shortly thereafter, he used volunteer consulting staff from Accenture's Minneapolis office to help with the strategic planning effort. As the strategy change process has proceeded, he has hired consultants to help with a variety of tasks, including facilitation, team building, financial analyses, ICT development, and so on.

6. Be willing to exercise power and authority to keep the process on track. Strategic planning is inherently prone to break down (Bryson & Roering, 1988, 1989). For one thing, effective strategic planning is a nonroutine kind of activity and, as March and Simon (1958, p. 185) pointed out, there is a sort of “Gresham's Law of Planning” at work in organizations: “Daily routine drives out planning.” Sponsors use their authority to provide continuous support for change to the point that enough momentum is built that important tipping points are passed and desired changes take on a life of their own and become a part of the organization's culture (Kelman, 2005).

Another danger with strategic planning is that people are likely to fight or flee whenever they are asked to deal with tough issues or failing strategies, serious conflicts, or significant changes. Sponsors have a key role to play in keeping the process going through the difficult patches; they can provide a holding environment (Heifetz,

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Linsky, & Grashow, 2009) that provides a measure of safety for participants as they are encouraged to face unpleasant challenges or dilemmas.

CHAMPIONING THE PROCESS The champions are the people who have primary responsibility for managing the strategic planning process day to day. They are the ones who keep track of progress and also pay attention to all the details. They model the kind of behavior they hope to get from other participants: reasoned, diligent, committed, enthusiastic, and good- spirited pursuit of the common good. They are the cheerleaders who, along with the sponsors, keep the process on track and push, encourage, and cajole the strategic planning team and other key participants through any difficult spots. Champions, especially, need the interpersonal skills and feel for complexity noted earlier. Sometimes, it is they who actually see the need for strategic planning and must convince sponsors to endorse the process. Sometimes the sponsors and champions are the same people, but usually they are not.

Champions should keep the following guidelines in mind:

1. Keep strategic planning high on people's agendas. Blocking out time in people's calendars is one way to gather participants together and focus their attention. Another is calling on sponsors to periodically emphasize the importance of the process. Yet another is to publish updates on the process (e.g., in special memoranda, regular newsletters, vodcasts, or social media posts). One more way is to circulate think pieces, special reports, podcasts, vodcasts, or Internet links that encourage strategic thought and action. By whatever means, champions should remind everyone on a regular basis that something good will come from getting together to talk about what is important and then doing something about it.

2. Attend to the process without promoting specific solutions. Champions are far more likely to gain people's participation and constructive involvement if they are seen as advocates for the process rather than for specific solutions. If the champions are

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seen as committed partisans of specific solutions, then other participants may boycott or torpedo the process rather than seek to find mutually agreeable strategies to address key issues.

3. Think about what has to come together (people, tasks, information, reports) at or before key decision points. In strategy formulation and strategic planning, time is not linear; instead, it involves important junctures (Albert, 2013). The best champions think like theatre directors, orchestrators, choreographers, or playwrights. They think about stage setting, themes, acts and scenes, and actors and audiences and how to get the right people with the right information on stage at the right time—and then get them off the stage.

4. Organize time, space, materials, and participation needed for the process to succeed. Without attention to the details of the process, its benefits simply will not be achieved. The trivialities of the process matter a great deal—in fact, they are not trivial at all. Effective champions and their assistants arrange the retreats, book the rooms, make sure any necessary supplies and equipment are handy, send out the meeting notices, distribute the briefing papers and minutes, maintain relevant social networking and collaborative working websites, oversee the production details of draft and final plans, and keep track of the work program.

5. Pay attention to the language used to describe strategic planning and implementation. One function of strategic planning is to provide a vocabulary and format that allows people to share views and deliberate about what is fundamental for the organization. At various points in the process, therefore, participants are likely to wonder about the meaning of particular planning concepts and how they relate to substantive matters of concern. An introduction to strategic planning, often in a retreat setting, is a useful way to begin developing a common vocabulary.

As the process proceeds further, at various points the discussion will almost invariably focus anew on the meaning of planning concepts (e.g., mission, vision, goals, issues, strategies). Champions should be prepared to discuss similarities and

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differences among various concepts and how they do or do not relate to substantive concerns, products, and outcomes. The specific vocabulary a group uses to label things does not matter as much as development of a shared understanding of what things mean.

6. Keep rallying participants and pushing the process along. Successful strategic planning processes can vary from a few weeks or months to two or more years depending on the kind of organization (or entity) and the issues involved. Some processes must fail one or more times before they succeed. Some never succeed. Champions should keep the faith and push until the process does succeed or until it is clear that it will fail and there is no point in continuing. At the same time, it is important to remember that strategic planning is likely to feel like a failure in the middle. Champions must keep pushing to help the strategic planning team and organization move through any feels-like- failure stage toward success.

Rallying the troops will be easier if they can show some early wins and continued small (and occasionally big) wins along the way (Kelman, 2005). Remember that strategic action usually should not wait until the strategic planning process is complete.

7. Develop champions throughout the organization. A champion in chief may oversee the entire strategic planning process, but he or she should seek out champions throughout the organization (collaboration, community) to oversee parts of the process—for example, by chairing task forces or working groups. Otherwise, the central champion can be in danger of burning out and in a position of having no one else to take over if he or she has to drop out of the process. Having multiple champions is especially important when the planning is in multiorganizational or community settings (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015). Having multiple champions beyond the U.S. GAO team was especially important in the INTOSAI strategic planning case, given how many different U.N.-related organizations and governments were involved.

8. Be sensitive to power differences. Differences in status, authority,

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and access to resources are likely to be pronounced in more hierarchical organizations such as the City of Minneapolis and within inclusive collaborations such as INTOSAI. In the Minneapolis case, the champions were mindful that elected officials would ultimately determine the fate of the plan, whereas in the INTOSAI case, the champions knew the success of the plan would depend greatly on the senior staffs of the member countries' supreme audit institutions. In both the Minneapolis and INTOSAI cases, the champions used inclusive structures such as task forces and cross-boundary working groups to help balance the power of the highest-ranking officials. The City of Minneapolis staff—at the direction of the mayor and city council—also used community engagement methods that in effect helped balance the power of the officials but also increased the legitimacy of the process.

FACILITATING THE PROCESS Process facilitators are often helpful in moving a strategic planning process along because of their group process skills, the attention they can give to structuring and managing group interactions, and the likelihood that they have no stake in the substantive outcomes of the process, particularly if they are outsiders (Chrislip, 2002; Schwarz, 2017). The presence of a facilitator means that champions can be free to participate in substantive discussions without having to worry too much about managing the group process. A skilled facilitator also can help build trust, interpersonal skills, and conflict management ability in a group. Building trust is important because the members of a strategic planning team often come from various parts of the organization and have never worked together before, let alone on fundamental strategic questions facing the organization.

Skilled facilitation usually depends on the establishment of a successful partnership among facilitators, sponsors, and champions. Inside facilitators may have less preparation work to do but may not be viewed as unbiased by process participants. Outside facilitators may be seen as impartial but will have a lot of work to do to be adequately knowledgeable. In either case, to do their work well,

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facilitators must know a great deal about the organization and its politics, issues, culture, and secrets. They must have the trust of the sponsors and champions, know the lay of the land, and demonstrate their ability to further the strategic planning effort. Their efforts will be thwarted, however, unless the sponsors and champions commit themselves to working closely with the facilitators. The three usually form the core group that moves the process forward with the help of the strategic planning team that is part of most planning efforts.

Facilitators should come to any process with a well-developed set of group process skills (Johnson & Johnson, 2016; Schwarz, 2017). The initiators of a complex strategic planning process may wish to provide facilitator training for some staff and community participants so that (1) the facilitation tasks can be widely shared and (2) the organization or community will have numerous members with valuable group process skills.

Strategic planning facilitators should consider following these guidelines:

1. Know the strategic planning process and explain how it works at the beginning and at many points along the way. Participants can easily get lost as they proceed through the planning process. Facilitators play a key role throughout in explaining to participants where they are, where they can head, and how they might get there.

2. Tailor the process to the organization and the groups involved. Planning processes must be fit to the unique circumstances in which organizations (initiatives, programs, collaborations, communities) and groups find themselves. Facilitators, along with sponsors and champions, are the ones who are in the best position to design the process so that it fits the organization, its circumstances, and the participants. Facilitators must pay careful attention to both the tasks of strategic planning and the socioemotional maintenance of the groups and teams involved in the process (Johnson & Johnson, 2016).

3. Convey a sense of humor and enthusiasm for the process and help groups get unstuck. Strategic planning can be alternately tension ridden and tedious. Good facilitators can help manage and relieve

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both. They also can help groups confront the difficulties that arise over the course of a strategic planning process. By helping groups reframe their situations imaginatively, invent new options, channel conflict constructively, and tap hidden sources of courage, hope, and optimism, facilitators can provide or find important resources to help groups move forward (Bolman & Deal, 2013; Schwarz, 2017).

4. Ensure that participants rather than the facilitators are doing the work. Skilled facilitators give participants many chances to interact in small groups, to produce idea-covered flip chart sheets and walls, stakeholder diagrams, strategy maps, reports, and presentations.

5. Press groups toward action and the assignment of responsibility for specific actions. Part of keeping the process moving is to make sure that participants engage in timely action. If the whole process is devoted entirely to thinking and strategizing without taking action, people will quickly quit participating. Facilitators should emphasize that not all of the thinking has to take place before any of the acting can occur. Further, much effective learning only occurs in the aftermath of action. Whenever useful and wise actions become apparent—as a result of attention to mission and mandates, stakeholder analyses, SWOC/T analyses, strategic issue identification, and various strategizing efforts—they should be taken as long as they do not jeopardize possible choices that decision makers might want to make in the future.

Often important strategies can emerge only by taking small steps and using adaptive learning to figure things out as one goes along. Huxham and Vangen (2005) point out that especially in multiorganization collaborations, participants may need to jointly undertake some small steps in order to build the trust and sense of shared purpose that are necessary for the collaboration to function effectively.

Pushing people toward action does raise the danger of inducing premature closure. People may act on what is immediately at hand without thinking creatively about other options or simply waiting

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until the time is right. A good facilitator will have a well-developed intuitive sense about when to push for action and when to hold back.

6. Congratulate people whenever possible. In our experience, most people in most organizations suffer from chronic—and sometimes acute—positive reinforcement deprivation. Yet people respond very favorably to kind words and praise from people who are important to them. Indeed, many excellently managed organizations are known for the praise and emotional support they provide their employees (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). Facilitators are in an excellent position to congratulate people and say good things about them in a genuine and natural way.

FOSTERING COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP (AND FOLLOWERSHIP) When strategic planning is successful for public and nonprofit organizations, it is a collective achievement. Many people contribute to its success, sometimes by leading, other times by following. Collective leadership may be fostered through the following approaches:

1. Rely on teams. The team is the basic vehicle for furthering strategic planning. Champions, in particular, will find that much of their time will be focused on making sure strategic planning teams or task forces perform well and make effective contributions. Because no one person can have all the relevant qualitative or quantitative information, forming a team is one way to increase the information available for strategic planning. Additionally, a strategic plan and intended strategies will need the support of a critical coalition of internal and external stakeholders when they are adopted and during implementation. A wisely constructed strategic planning team or teams can provide the initial basis for such a coalition, and team members can do much of the work leading to formation of the necessary coalition.

2. Team leaders naturally must focus on the accomplishment of team goals or tasks, but they also must attend to individual team

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members' needs and consciously promote group cohesion (Johnson & Johnson, 2016). Team leadership balances direction, mentoring, and facilitation so that everyone can make useful contributions. Leaders should help team members:

Communicate effectively face to face and at a distance (including promotion of active listening, dialogue, and other conflict management methods)

Balance unity around a shared purpose with diversity of views and skills

Define team mission, goals, norms, and roles

Establish an atmosphere of trust

Foster group creativity and sound decision making

Obtain necessary resources

Develop leadership and followership competencies

Celebrate achievement and overcome adversity

Although the role of team leaders typically receives attention in books like this one, we also want to highlight follower roles. Active, committed followers play vital roles in keeping leaders in check and on track, contributing knowledge and ideas, promoting change, and carrying out and shaping agreed-upon tasks (Chaleff, 2009; Riggio, Chaleff, & Lipman-Blumen, 2008).

3. Focus on network and coalition development. Coalitions basically organize around ideas and interests that allow people to see that they can achieve together what they could not separately. The way issues, goals, or visions—and strategies for achieving them—are framed will structure how stakeholders interpret their interests, how they assess the costs and benefits of joining a coalition, and the form and content of winning and losing arguments. Therefore, leaders should use the insights gained from various stakeholder analysis exercises to gain a sense of where stakeholders' interests overlap and how issues, goals, visions, and strategies could be framed to draw significant support from key stakeholders. The worldview that public, nonprofit, and community leaders should

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seek is one likely to evoke widely shared notions of what constitutes the public interest and the common good (Bryson, Cunningham, & Lokkesmoe, 2002; Chrislip & O'Malley, 2013; Crosby & Bryson, 2005).

4. A strategic plan's or strategy's political acceptability to key stakeholders is enhanced as the benefits of adopting and implementing it increase and the costs of doing so diminish. Issues with the greatest potential benefit for key stakeholders are likely to get on the agenda, and those that cost key stakeholders the least are the ones likely to receive the most consideration. Moreover, any proposal likely to be adopted and implemented will be a carefully tailored response to specific circumstances, rather than an off-the-shelf solution imported from somewhere else. Typically, not every member of a winning coalition will agree on every specific aspect of an entire plan or set of strategies, and that is okay.

5. Leaders should recognize that coalition development depends on following many of the same guidelines that help develop effective teams. In particular, coalitions are probably more likely to be formed if organizers employ strategies for valuing the diversity of coalition members and their various ideas and special gifts. Acquiring the necessary resources is also vital to coalition development, and the coalition itself can become a major source of resources for implementing a strategic planning process. Rewarding and celebrating collective achievements and sharing credit for them broadly are also likely to help.

In a broader sense, public leaders should work to build a sense of community—that is, a sense of relationship, mutual empowerment, and common purpose—within and beyond their organizations. This is desirable because so many of the problems that public and nonprofit organizations are called on to address require multiorganizational, or community, responses. Community may be tied to a specific place or to a community of interest, an interorganizational network that often transcends geographic and political boundaries and is designed to address transorganizational problems.

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6. Make leadership and followership development an explicit strategy. Many organizations invest in leadership development but may not directly tie leadership development to the organization's strategic change processes. Community leadership programs such as those conducted by university extension services are often intended to help communities pursue new visions and regenerate themselves (Scheffert, Horntvedt, & Hoelting, 2011). We don't know of followership development programs though suggestions abound (Riggio et al., 2008). Some elements of good followership may be included in organizations' orientation programs or in citizen engagement processes (Nabatchi & Leighninger, 2015).

7. Establish specific mechanisms for sharing power, responsibility, and accountability. Authority is not usually shared by policymaking bodies or chief executives—and often cannot by law— but that does not mean power, responsibility, and accountability cannot be shared. Doing so can foster participation, trigger information and resource flows, and help build commitment to plans and strategies and their implementation. Strategic planning teams, strategic issue task forces, and implementation teams are typical vehicles for sharing power. Action plans should spread out responsibilities while also establishing clear accountability.

USING DIALOGUE AND DELIBERATION TO CREATE A MEANINGFUL PROCESS Creating and communicating meaning is the work of visionary leadership. Sometimes it results in a vision of success for the organization (initiative, program, collaboration, community), but in the present discussion, visioning covers a broader range of outcomes; it is a verb more than a noun. Leaders become visionary when they play a vital role in interpreting current reality (often in light of the past), fostering a collective group mission, articulating desirable strategies, and shaping a collective sense of the future (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Scharmer, 2016). Furthermore, visionary leaders must understand important aspects of their own and others' internal worlds, and they must also grasp the meaning of related external

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worlds.

As truth tellers and direction givers, they help people make sense of experience, and they offer guidance for answering the following questions: What's going on here? Where are we heading? What traditions should we preserve? And how will things look when we get there? They frame and shape the perceived context for action, and they manage important stakeholders' perceptions of the organization, its strategies, and their effects (Fairhurst, 2010; Hill & Lynn, 2009). In order to foster change, particularly major change, they become skilled in the following methods of creating and communicating new meanings:

1. Understand the design and use of forums. Forums are the basic settings humans use to create shared meaning through dialogue and deliberation (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). Much of the work of strategic planning takes place in forums, where fairly free-flowing consideration of ideas and views can occur before proposals are developed for adoption and action in decision-making arenas. The tasks of sponsoring, championing, and facilitating strategic planning are primarily performed in forums. Strategic planning retreats, team meetings, task force meetings, focus groups, strategic planning newsletters and Internet notices, conference calls, e-mail and social networking exchanges, and strategic plans themselves—when used as educational devices—are all examples of the use of forums. These forums can be used to help develop a shared understanding about what the organization is, what it does or should do, and why.

2. Seize opportunities to be interpreters and direction givers in areas of uncertainty and difficulty. Leadership opportunities expand in times of difficulty, confusion, and crisis, when old approaches clearly are not working, and when people are searching for meaningful accounts of what has happened and what can be done about it (Boin, ‘t Hart, Stern, & Sundelius, 2016; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015). Focusing on strategic issues or failing strategies therefore provides opportunities for exercising leadership, for inspiring and mobilizing others to figure out what might be done to improve the organization's performance in the eyes of key stakeholders.

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Turning dangers, threats, and crises into manageable challenges is an important task for visionary leaders. Doing so not only promotes optimism and resilience but also is more likely to free up the necessary thinking, resources, and energy to confront the challenges successfully. Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges saw the strategic planning process as a way of advancing the cause of equity that was part of her winning campaign platform. The MEDA board of directors asked Gary Cunningham to take MEDA “to the next level.” INTOSAI leaders saw their strategic planning process as a way of helping advance the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals.

3. Reveal and name real needs and real conditions. New meaning unfolds as leaders encourage people to see the “real” situation and its portents. To illuminate “real” conditions, leaders may use observation and intuition as well as integrative and systems thinking (Heifetz, Linsky, & Grashow, 2009; Mintzberg et al., 2009). They formally or informally scan their environment, consider multiple perspectives, and discern the patterns emerging from local conditions or they accept patterns and issues identified by other people, such as pollsters or planners.

Simply articulating these patterns publicly and convincingly can be an act of revelation. However, leaders cannot just delineate emerging patterns and issues; they must also explain them (Scharmer, 2016). They must relate what they see to their knowledge of societal systems and to people's experience. Going further, leaders alert followers to the need for action by helping clarify the gaps or contradictions between aspirations and current realities.

4. Help coleaders and followers frame and reframe issues and strategies. In revealing and explaining real conditions, leaders are laying the groundwork for framing and reframing issues facing the organization and strategies for addressing them (Bolman & Deal, 2013; Stone, 2011). The framing process consists of naming, characterizing, and explaining the issue, opening the door to alternative ways of addressing it, and suggesting outcomes. The reframing process involves breaking with old ways of viewing an issue or strategy and developing a new appreciation of it

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(Fairhurst, 2010). As noted earlier, framing and reframing should be connected to stakeholder views and interests.

5. Offer compelling visions of the future. Leaders convey shared visions through stories rooted in shared history yet focused on the future. These stories link people's experience of the present (cognitions), what they may do about the situation (behaviors), and what they may expect to happen as a result (consequences), including the preservation or enhancement of public value; in other words, the stories help people grasp desirable and potentially real futures (Boal & Schultz, 2007). Effective stories are rich with metaphors that make sense of people's experience, are comprehensive yet open-ended, and impel people toward union or common ground. Leaders transmit their own belief in their visionary stories through vivid, energetic, optimistic language (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). To be effective, the visions and the symbols they incorporate should be enacted through organizational rituals that honor what is to be preserved from the past, celebrate new activities, and leave behind (and even mourn) what is to be discarded (Bolman & Deal, 2013).

6. Champion new and improved ideas for dealing with strategic issues. Championing ideas for addressing issues is different from championing the process of strategic planning but is nonetheless important. Astute leaders gather ideas from many sources (Mintzberg et al., 2009). Within organizations and political communities, they foster an atmosphere in which innovative approaches flourish. Acting in the mode of Schön's reflective practitioner (1984), these leaders champion improved ideas, those that have emerged from practice and have been refined by critical reflection, including ethical analysis. In analyzing ideas, leaders keep strategic planning participants focused on the important outcomes they seek.

7. Articulate desired actions and expected consequences. Pragmatic visionary leaders ensure that actions and consequences are an integral part of organizational, program, collaboration, or community visions, missions, and strategies. These naturally will become more detailed as implementation proceeds (Sandfort &

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Moulton, 2015) and should include what the organization, program, collaboration, or community will stop doing. Crises, however, can necessitate reversing this sequence. When old behaviors are not working and disaster is imminent, followers may wish for leaders to prescribe new behaviors and may be willing to try those behaviors even before they can develop a clear vision of the outcome (Boal & Bryson, 1987). At some point, though, leaders must link the recommended actions to organizational or communal purposes (Boin et al., 2016).

MAKING AND IMPLEMENTING DECISIONS IN ARENAS Public and nonprofit leaders are also required to be political leaders— partly because all organizations have their political aspects (Bolman & Deal, 2013) and partly because public and nonprofit organizations are inherently involved in politicized decision making much of the time. The key to success, and the heart of political leadership, is understanding how intergroup power relationships shape decision making and implementation outcomes. Particularly important is understanding how to affect outcomes by having some things never come up for a decision. Specifically, political leaders must undertake the following responsibilities:

1. Understand the design and use of arenas. Politically astute leaders must be skilled in designing and using formal and informal arenas, the basic settings for making decisions about which policies, programs, and projects will be adopted and implemented (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). For government organizations, these settings may be legislative, executive, or administrative. For nonprofit organizations, internal arenas will include the board and management meetings; they too likely will be affected by a variety of government arenas. Collaborations and communities will be dependent on many relevant settings. A collaboration may include its own policy-making body but may also depend on decisions by boards of member organizations and be affected by various other government arenas. It is in arenas that the products of forums—

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such as strategic plans and important aspects of strategies—are adopted as is, altered, or rejected.

A major issue in any strategic planning process is how to sequence the move from planning forums, particularly planning team meetings that include key decision makers, to decision-making arenas. A large fraction of the necessary strategic thinking will occur as part of the dialogue and deliberation in forums. Once viable proposals have been worked out, they can move to arenas for any necessary revisions, adoption, and implementation—or else rejection. At a minimum, managing the transition from forums to arenas depends on figuring out when key decision points will occur and then designing the planning process to fit those points in such a way that decisions in arenas can be influenced constructively by the work done in forums.

A further issue is how to handle any residual conflicts or disputes that may arise during implementation. Some advance thinking, therefore, is almost always in order about how these residual or subsidiary conflicts might be handled constructively, either in arenas or through the use of formal or informal courts.

2. Mediate and shape conflict within and among stakeholders. Conflict, or at least recognizable differences, are necessary if people are to be offered real choices in arenas and if decision makers are to understand the choices and their consequences (Bryant, 2015; Thompson, 2014). Further, political leaders must possess transactional skills for dealing with followers, other leaders, and various key stakeholders who have conflicting agendas. To forge winning coalitions, they must bargain and negotiate, inventing options for mutual gain so that they can trade things of value that they control for others' support (Thompson, 2014).

3. Understand the dynamics of political influence and how to target resources appropriately. The first requirement for influencing political decision making may be knowing whom to influence. Who controls the agenda of the relevant decision-making body—a city council, a board of directors, or some other group? Who chairs the group and any relevant committees? The next requirement is

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knowing how to influence. What forms of providing information, lobbying, vote trading, arm twisting, and so on are acceptable? Should change advocates try to alter the composition of the decision-making bodies? Given the available time, energy, and other resources, how might they best be spent? Essentially, political leaders manipulate the costs and benefits of actions, so supporters are more motivated to act in desired directions and opponents are less motivated to resist.

Leaders can affect outcomes in arenas dramatically by agenda control—influencing what items come up for decision in the first place and which do not, thereby becoming a nondecision in the latter case (Bachrach & Baratz, 1962; Crosby & Bryson, 2005). Decision outcomes also can be affected by strategic voting in which participants use their knowledge of voting rules and manipulation of their vote resources to steer outcomes in directions they favor. Issue framing—reshaping the way issues are viewed—also can have dramatic effects on how people vote (Riker, 1986).

4. Build winning, sustainable coalitions. For strategic planning to be effective, a coalition of support must be built for the process and its outcomes. The coalition in place must be strong enough to adopt intended strategies and to defend them during implementation. Finding ideas (visions, goals, strategies) that people can support that further their interests is a large part of the process, but so is making deals in which something is traded in exchange for that support.

5. Avoid bureaucratic imprisonment. Political leaders in government, particularly, may find their ability to make and implement needed decisions severely constrained by the bureaucracies in which they serve (Rainey, 2014). Those bureaucracies usually have intricate institutionalized rules and procedures and entrenched personnel that hamper any kind of change. Leaders committed to change must continually challenge the rules or else find their way around them (deHart-Davis, 2017). Whenever possible, they should try to win over members of the bureaucracy—for example, by appealing to shared goals—or by

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enlisting insiders distressed by the inhibiting aspects of rules. When necessary, they should appeal over the heads of resistant bureaucrats to high-level decision makers or to key external stakeholders (Hill & Lynn, 2009; Kouzes & Posner, 2017).

ENFORCING PRINCIPLES AND NORMS, SETTLING DISPUTES, AND MANAGING RESIDUAL CONFLICTS The decisions made in arenas are unlikely to cover all of the details and difficulties that may come up during implementation. These residual or subsidiary conflicts must be handled constructively, either in other arenas or through the use of formal or informal courts, both to address the difficulty at hand and to reinforce or change important norms governing the organization. At times, leaders may have to reckon with the possibility that other people will use courts outside the organization or grievance processes (a more informal court) inside the organization to resist or modify planned changes. The following tasks are vital to exercising ethical leadership.

1. Understand the design and use of formal and informal courts. Courts operate whenever two actors having a conflict rely on a third party (leader, manager, facilitator, mediator, arbitrator, judge) to help them address it. Managing conflict and settling disputes not only takes care of the issue at hand but also reinforces the important societal or organizational norms used to handle it. Leaders must be skilled in the design and use of formal and informal courts; the settings for enforcing ethical principles, constitutions, and laws; and managing residual conflicts and settling disputes (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). Formal courts theoretically provide the ultimate social sanctions for conduct mandated or promoted through formal policy-making arenas, but in practice, the informal court of public opinion can be even more powerful (Whittington, Kelemen, & Caldeira, 2010).

2. Foster organizational (initiative, program, collaboration, community) integrity and educate others about ethics,

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constitutions, laws, and norms. In nurturing public organizations, collaborations, and communities that advance the common good, leaders must adopt practices and systems that align collective actions with espoused principles and public values (Bozeman & Johnson, 2015; Hill & Lynn, 2009). Such leaders make a public commitment to ethical principles and then manifest them in their own behavior. They involve stakeholders in ethical analysis and decision making, inculcate a sense of personal responsibility in followers, and reward ethical behavior.

3. Apply constitutions, laws, and norms to specific cases. Constitutions are usually broad frameworks establishing basic organizational purposes, structures, and procedures. Laws, though much more narrowly drawn, still typically apply to broad classes of people or actions; moreover, they may emerge from the legislative process containing purposeful omissions and generalities that were necessary to obtain enough votes for passage (Hill & Lynn, 2009). Therefore, both constitutions and laws require authoritative interpretation as they are applied to specific cases. In the U.S. judicial system, judges, jurors, and attorneys—and even interest groups filing amicus curiae briefs—all contribute to that authoritative interpretation. Outside the formal courts, leaders typically must apply norms rather than laws.

4. Adapt constitutions, laws, and norms to changing times. Judicial principles endure even as the conditions that prompted them and the people who created them change dramatically. Sometimes public leaders are able to reshape the law to current needs by working in legislative, executive, or administrative arenas; often, however, leaders must ask formal courts to mandate a change because vested interests that tend to oppose change hold sway over the executive and legislative branches (Whittington et al., 2010). In other words, sometimes strategic issues involve the need to change the rules for making rules (Hill & Hupe, 2014) (see Figure 6.1).

5. Resolve conflicts among constitutions, laws, and norms. Ethical leaders working through the courts must find legitimate bases for deciding among conflicting principles. This may mean relying on judicial enforcement or on reconciliation of constitutions, laws,

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and norms. Conflict management and dispute resolution methods typically emphasize the desirability of finding principles or norms that all can support as legitimate guides for settling disputes (Fisher & Ury, 2011; Thompson, 2014). Obviously, these principles and norms should be applied in such a way that the public interest is served and the common good is advanced.

There are several good tests for discerning whether this is achieved. One is to ask whether respect for future generations is implied in an outcome. Another is to explore whether important values, principles, and interests are effectively accommodated. And a third is see whether public and nonprofit leaders are acting as stewards of the vulnerable, dependent, and politically inarticulate —meaning those most likely to be left out of deliberations (Lewis & Gilman, 2012).

SUMMARY: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER AND PREPARING FOR ONGOING STRATEGIC CHANGE The tasks of leadership for strategic planning are complex and many. Unless the organization is very small, no single person or group can perform them all. Effective strategic planning is a collective achievement, typically involving sponsors, champions, facilitators, teams, task forces, and others in various ways at various times. Over the course of a strategy change cycle, leaders of many different kinds must put together the elements we have described in such a way that enhances organizational, program, collaboration, or community effectiveness—thereby creating public value and making some important part of the world noticeably better.

Personal and collective reflection and deliberation are warranted at many points along the way to consider whether the right people are in the right roles at the right time; whether the content and pace of change, and the approach to it, should be modified; what has been accomplished so far; and what remains to be done. By maintaining awareness of progress, celebrating resilience in the face of setbacks,

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publicizing the tangible and intangible benefits of the planning process, and continually developing collective leadership and followership, leaders can help their organizations, collaborations, and communities become places in which strategic thinking, acting, and learning simply become the way things are done.

In short, for strategic planning and management to be effective, caring, and committed leadership and followership are essential. As Dr. Seuss (1971, p. 52) points out in The Lorax:

UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

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CHAPTER TWELVE Getting Started with Strategic Planning

With hope it is, hope that can never die,

Effort, and expectation, and desire,

And something ever more about to be. —William Wordsworth, The Prelude

Previous chapters presented an overview of strategic planning, an introduction to the Strategy Change Cycle, detailed guidance on working through the process, and a discussion of the leadership roles in strategic planning. This chapter will present a number of guidelines on how public and nonprofit organizations and communities interested in strategic planning might proceed with the process.

THE THREE EXAMPLES REVISITED How have our three examples—one government organization, one nonprofit organization, and one major international collaboration— fared with strategic planning? Each has achieved notable successes, and each also has encountered challenges to its ability to think, act, and learn strategically. Exhibits 12.1 12.2, and 12.3, respectively, provide brief updates on the City of Minneapolis, the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA), and the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) efforts.

Exhibit 12.1. The City of Minneapolis Changes Under the 2014–2017 Strategic Plan. Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges in particular has emphasized the One Minneapolis goal (see Exhibit 7.1), but a strong majority of the

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council also supports the goal. As Hodges (2017; Belz, 2017) described it in her 2017 State of the City Address, “One Minneapolis is a city that works for everyone, and a city where everyone contributes to making it work for everyone else.”

Several changes have occurred under Hodges and the new council. One is simply population growth. Minneapolis now has approximately 420,000 residents, an increase of more than 37,000 since 2010, which puts the city on pace to reach 450,000 by 2020. In each of the past five years, more than $1 billion in construction projects have received permits. And the city has added about 5,300 private-sector jobs each year since 2014 (Roper, 2017).

Hodges and the council certainly can't take all the credit for that growth, but they have done a number of things in accord with the strategic plan to stimulate it and further strengthen the city by building on the work of previous mayors and councils. These include the following:

First, the city has contributed to a number of investments in infrastructure in the downtown area. One is a complete rebuild of the lengthy Nicollet Mall in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. The mall has been in the past—and now will continue to be in the future—a stimulus to private-sector investments in the downtown and nearby. The Downtown East neighborhood (where I live) has seen tremendous public and private investment, including commercial and residential buildings and a new two-block square public park in the middle of it called the Commons. The North Loop neighborhood just north of downtown has also seen major public and private investment, as has land on either side of the Mississippi River near downtown.

Second, substantial effort has gone into improving policing, policy- community relations, and public safety in general. For instance, now every officer who responds to a 911 call wears a body camera which is supposed be on. Substantial money has gone into funding creation of community-based public safety strategies. New initiatives are aimed at reducing gun violence. And significant effort is going into police officer training in implicit bias,

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procedural justice, and crisis intervention, though there is still substantial work to do.

Third, largely successful efforts have gone into raising the minimum wage and providing earned sick and “safe time” for people, especially low-income people, working in Minneapolis. This means that people do not have to choose between getting paid and getting well; or for taking time off to seek law enforcement, counseling, or other services for domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking for the employee or covered family member; or for caring for a family member during emergency closure of a school or place of care, including for inclement weather. There are legitimate concerns, however, about potential negative effects on overall employment and small business viability. Time will tell.

Fourth, a number of initiatives have focused on sustainability and resilience in the face of climate change. The city has hired a Chief Resilience Officer as part of the city's participation in the Rockefeller Foundation-funded 100 Resilient Cities project. (http://www.100resilientcities.org/). The person will act as a focal point for moving forward the sustainability and resilience agenda.

Fifth, several initiatives are focused on reshaping the city's street system so that it is friendlier to walkers, bicyclists, transit riders, park users, and people with disabilities, as well as motorized vehicle users. Initiatives include protected bikeways, new approaches to the use of technology and data, planning for greater use of ride-sharing and automated vehicles, and dedicated funding for investments in streets and parks. Sixth, the city has made some significant investments in providing affordable housing. Finally, the City of Minneapolis has continued to improve the Results Minneapolis strategic management system. This has included engaging external stakeholders to develop community indicators (see Exhibit 9.1) and working on ways of more directly incorporating performance information into annual budgeting processes (Andreason et al., 2016).

The city has also been working since November 2016 with the Bloomberg Philanthropies–funded initiative called What Works

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Cities and the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University to increase the use of data and evidence to improve outcomes for residents (Reese, 2017). As a result, efforts are now being made to automate as much of the reporting process as possible in order to provide departments with more time to analyze data and make recommendations for improvement. The city pilot tested this approach with the Public Works Department in order to better understand the causes of employees' injuries. The city learned that two types of injuries are consistently taking place with the highest frequency and with the highest costs, and this finding is going to reshape how Public Works rethinks employee safety and training. The City Coordinator's Office (CCO) will be taking a look at one or two metrics each year for each department in order to frame very focused in-depth conversations on what is going on and what can be improved.

Exhibit 12.2. MEDA Under Its 2016–2020 Strategic Framework. In 2016, MEDA provided help to 676 clients. With MEDA's assistance, these businesses have grown as sustainable employers that have brought more than 1,000 quality jobs to the metropolitan area (a substantial increase from 2014). MEDA increased its capital fund to $14 million (up from approximately $6.5 million in 2014) on the way to its goal of $20 million by 2020. In September, MEDA was named by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency as the nation's top- performing local minority business development agency.

At the end of its 2016 fiscal year, MEDA had total assets of approximately $15.4 million and total liabilities of $8.1 million for total net assets of $7.3 million (almost twice what they had in 2014). MEDA had total 2016 revenue of $7.3 million and total expenses of $4.1 million (Metropolitan Economic Development Association, 2016).

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MEDA's strategy change effort has had five big overlapping agendas since Gary Cunningham become president and CEO in August 2014. The first agenda involved—and still involves—having Cunningham and MEDA staff (especially new staff) better understand MEDA and the broader ecology of support for minority-owned businesses. Cunningham himself has made—and continues to make—extensive use of meetings, informational interviews, conference attendance and presentations, site visits, and other kinds of information gathering to understand more clearly the context within which MEDA operates and the possibilities for strategic change. A crucial input to the current plan was engaging Accenture in 2015 to do an in-depth assessment of MEDA and its environment and to make recommendations for change.

The second agenda has involved building credibility and support with the MEDA board. The Accenture report helped, as have efforts to help the board be more effective as a board, success in fundraising, and garnering favorable publicity.

Building MEDA's capacity has been the third big agenda item consisting of several components. Among the most important has been getting the right team in place. This team includes a new vice president for business solutions (i.e., VP for operations), new chief of strategic initiatives, new chief development officer, new director of marketing, new technology systems and data administrator, new data manager, and new executive assistant for Cunningham, among other personnel changes. MEDA now has 33 staff members, up from 28 when Cunningham began.

Other components of building capacity include the following: There has been an explicit stop agenda involving shedding lines of business that either were not aligned with the new, more targeted mission or were not cost-effective. Changes in the organizational structure have been made to increase organizational effectiveness —for example, hiring the chief of strategic initiatives to help oversee, coordinate, and keep moving a large portfolio of projects related to implementing the strategic plan. Success in fundraising and developing long-term funding has also helped, as has

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strengthening or building relations with other organizations in the ecosystem. And MEDA will be moving to new and better facilities in 2018 that will help it be more accessible to minority communities and will also include collaborative minority entrepreneurship workspace. These changes have together helped build competence and confidence among the staff to expand products and services.

The first three agendas fed into and flowed out of efforts to develop a new strategic vision of success for MEDA, one directly related to one of the strategic plan's transformational goals: “Serve the entire entrepreneurial business lifecycle by leveraging strategic partnerships” (see Exhibit 7.2). The new—and still developing— vision of success includes a strong set of collaborative strategic partnerships meant to change the ecosystem and dramatically increase minority entrepreneurial success rates. Ultimately, the vision involves having a substantial impact on reducing disparities. In other words, the new vision of success involves many more organizations than MEDA but will still be true to the current plan's vision sketch: “Thriving communities through equal economic participation” (see Exhibit 7.2).

Cunningham understood early on that taking MEDA “to the next level” would necessarily involve changing the whole system of minority business support in fundamental ways. The Accenture report helped crystallize in Cunningham's mind what that might involve—namely, development of a collaboration among support organizations that would work more as collaborators than competitors. For example, ideally, they would have a common IT platform and intake system so that there would be “no wrong front door” to the system for aspiring entrepreneurs. There would be collaborative resource development and funding efforts. Accenture would provide access to training. Across the system, funding and capital would increase, loans would increase, training and certification would increase, and, in general, support for minority entrepreneurs and minority-owned businesses would significantly increase.

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and secured foundation funding to support the work. The Minority Business Development Cohort (MBDC) began meeting in October 2016 and included seven organizations: the African Development Center, African Economic Development Solutions, Asian Economic Development Association, Community Reinvestment Fund, Latino Economic Development Center, Metropolitan Economic Development Association, and Northside Economic Opportunity Network. MBDC now has work groups in place to develop strategies in the following areas: marketing study and ecosystem mapping, impact reporting, technology and intake, fundraising, and capital. Other minority and women business support organizations may join in the future.

The fifth agenda is not directly a part of MEDA's strategic plan though it is implied by it. The agenda has been part of Cunningham's own strategic plan for some time and is an important part of why he took the job as MEDA's president and CEO. The agenda involves changing the framing of issues of race and disparities and associated policy and funding approaches so that better advances can be made against racial inequalities and injustices, including thorough minority business support. He has pursued this agenda as a Minneapolis member of the Twin Cities regional planning and coordinating body, and the Metropolitan Council, and he works on the state and national levels as well.

Exhibit 12.3. Implementation of the INTOSAI 2017–2022 Plan So Far. INTOSAI has put in place mechanisms intended to help guide and ensure that the plan is implemented. First, these include a commitment to assessing its own performance. INTOSAI will implement annual reviews of progress toward each strategic objective contained in the plan. The organization will use the results of these reviews to inform long-term strategy; identify opportunities for continuous improvement, including risk

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management; and strengthen collaboration across the organization. To promote transparency, the summary results of these reviews will be shared in a performance and accountability report each year and provided to each SAI member and external stakeholders, publicized in the International Journal of Government Auditing, and made publicly available on the INTOSAI website.

Second, INTOSAI is building on its ongoing efforts to identify and address emerging issues by creating a robust Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) capacity to guide risk identification and management efforts. As part of this effort, the Supervisory Committee on Emerging Issues will monitor INTOSAI's crosscutting priorities to ensure that they are being consistently and thoroughly integrated into INTOSAI's various strategies and programs under its strategic goals.

Third, INTOSAI, under the leadership of the General Secretariat, cooperates with the United Nations in promoting efficient, accountable, effective, and transparent public administration and the effective follow-up and review of the SDGs, promoting good governance, and fighting corruption. INTOSAI also partners with other organizations including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

And fourth, INTOSAI is committed to publicly reporting the results of its annual strategic objective reviews and its programmatic adjustments and improvement plans. INTOSAI will continue to communicate the value and benefits of SAIs and the results of capacity development efforts, especially those externally funded. INTOSAI.org is one major mechanism for communication and INTOSAI is expanding its use of social media. Similarly, the activities of the International Journal of Government Auditing will continue to evolve and include a deliberate and active social media strategy. This includes the use of social media, video, and interactive tools.

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A number of lessons can be drawn from each organization's experience. They have been discussed in previous chapters but become more concrete in relation to specific cases.

The City of Minneapolis The city began producing strategic plans on a four-year cycle starting in 2006. The 2014–2017 strategic plan is the city's third. By mid-2017, a great deal of progress had been made on implementing the plan. One of the most important achievements was the successful transition of the strategic planning and implementation process from the mayor who started it, R. T. Rybak, to the new mayor, Betsy Hodges. The process now appears to be firmly institutionalized.

The lessons from the Minneapolis experience seem clear. First, unless the top decision makers are fully committed to strategic planning, it is unlikely to succeed in the organization as a whole. Again, there simply is no substitute for that kind of leadership.

Second, staff must be assigned to work on what is truly important. A good plan would not have been prepared and adopted and the plan's contents would not have been implemented had not the CCO and others followed through. Process champions at the CCO and department levels were critical.

Third, one of the biggest innovations that strategic planning promotes is the habit of focusing key decision makers' attention on what is truly important. The Results Minneapolis process has helped the key decision makers and staff identify key issues, figure out what to do about them, and follow through. There is simply no substitute for that kind of often quite time-consuming dialogue and deliberation. Fourth, if strategic planning is to be really effective in an organization that has a governing board, the board itself must understand and own the process. Fifth, the board must understand what it means to be an effective policy-making body and then act the part (Carver, 2006; Chait, Ryan, & Taylor, 2004). The strategic planning process can help policy boards be better policy-making bodies. Sixth, strategic planning is an iterative process that can lead to new understandings—and to new and more effective rounds of strategic thought and action.

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Seventh, if strategic discussions precede budgeting efforts, budgets may be prepared and reviewed in light of their consequences for the public or nonprofit organization or collaboration as a whole. The newly revised Department Results Minneapolis planning and reporting process does this by requiring reports to be done before the budget process kicks in. Whether the new approach works remains to be seen, but the move certainly appears to be in the right direction. These days, it is becoming increasingly important to demonstrate that the organization creates significant public value at reasonable cost. If the demonstration can be made, then even in an era when public officials and the citizenry are quite opposed to new spending in general, it may be possible to create a persuasive case for needed funding.

Eighth, advocates of strategic planning and plans must be prepared for disruptions, delays, and unexpected events because they are almost bound to happen. The 2013 mayoral and council election slowed down the process because time was needed to allow the new mayor and council to have input after they took office in early 2014. The mayor and council added emphasis to the city's equity agenda and the requirement to develop community indicators to help track goal achievement. After a year-long Community Indicators Project, headed by the CCO, specific indicators were adopted in October 2015.

The Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA) Many noteworthy accomplishments have occurred since adoption of the 2016–2020 strategic plan (see Exhibit 12.2). Many of the lessons from the Minneapolis case apply to the MEDA and INTOSAI cases. Rather than repeat them, however, we will focus on six particularly apparent ones. First, leadership counts. MEDA's senior administrators and board members are and have been thoughtful, service-oriented professionals deeply committed to the organization's mission. They are dedicated to providing high-quality, cost-effective programs that create substantial public value and have been willing to explore what might be done to increase the creation of public value. As a group, they understand how to be effective sponsors and champions and know

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when to involve stakeholders, consultants, and facilitators. And they have tried to be wise about which projects to pursue, how to build support, and how to garner needed resources. Current president and CEO Gary Cunningham has made good use of his well-developed social and political skills.

Second, serving as a process champion is a particularly important leadership role. The most important champion in this case was Cunningham, without whose single-minded efforts MEDA would not have undertaken a major strategy change effort or made the progress it has. He diligently and faithfully followed through and made sure that what was necessary occurred—no matter how overworked, tired, or frustrated he became. Strong support from the board also helped. The strategic planning consultants from Accenture (and the student teams and I) also provided support, encouragement, and needed insights at key points. And facilitators were often used to help various groups work through difficult issues.

Third, strategic planning and strategy change are almost always about culture change. Cunningham has had to work hard at changing MEDA's culture to foster greater innovation and open people up to the potential advantages of changing the ecosystem of support for minority-owned business. Part of that process included adding new staff and letting some staff go, as well as working hard at communicating the new vision. Without paying attention to the culture—what is good about it and what needs changing—strategy change is unlikely to succeed. And productive culture changes happen only when leaders are committed to it over long periods of time.

Fourth, and relatedly, it takes times and effort to gain widespread appreciation of an organization as a whole—and when the organization is involved in a host of collaborative relationships, or relies extensively on volunteers and voluntary contributions, it takes even longer (as in the INTOSAI case). A great deal of dialogue and deliberation has been necessary as part of developing a fuller understanding of MEDA, its varied stakeholders and relationships, and strategies likely to be effective have emerged. The same kind of extensive dialogue and deliberation has been involved in developing an appreciation for possibilities of ecosystem change among the partners in the Minority ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Business Development Cohort. There is no substitute for this kind of conversation; people must reach their own conclusions in their own time through conversation with others—and it all takes time.

Fifth, it is important to blend what is ongoing with what is new. MEDA kept many programs while it added or phased out others. In other words, the strategic planning effort had to be about what was working, not just about what was new and what should stop. Finally, it helps to have a governing board that is also an effective policy board. MEDA's board was essentially an effective policy board when the process began, and the strategy change process has helped them become more effective.

The International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI), Plus Added Lessons The lessons and themes noted above apply to the INTOSAI case as well. Here I just want to emphasize two things, starting with the importance of leadership support and strong champions. The INTOSAI process would not have succeeded without the sustained efforts of the Task Force on Strategic Planning chaired by the U.S. General Accountability Office's (GAO) comptroller general and supported by GAO staff. Second, the case also demonstrates how a highly participative process—while quite time-consuming—can help build coalitions of support that are needed to adopt and implement innovative strategic plans.

There are some added lessons not tied to any of the cases in particular that should be emphasized. The first is that strategic planning can proceed in an evolutionary way and still have revolutionary consequences. If MEDA's and INTOSAI's strategy change processes fully succeed, the consequences will be transformational.

Second, surprises should be expected, as happened at least in part in the MEDA case when the desirability of ecosystem change fully emerged. In other words, if everyone already knows what should be done strategically, then there is no need for strategic planning. If people do not know the answer, yet are open to new learning and possibilities, strategic planning can be of use.

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Third, strategic planning can help create the organization's own desirable surprises, rather than needing to respond to someone else's surprises (Frentzel, Bryson, & Crosby, 2000, pp. 420–421). In other words, strategic planning can facilitate an important shift in a group's thinking to the point that some things that once were only possibilities become givens. It can help alter the premises and binding choices that govern behavior.

Fourth, all of the cases strongly emphasize a lesson about the importance of cross-boundary forums that bridge boundaries inside or outside of an organization. Fifth, a very important lesson concerns the need to fit strategic planning to other ongoing processes in an organization.

Sixth, operational detail can overwhelm strategic planning efforts. Even though each organization has been successful at strategic planning, it still took each one a fairly long time to get through the process. Often, attention to the day-to-day simply drove out attention to the long term. It takes a real commitment to find the time to attend to what is fundamental on a regular basis. This may well be the most important discipline that strategic planning is designed to promote. Without it, strategic thinking, acting, and learning among a group of senior decision makers is not likely to occur. Strategic planning cannot simply be an add-on to already overworked leaders, managers, and staff.

Seventh, quicker really can be better. If the challenges are serious and imminent—bankruptcy, for example—a lengthy and elaborate strategic planning process can doom the organization to an early death. Eighth, simpler can be better too. Focusing on the most critical issues in a direct and timely way and developing effective strategies to address them may be all that is needed. Such a process would not be data- heavy though some key quantitative and qualitative data are likely to be necessary. Instead, it will be heavy on strategic thinking, acting, and learning. Ninth, perhaps strategic planning is a waste of time if there is no real reason to plan strategically—no major threats to avoid or important opportunities to pursue. “Muddling through” may work acceptably until strategic planning does become necessary.

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Finally, strategic planning by itself is not enough. The key decision makers in the system must be willing to take effective political and organizational action to promote strategic thought, action, and learning—and must at times be willing to make extreme sacrifices in order to create public value. Although it didn't happen in any of the cases reported on in this edition of the book, I have certainly seen instances where some decision makers may need to be sacrificed in order to get needed changes introduced. Hope and courage are necessary—but not costless—civic virtues. Public leaders must be willing to pay the price when necessary.

GETTING STARTED These three cases along with the others cited in the book indicate that strategic planning can help public and nonprofit organizations and communities fulfill their missions, meet their mandates, create public value, and satisfy their key stakeholders more effectively. All the advocates along the way were inspired by a hope of “something ever more about to be.” William Wordsworth would be proud of them.

These cases also indicate that a number of difficulties and challenges must be overcome if strategic planning is to fulfill its promise for organizations. Let me conclude with some advice about how to get started with strategic planning:

1. Start where you and the other people who might be involved in or affected by the process currently are. This is one of the most important principles for organizing collective action (Kahn, 2010). You can always undertake strategic planning for the part of the organization you control. Whatever you are in charge of—a unit, department, division, or a whole organization—you can always start there. But wherever you start, you must also keep in mind where the participants currently are. Other involved or affected parties are likely to need some education concerning the purposes, processes, and products of strategic planning. If they are important for the formulation or implementation of strategies, you will need to bring them along so that they can be effective supporters and implementers.

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2. Have a compelling reason to undertake strategic planning. Otherwise, the process is not likely to be worth the effort or to reach a satisfactory conclusion. The obverse of this lesson is that people can create an infinite number of reasons not to engage in strategic planning, even when it would be the best thing for the organization or community; such reasons may be nothing more than excuses.

Reasons that might be compelling are numerous. The organization or community may be performing well, but key decision makers may be fully aware of important strategic issues that must be addressed if the organization is to continue to do well. That was the case for MEDA.

In another scenario, an organization may be confronting a real turning point in its history—a point that could lead to success or extermination. Recall that organizational strategies are usually fairly stable for rather long periods of time during which strategic planning is usually more concerned with programming strategy implementation than with formulation of whole new strategies. But then after long periods of stability come significant shifts—either as a result of changes in the environment or new leadership visions. At such times, strategic planning is much more concerned with enhancing strategy formulation. As the new strategies unfold, it is entirely possible that a quantum change in the organization may occur (Miller & Friesen, 1984)—though that result was clearly not anticipated at the beginning of the process or fully appreciated at the end of the process.

Yet another reason is that the organization may feel the need for strategic planning but not engage in the process until ordered to do so by decision makers further up the hierarchy. Indeed, federal legislation and many states now require certain organizations to engage in strategic planning. But whatever the compelling reason, organizational or community members—especially key decision makers—must see some important benefits to be derived from strategic planning or they will not be active supporters and participants. And if they do not support and participate, the process is bound to fail.

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3. Remember there is no substitute for leadership. The concepts, procedures, tools, and practices that strategic planning comprises cannot think, act, or learn by themselves. Nor can they inspire and mobilize others to act on behalf of what is best for an organization (collaboration or community). Only concerned and committed people—leaders and followers—can do that. Broad-based, collective leadership spread throughout an organization is necessary to ensure that it fulfills its mission, meets its mandates, creates real public value, and satisfies the expectations of its key stakeholders. And when the organization succeeds, it is a collective accomplishment.

Two leadership roles are especially important to the success of any strategic planning effort: sponsoring and championing. Unless the process is sponsored (ultimately, if not initially) by important and powerful leaders and decision makers, it is likely to fail. Only key decision makers who are also effective leaders will be able to motivate and guide their organizations through a successful strategic thinking, acting, and learning process. Leadership from the key decision makers is absolutely necessary if the organization itself must be changed as a result of strategic planning.

A strategic planning process will not succeed unless it is championed by someone. This person should believe in the process and see his or her role as promoting effective thinking, acting, and learning on the part of key decision makers. A process champion does not have a preconceived view of what key issues are facing the organization or a preconceived set of answers to those issues; rather, he or she pushes a process that is likely to produce effective answers. It certainly helps if the process champion is near the top of the organization chart.

A third leadership role—facilitating—also can be very important, though I would not place it in the same category as the first two. Facilitation is a special skill and can be very important at particular points, especially during the design of the process and as groups of participants learn how to work effectively together (Johnson & Johnson, 2016; Schwarz, 2017).

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4. When designing a strategic planning process, always be attentive to the requirements for success in the situation at hand and tailor the process according to the needs of the organization, collaboration, or community and situation. As noted in Chapter 2, the Strategy Change Cycle highlights the need to have a strategic planning process design that includes:

Having a process sponsor(s) and a process champion(s)

Carefully designing and using a series of settings for deliberation—formal and informal forums, arenas, and courts

Emphasizing the development of the initial agreement(s) in light of the likely requirements for a successful process

Intensely attending to stakeholders via careful analysis and effective engagement

Gaining clarity about mission and mandates and knowing the difference between the two

Understanding the organization's internal and external environments

Focusing on the identification and clarification of strategic issues and knowing there is an array of available approaches for doing so

Seeing strategies as a response to strategic issues and knowing there are many approaches to formulating strategies, including incorporating useful aspects of existing or emerging strategies

Attending to the requirements for successful strategy implementation and evaluation

Building capacity for ongoing implementation, learning, and strategic change

Periodically reassessing strategies and the strategic planning process as a prelude to the next round of strategic planning

Remaining flexible throughout the process while still paying attention to all necessary requirements that must be met along the way and the logic that links them

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Strategic planning efforts clearly must fit the situation at hand, even if the ultimate aim of the process is to change the situation (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009). The roles that official planners play in the process also will depend on the situation. In most cases involving strategic planning across units or levels within an organization or a community, planners will need to facilitate strategic thought, action, and learning by key decision makers. In other situations, planners also will be called upon to serve as technical experts.

Another key situational factor concerns the presence or absence of the necessary formal and informal forums (for discussion), arenas (for decision making and implementation), and formal or informal courts (for managing residual conflicts and enforcing underlying norms). These are the settings within which strategic planning and implementation will occur, and the ways they are designed and used are important to the success of the process (Crosby & Bryson, 2005, 2010).

For example, if it is clear that key strategic issues bridge organizational boundaries, then it is probably necessary to create forums to discuss the issues that also bridge the boundaries. Forums may include strategic planning teams, task forces, or discussion groups. Similarly, if implementation will require coordinated action across boundaries, some sort of arena-like mechanism to manage the process across those boundaries may be necessary. Appropriate mechanisms could include a policy board, cabinet, interagency coordinating council, project management group, or community leadership council. Court-like vehicles to manage residual conflicts also are likely to be needed. Procedures to refer conflicts up administrative hierarchies for resolution, alternative dispute-resolution mechanisms, administrative tribunals, or access to the formal courts may be needed.

The strategic plans themselves must also be tailored to fit the situation. It may be important, for example, not to prepare a written strategic plan. Indeed, some of the best strategic “plans” I have seen were unwritten agreements among key decision makers about what was important and what actions they would take. In

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other cases, plans will consist of informal letters, memoranda of agreement, issue-specific strategy documents, or full-blown glossy publications and websites intended for public consumption. It all depends on the purposes to be served by the plan.

A final area of needed situational sensitivity concerns the evaluative criteria used to assess strategies and plans. Viable strategies and plans will need to be politically acceptable, technically and administratively workable, and legally and ethically justifiable—a severe test, given the many stakeholders who are likely to be involved or affected. To find strategies that can satisfy the various stakeholders means that leaders, managers, and planners will need to be willing to construct and consider arguments geared to many different evaluative criteria.

In short, it is very important to think strategically about the strategic planning process and to design the process in such a way that the requirements for success are met along the way. This means that (as noted in Chapter 2) the logic of the Strategy Change Cycle flows backward from the “end” of the process toward the initial agreement as much or more than it flows forward. The process needs to be designed by keeping in mind the desired outcomes of each step along the way and thinking as clearly as possible about who needs to say yes to what, when, where, and how. In Chapter 3, I quoted Plato to the effect that “the beginning is the most important part of the work”—but the beginning should start with the end in mind.

5. Remember that the big innovation in strategic planning is having key decision makers talk with one another about what is truly important for the organization, collaboration, or community as a whole, and then to do something about it. A strategic planning process is merely a way of helping key decision makers think, act, and learn strategically. In no way can the process substitute for the presence, participation, support, and commitment of key decision makers to raise and resolve the critical issues facing the organization, collaboration, or community. The initiation and institutionalization of the process, however, can provide the occasions, settings, and justification for gathering key decision

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makers together to think, act, and learn strategically on behalf of the organization, collaboration, or community. In all too many cases, such occasions, settings, and justifications do not exist, and organization, collaboration, and community performance and stakeholder satisfaction suffer accordingly.

6. Be aware that the resource most needed to undertake strategic planning is not money but the attention and commitment of key decision makers. Strategic planning is not expensive in dollar terms, but it is expensive when you consider the resources that typically are most scarce—the attention and commitment of key decision makers. For organizations, strategic planning may involve having key decision makers spend as much as 10 percent of their ordinary work time on identifying and addressing fundamental policy questions. That may not seem like much. Indeed, one might argue that decision makers unwilling to devote at least that much of their time to what is truly important for the organization are either incompetent or disloyal and ought to be fired! But realistically, for a variety of reasons, it is hard to persuade key decision makers to commit more than 10 percent of their time to strategic planning. And it may even be more difficult to get substantial blocks of time from community leaders for community strategic planning.

Strategic planning processes are also likely to be thrown off track by various disruptions and delays. Strategic planning processes in which I have been involved have been thrown off course by elections, promotions, firings, crises, deaths and life-threatening illnesses, planned and unplanned pregnancies, and chance events, both favorable and unfavorable, of numerous sorts. Such eventualities are normal, and sponsors and champions should expect them. Also, strong sponsors and champions are necessary to keep key decision makers focused on what is important so that wise strategic thought, action, and learning are not lost in the disruptions and delays.

Given the difficulties of getting key decision makers' attention, an effective strategic planning process is therefore likely to be one that is fairly simple (simpler is better), quick (quicker is better), and

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treated in a special and sensitive way so that key decision makers will give the time and attention it needs. In addition, it is important that sponsors and champions think of junctures (or timing) as a key temporal metric. Time in strategic planning is generally not linear (chronos) or characterized by peaks or optimal experiences (kyros). Instead, it is junctural: Key people must come together at the right time with the right information in order to discuss what is important and do something effective about it (Albert, 2013). The ability to do this is a special skill that must be cultivated (particularly by sponsors and champions) if the strategic planning process is to be successful.

7. Remember that the biggest payoffs from strategic planning may come in surprising ways or from surprising sources. For example, organizations often find that organizational development, team building, and heightened morale throughout the organization are among the greatest benefits derived from a strategic planning process. There is no telling what will happen as a result of the strategic planning process. But the organization, collaboration, or community that is open to surprises may create and take advantage of its own opportunities. As Louis Pasteur said, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.”

8. Outside consultation and facilitation can help. Often, organizations, collaborations, and communities need some consultation, facilitation, and education from outsiders to help with the design and management of the strategic planning process. If help is needed, try to get it.

9. If the going gets tough, keep in mind the potential benefits of the process. Recall that strategic planning can help in a number of ways. For example, strategic planning can help organizations, collaborations, and communities:

Think, act, and learn strategically and develop effective strategies

Clarify future direction and establish priorities

Improve decision making by:

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Making today's decisions in light of their future consequences

Developing a coherent and defensible basis for decision making

Making decisions across levels and functions

Exercise maximum discretion in the areas under organizational control

Solve major organizational and community problems

Improve organizational, community, or broader system performance

Deal effectively with rapidly changing circumstances

Develop capacities to address future problems or challenges

Build teamwork and expertise

But it may not be easy to achieve these benefits. The faith of process sponsors and champions is often sorely tried, particularly if the organization or community is engaged in strategic planning for the first time. For example, the process seems particularly prone to disintegration in the middle—the strategic issue identification and strategy development steps. And the big payoffs may take a long time to achieve. For instance, it may take several years to know whether some important strategy has worked or not. In the meantime, try to label as much as possible that comes out of the process a success—count every small win, and work hard to improve the process along the way. In other words, manage the process so it is “successful” long before any strategies are implemented.

It also is useful for sponsors and champions to do what they can to maintain an optimistic stance toward the world—to see difficulties as specific rather than pervasive, temporary rather than permanent, and something that can be changed (Seligman, 2006). They should do what they can to build their own and others' psychological hardiness through building commitment to the organization's mission, building a sense of control over the

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organization's future, and seeing difficulties as manageable challenges (Kouzes & Posner, 2017).

Sponsors and champions also should be realistic—at least with themselves—about what strategic planning might achieve. They might keep in mind, for example, what Sigmund Freud (Bruer & Freud, 1957/2000) told doubting patients: “Much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.” Strategic planning will not lead to perfection, but it can result in useful, implementable strategies for addressing a few key issues—and that is something worth pursuing. By organizing hope, strategic planning can make the courageous organization's hopes reasonable.

Recall also Maya Angelou's observation that “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” Creating lasting public value almost always takes committed, courageous, hopeful people—and strategic planning is a set of concepts, procedures, tools, and practices that can help such people make the world a better place.

10. Finally, keep in mind that strategic planning is not right for every organization or community. In the following situations, strategic planning perhaps shouldn't be undertaken (Barry, 1997/2013):

The roof has fallen.

The organization or community lacks the necessary skills, resources, or commitment of key decision makers to produce a good plan.

Costs outweigh benefits.

The organization or community prefers to rely on the vision, intuition, and skill of extremely gifted leaders.

Incremental adjustments or muddling through in the absence of a guiding vision, set of strategies, or plan are the only processes that will work.

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Implementation of strategic plans is extremely unlikely.

And yet, though there may be reasons not to undertake strategic planning, those reasons all too easily become excuses for not paying attention to what is really important for the organization or community. An organization or community that gives in to excuses has suffered a failure of hope and courage. The poet William Wordsworth reminds us in his Prelude that “our destiny, our being's heart and home” are with “effort, hope, expectation, and desire.” And Maya Angelou reminds us that only courage will consistently get us there.

Strategic planning can help public and nonprofit organizations and collaborations fulfill their missions, meet their mandates, and create real public value; it also can help communities serve important purposes, including the creation of public value. Said differently, strategic planning can help organizations, collaborations, and communities create a better, more productive, more effective, more satisfying value proposition for their key stakeholders. But strategic planning will work only if people want it to.

This book was written to help all those who want their organizations, collaborations, and communities to survive, prosper, and serve noble purposes. I hope it will prompt more than a few of these organizational and community citizens to proceed with strategic planning because then significant change can occur. As they tackle important challenges and seek to create real public value, these change advocates can draw inspiration from the words of the traditional African American spiritual—words grown out of abiding hope in the face of enduring challenges:

Hold on, change is coming.

Hold on just a little while longer, everything will be all right.

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RESOURCES Two resources are included. The first presents an array of stakeholder identification and analysis techniques. The second describes how Internet-based tools and social media can be used as part of a strategic planning process.

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RESOURCE A A Guide to Stakeholder Identification and Analysis Techniques This resource focuses on how and why leaders, managers, and planners might go about using stakeholder identification and analysis techniques in order to help their organizations meet their mandates, fulfill their missions, and create public value. A range of stakeholder identification and analysis techniques is reviewed. The techniques cover the functions presented in Figure 2.3: organizing effective participation; creating meritorious ideas for mission, goals, strategies, actions, and other strategic interventions; building a winning coalition around proposal development, review, and adoption; implementing, monitoring, and evaluating strategic interventions; and building capacity for ongoing implementation, learning, and change. Wise use of stakeholder analyses can help frame issues that are solvable in ways that are technically and administratively feasible and politically acceptable, legally and morally defensible, and that create public value and advance the common good.

Figure A.1 shows how the stakeholder identification and analysis techniques fit with the simplified public and nonprofit sector strategic management theory summarized in Figure 2.3. Note, however, that there is an elaboration of one function in Figure 2.3—namely, that creating ideas for strategic interventions consists of the two connected subfunctions of formulating problems (identifying issues) and searching for solutions (developing strategies).

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Figure A.1. Strategic Management Purposes and Functions and Stakeholder Analysis Techniques to Assist in Fulfilling Them.

AN ARRAY OF TECHNIQUES Three techniques have already been discussed in detail: purpose mapping and choosing stakeholder analysis participants in Chapter 3 and the basic stakeholder analysis technique in Chapter 4. This resource presents 13 additional stakeholder identification and analysis techniques. The techniques are grouped according the functions presented in Figure A.1. All of the techniques are fairly simple in concept and rely on standard facilitation materials such as flip charts, marking pens, tape, and colored stick-on dots. All it takes to do them is some time and effort—an expenditure of resources that typically is minuscule when compared with the opportunity costs of less-than- adequate performance, or even disaster, that typically follow in the wake of failing to attend to key stakeholders, their interests, and their information (Nutt, 2002).

Techniques for Organizing Participation Stakeholder analyses are undertaken for a purpose, and that purpose ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

should be articulated as clearly as it can be before the analyses begin— while also understanding that purposes may change over time. The purpose mapping technique detailed in Chapter 3 can help clarify the reasons for doing the analyses as part of fulfilling each function of the strategic management process. The purpose(s) should guide the choices concerning who should be involved in the analyses and how. Different analyses will be needed at different stages in the Strategy Change Cycle.

Deciding who should be involved, how, when, and why is a key strategic choice in doing stakeholder analyses. In general, people should be involved if they have information that cannot be gained otherwise or if their participation is necessary to ensure successful adoption and implementation of initiatives built on the analyses (Thomas, 1995, 2012).

There is always a question of whether there can be too much or too little participation. The general answer to this question is yes, of course. But the specific answer depends on the situation, and there are no hard-and-fast rules, let alone good empirical evidence, on when, where, how, and why to draw the line. There very well may be important trade-offs between early and later participation in analyses and one or more of the following: representation, accountability, analysis quality, analysis credibility, analysis legitimacy, the ability to act based on the analyses, or other factors, and these will need to be thought through. Fortunately, “the choice” actually can be approached as a sequence of choices in which first an individual or small planning group begins the effort and then others are added later as the advisability of doing so becomes apparent.

Six stakeholder identification and analysis techniques are particularly relevant to helping organize participation: purpose mapping and a process for choosing stakeholder analysis participants (discussed in Chapter 3); the basic stakeholder analysis technique (discussed in Chapter 4); power versus interest grids; stakeholder influence diagrams; and the participation planning matrix.

Power Versus Interest Grids. The power versus interest grid is described in detail by Ackermann and Eden (2011) (see Figure A.2).

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This grid arrays stakeholders on a two-by-two matrix where the dimensions are the stakeholders' interest (in a political sense as opposed to simple inquisitiveness) in the organization or issue at hand and the stakeholders' power to affect the future of the organization or issue. Four categories of stakeholders result: players who have both interest and significant power; subjects who have interest but little power; context setters who have power but little direct interest; and the crowd, which consists of stakeholders with little interest or power.

Figure A.2. Power Versus Interest Grid. Source: Ackermann and Eden, 2011, p. 233. Reprinted with permission.

The power versus interest grid helps determine the players, the people whose interests and power bases must be taken into account in order to address the problem or issue at hand. It also highlights coalitions to be encouraged or discouraged, behavior that should be fostered, and people whose buy-in should be sought or who should be co-opted. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Finally, it provides some information on how to convince stakeholders to change their views. Interestingly, the knowledge gained from this grid can be used to help advance the interests of the relatively powerless (Bryson, Cunningham, & Lokkesmoe, 2002). Note that in some cases it may make sense to construct a power versus identity grid, for identity as well as interest can motivate stakeholder action (see Rowley & Moldoveanu, 2003).

A power versus interest grid is constructed as follows:

The facilitator tapes four flip chart sheets to a wall to form a single surface two sheets high by two sheets wide.

The facilitator draws the two axes on the surface using a marking pen. The vertical axis is labeled interest from low to high; the horizontal axis is labeled power from low to high.

Planning team members brainstorm by writing the names of different stakeholders as they come to mind on a 1½ × 2-inch (2½ × 5-cm) self-adhesive label, one stakeholder per label. Alternatively, if the basic analysis technique has been performed, the names should be taken from that list.

The facilitator places each label in the appropriate place on the grid, guided by the deliberations and judgments of the planning group members. Labels should be collected in round-robin fashion, one label per group member, until all labels (other than duplicates) are placed on the grid or eliminated for some reason.

Labels are moved around until all group members are satisfied with the relative location of each stakeholder on the grid.

The group should discuss the implications of the resulting stakeholder placements.

The facilitator records the results of the discussion on flip chart sheets.

Stakeholder Influence Diagrams. The stakeholder influence diagram indicates how the stakeholders on a power versus interest grid influence one another. The technique is taken from Ackermann and Eden, 2011; see also Bryson et al., 2002) and begins with a power ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

versus interest grid. The steps in developing such a diagram are as follows:

The planning team should start with a power versus interest grid and then, for each stakeholder on the grid, suggest lines of influence from one stakeholder to another.

The facilitator draws in the lines with a soft-lead pencil. Two-way influences are possible, but an attempt should be made to identify the primary direction in which influence flows between stakeholders.

Team members engage in a dialogue to determine which influence relationships exist, which are most important, and what is the primary direction of influence.

Once final agreement is reached, the pencil lines should be made permanent with a marking pen.

Team members discuss the results and implications of the resulting diagram, including identifying who are the most influential or central stakeholders.

Participation Planning Matrix. In a sense, all the techniques considered thus far are relevant to planning for stakeholder participation. The participation planning matrix, however, is specifically designed for this purpose. The matrix adapts contributions from the International Association for Public Participation (2017), specifically the association's notion of a spectrum of levels of public participation and the strategic management functions identified in Figures 2.3 and A.1. The levels of participation range from a minimum of ignoring stakeholders to empowering them, meaning giving stakeholders or some subset of them final decision-making authority. Each level has a different objective and makes a different kind of promise—implicitly if not explicitly (see Exhibit A.1).

The matrix prompts planners to think about responding to or engaging different stakeholders in different ways over the course of a strategy change effort. As a result, planners may reap the benefits that arise from taking stakeholders seriously yet avoid the perils of responding to or engaging stakeholders inappropriately. The process for filling out ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

the matrix is as follows:

Begin using this matrix relatively early in any change effort but not before some prior stakeholder analysis work has been done.

Place stakeholders' names in the appropriate boxes and then develop action plans for how to follow through with each stakeholder.

Revise the matrix as the change effort unfolds.

Exhibit A.1. Participation Planning Matrix.

Strategic Management Function or Activity:

Which Stakeholders to Approach by Which Means:

Ignore Inform Consult Involve Promise: We will keep you informed.

Promise: We will keep you informed, listen to you, and provide feedback on how your input influenced the decision.

Promise: We will work with you to ensure your concerns and aspirations are directly reflected in the alternatives developed and provide feedback on how your input

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influenced the decision.

Organizing Participation Creating Ideas for Strategic Interventions (Including Issue Identification and Strategy Formulation) Building a Winning Coalition around Proposal Development Review and Adoption Implementing, Monitoring, and Evaluating Strategic Interventions Building Capacity for Ongoing Implementation, Learning, and Strategic Change

Source: Adapted with permission from International Association for Public Participation's Spectrum of Public Participation, 2017; and Bryson, 2010, p. S256.

Techniques for Creating Ideas for Strategic Actions ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Creating ideas for strategic interventions involves strategic issue identification and strategy development but also depends on understanding political feasibility. In other words, creating ideas that are worth implementing and that are also implementable depends on clearly understanding stakeholders and their interests, both separately and in relation to each other, so that issues can be formulated in such a way that they have a chance of being addressed effectively in practice.

The techniques relevant to organizing participation, therefore, also have something to contribute to the process of issue identification and strategy development and vice versa. Six additional techniques are particularly relevant to creating ideas for strategic interventions. They are the bases of power—directions of interest diagram; the technique of finding the common good and the structure of a winning argument; the technique of tapping individual stakeholder interests to pursue the common good; stakeholder-issue interrelationship diagrams; problem-frame stakeholder maps; and ethical analysis grids.

Bases of Power–Directions of Interest Diagrams. This technique, building on the power versus interest grid and stakeholder influence diagram, involves looking more closely at each of the stakeholder groups, including the most influential or central stakeholders. A bases of power–directions of interest diagram can be created for each stakeholder. The technique comes from Bryson et al. (2002) and represents an adaptation of Ackermann and Eden's “stakeholder management web” (2011). A diagram of this kind indicates the sources of power available to the stakeholder, as well as the goals or interests the stakeholder seeks to achieve or serve (see Figure A.3). Power can come from access to or control over various support mechanisms, such as money and votes, or from access to or control over various sanctions, such as regulatory authority or votes of no confidence. Directions of interest indicate the aspirations or concerns of the stakeholder. Typically, the diagrams focus on the stakeholder's bases of power and directions of interest in relation to a focal organization's purposes or goals; that is, they seek to identify the powers that might affect achievement of the focal organization's purposes. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Figure A.3. Bases of Power—Directions of Interest Diagram, With Examples of Power Bases and Interests.

There are three reasons for constructing the diagram for each stakeholder or at least for all key stakeholders. The first is to help the planning team find the common ground—especially in terms of interest—across all of the stakeholder groups. After exploring the power bases and interests of each stakeholder, the planning group will be in a position to identify commonalities across the stakeholders as a whole or across particular subgroups. Second, this search will allow the group to find the common good and the structure of a winning argument (see the next technique). Third, the diagrams are intended

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to provide background information on each stakeholder in order to know how to tap into stakeholders' interests or make use of their power to advance the focal organization's agenda as well as the common good. For example, background information can be used in stakeholder role plays (discussed later in this resource) to help planners further understand stakeholder reactions to specific problem frames or proposals for change.

A bases of power–directions of interest diagram may be constructed as follows:

The facilitator attaches a flip chart to a wall and writes the stakeholder's name in the middle of the sheet.

The planning team then brainstorms possible bases of power for the stakeholder (particularly as they affect the focal organization's purposes or interests), and the facilitator writes these on the bottom half of the sheet.

Following team discussion, the facilitator draws arrows on the diagram from the power base to the stakeholder and between power bases to indicate how one power base is linked to another.

The planning team then brainstorms goals or interests they believe the stakeholder has (particularly those relevant to the focal organization's purposes or interests). The facilitator writes these on the top half of the sheet and draws arrows from the stakeholder to the goals or interests and, when appropriate, arrows linking goals or interests.

A thorough discussion of each diagram and its implications should occur.

The facilitator records the results of the discussion on flip chart sheets.

Finding the Common Good and the Structure of a Winning Argument. Bryson et al. (2002) created this technique and used it successfully to help develop a viable political strategy for producing better outcomes for young African American men in a large county in the United States. The technique builds on the bases of power–

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directions of interest technique; such diagrams can be explored in depth to determine which interests or themes appear to garner support from a significant number of stakeholders. Members of the planning team will need to search for these common themes, which are called super-interests (or supra-interests or meta-interests). For each theme, the team should construct a label that appears to capture or integrate the specific interests that make up the theme. The identification of common themes is a subjective exercise calling for creativity, discernment, and judgment. After identifying these themes, the team should then construct a map that identifies all of the super- interests that tie together the individual stakeholders' interests and that indicates what appear to be the relationships among the super- interests.

The map is called finding the common good and the structure of a winning argument because it indicates—at least in part—what the common good (or the creation of real public value) is for this group of stakeholders and it suggests how arguments probably will need to be structured to tap into the interests of enough stakeholders to create a winning coalition. In other words, if persuasive arguments can be created that show how support for specific policies and programs will further the interests of a significant number of important stakeholders, then it should be possible to forge the coalition needed to adopt and implement the policies and programs.

Being relatively clear about goals or interests, though not always necessary, does help in producing successful programs and projects (Jung, 2014; Jung & Lee, 2013). Any difficulties that then arise are likely to concern the means to achieve specific ends rather than the ends themselves. Conflicts over means can be resolved through interest-based bargaining and through the creation of prototypes, pilot projects, or small experiments to identify the most effective approaches. In addition, the structure of a winning argument outlines a viable political rhetoric around which a community of interests can mobilize, coalesce, and co-align to further the common good (Stone, 2011).

Tapping Individual Stakeholder Interests to Pursue the

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Common Good. Developing a viable political rhetoric is a key visionary leadership task (Crosby & Bryson, 2005) and should help public leaders, managers, staff, and their collaborators understand how they might pursue their missions and create public value. What still remains is the task of understanding how specific stakeholders— separately, in coalitions, or in coaligned groups—might be inspired and mobilized to act in such a way that the common good is advanced. A further analysis is therefore needed in order to understand how each stakeholder's interests connect with the super-interests.

Specifically, a set of diagrams is needed that shows how each individual stakeholder's bases of power–directions of interest diagram links to the super-interests (Bryson et al., 2002). Once the diagrams are constructed, it is possible to see how policies, programs, and projects would need to be found, tailored, or sold in such a way that individual stakeholders perceive that their own interests are advanced. Developing these diagrams is a kind of research intended to help create and market social programs successfully (e.g., Lee & Kotler, 2015). This research is designed to help the team understand the organization's audiences well enough to satisfy both their interests and to advance the common good. Strategy, program, and project design will be enhanced as a result of more clearly understanding stakeholder interests, and effective one- and two-way communication strategies may be created through developing and testing out these diagrams with key informants in the target audiences.

The techniques discussed thus far have at least implicitly if not explicitly approached strategic issue identification and strategy formulation in terms of the common good or creating public value by searching for themes, concerns, or goals shared by key stakeholders. The analyses have tended to downplay the significance of opposition— including opposition to a specifically defined common good. The techniques that follow begin to address the ways in which opposition might need to be taken into account.

Stakeholder-Issue Interrelationship Diagrams. The stakeholder-issue interrelationship diagram helps the planning team understand which stakeholders have an interest in which issues and

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how some stakeholders might be related to other stakeholders through their relationships with the issues (see Figure A.4). This diagram helps provide some important structuring of the issue areas, in which a number of actual or potential areas for cooperation—or conflict—may become apparent.

Figure A.4. Stakeholder-Issue Interrelationship Diagram.

An arrow on the diagram indicates that a stakeholder has an interest in an issue though the specific interest is likely to differ from stakeholder to stakeholder and those interests may well be in conflict. The arrows therefore should be labeled to indicate exactly what the interest is in each case. In Figure A.4, stakeholders A, B, C, D, E, and F all have an interest, or stake, in Issue 1, whereas subgroups of stakeholder A have a further issue between them—Issue 2. Stakeholder A is also related to stakeholders E, G, H, and I through their joint relationship to Issue 3. Again, in an actual case, the arrows should be labeled so it is clear exactly what the interests are and whether they are in conflict.

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A stakeholder-issue interrelationship diagram may be constructed as follows:

The planning team starts with a power versus interest grid and stakeholder influence diagram and perhaps with the basic stakeholder analysis technique.

The facilitator tapes four flip chart sheets to a wall to form a single surface two sheets high by two sheets wide.

Planning team members should brainstorm the names of stakeholders by writing the names of different stakeholders as they come to mind on a 1½ × 2-inch (2½ × 5-cm) self-adhesive label, one stakeholder per label. Alternatively, the names may be taken from one of the previous analyses.

Planning team members also brainstorm issues that appear to be present in the situation at hand. These also are placed on self- adhesive labels, preferably of a different color.

The facilitator places the issues on the flip chart surface and, following team discussion, arrays stakeholders around the issues. A stakeholder may be involved in more than one issue.

The facilitator draws arrows indicating which stakeholders have a stake in which issues; the content of each arrow—that is, the stake or interest involved—should be identified.

The team thoroughly discusses each issue, stakeholder, and arrow, and any implications for the framing or reframing of issues and management of stakeholder relationships should be noted.

Problem-Frame Stakeholder Maps. The problem-frame stakeholder mapping technique was developed by Anderson, Bryson, and Crosby (1999) and is adapted from a technique developed by Nutt and Backoff (1992). It is especially useful in developing problem (or issue) definitions likely to lead to a winning coalition. Careful analysis is usually necessary to find desirable problem definitions that can motivate action by a coalition of stakeholders large enough to secure adoption of preferred solutions and to protect them during implementation (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Sabatier & Weible, 2014). A

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crucial first step in this analysis is to link stakeholders to alternative problem definitions through a problem-frame stakeholder map (see Figure A.5). Ideally, once a “winning” frame has been identified, specific policy proposals can be developed within that framing.

Figure A.5. Problem-Frame Stakeholder Map. Source: Anderson, Bryson, and Crosby, 1999; adapted from Nutt and Backoff, 1992, p. 198.

The following steps may be followed to construct a problem-frame stakeholder map:

The facilitator tapes four flip chart sheets to a wall to form a single surface two sheets high by two sheets wide.

Draw a two-by-two matrix on the surface using a marking pen. The very top of the map is labeled with the name of the problem frame, e.g., enhance economic development, achieve greater equity,

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enhance resilience, etc. The vertical axis above the horizontal line in the middle is labeled support from low at the horizontal line to high at the top of the axis. The vertical axis on the left below the horizontal line in the middle is labeled opposition from low at the horizontal line to high at the bottom of the axis. The horizontal axis across the bottom is labeled stakeholder power from weak on the left-hand side to strong on the right-hand side.

On a second set of flip chart sheets, the planning group should brainstorm and write down the various problem frames or definitions that might apply to the case at hand. The whole range of frames or definitions should be recorded, including those favored by known critics or opponents. The snow card technique, nominal group technique, or other brainstorming method can be used.

On a third set of flip chart sheets, the planning group should brainstorm the list of potential stakeholders likely to be implicated by the range of problem definitions. Alternatively, if the basic analysis technique has been performed, the names should be taken from that list.

These stakeholders' names are placed on 1½ × 2-inch self-adhesive labels, one stakeholder per label.

For each problem frame or definition, consider the likely policy changes based on the definition.

Next, for each problem frame or definition, a facilitator—guided by the deliberations and judgments of the planning group members— should array the stakeholder stickies on the matrix that was created at the beginning of the process, placing each label in the appropriate spot on the grid.

Labels are moved around until all group members are satisfied with the relative location of each stakeholder on the grid.

The group should discuss the implications of the resulting stakeholder placements. Particular attention should be given to the stakeholders who show up in the right-hand quadrants for all definitions of the problem. In other words, attention should be devoted to the more powerful stakeholders. Emphasizing a

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problem frame that increases the number of strong supporters and reduces the number of strong opponents facilitates formation of a winning coalition.

The facilitator records the results of the discussion on flip chart sheets.

Ethical Analysis Grids. Attending to stakeholders and to the common good certainly can be thought of as contributing to ethical behavior. But more is required to ensure the ethical appropriateness of whatever actions are ultimately taken. Lewis and Gilman (2012) propose use of a grid to clarify and prompt a dialogue around who and what counts. Use of the grid helps the organization fulfill both deontological (duty-based) and teleological (results-oriented) obligations. Results of the analysis should indicate which proposals or options should be eliminated or altered on ethical grounds. A modified version of the grid Lewis and Gilman propose can be found in Exhibit A.2. The planning team members simply work together to fill it out and then discuss the results. It may be wise to involve others in this discussion as well. In general, Lewis and Gilman's admonition would be to pursue the common good and avoid doing harm.

Exhibit A.2. Ethical Analysis Grid.

Stakeholder Name and Category:

Description of Stake:

Internal stakeholder External stakeholder and directly affected External s/h and indirectly affected Factors and Score: High

(3) Medium (2)

Low (1)

None (0)

Dependency of s/h on agency (e.g., inaccessible alternative services)

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Vulnerability or dependency of s/h as a result of decision (e.g., potential injury or other harm) Gravity (versus triviality) of s/h's stake Likelihood that remedy or relief will be unavailable Risk to fundamental ethical value, duty, or principle Policy or decision impact on s/h (e.g., broad impact versus negligible impact) Total scores—Do they indicate obligatory action or relief?

Source: Adapted from Lewis & Gilman, 2012, p. 169.

Techniques for Plan Development, Review, and Adoption Once stakeholders and their interests have been identified and understood, it is typically still advisable to do additional analyses in order to develop proposals that can garner adequate support in the plan review and adoption process. Three techniques will be considered here beyond the ethical analysis grid: the stakeholder support versus opposition grid, stakeholder role plays, and policy attractiveness versus stakeholder capability grid.

Stakeholder Support Versus Opposition Grids. The stakeholder support versus opposition grid builds on the problem- frame stakeholder map, using the same grid and process. But this time, specific proposals—rather than problem frames or definitions— are assessed in terms of stakeholder support, opposition, and importance. Nutt and Backoff (1992) are the original developers of the technique. The steps are simple. For each proposal:

The facilitator constructs a separate grid.

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The planning team members brainstorm stakeholders' names and place them on self-adhesive labels, one name per label.

The facilitator places the labels on the grid in the appropriate places.

The team discusses the results in terms of the viability of specific proposals and of stakeholders requiring special attention.

Specific tactics should be discussed and deployed based on the analysis to build a stronger coalition in support of changes and weaken any opposition coalition.

The facilitator records the results of the discussion on flip chart sheets.

A serious question concerns how large a winning coalition should be. On the one hand, the political science literature on policy adoption tends to emphasize the idea of a minimum winning coalition (that is, the smallest size feasible for victory) because creating a larger coalition is likely to entail having to make so many concessions or trades that the proposal gets watered down to the point that it cannot achieve its original purpose (Brams, 2011). On the other hand, the literature on collaborative planning argues that a larger coalition probably should be pursued because sustained implementation requires broadscale support and the minimum winning coalition may not provide it (Deyle & Weidenman, 2014). Obviously, in any specific case, a thoughtful discussion should focus on answering this question.

Stakeholder Role Plays. Eden and Ackermann (1998, pp. 133–134) show how role plays—in which members of the planning team play the roles of different stakeholders—can be used to develop plans that are likely to address stakeholder interests, effectively build a supportive coalition, and ensure proper implementation. Role plays have the special benefit of really enhancing the planning group's capacity to understand how other stakeholders think. Role plays build on the information revealed in bases of power–directions of interest diagrams, as well as, perhaps, the problem-frame issue maps and stakeholder support versus opposition grids. In some cases, it may be wise to use role plays to inform the issue identification and strategy

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development steps.

A stakeholder role play involves the following steps:

Each member of the planning team reviews the bases of power– directions of interest diagrams, the problem-frame stakeholder maps, and the stakeholder support versus opposition grids, if they have been prepared.

Each member of the planning team assumes the role of a different stakeholder.

With the stakeholder's bases of power–directions of interest diagram as a guide, each team member should answer, from the stakeholder's point of view, two questions about each proposal:

1. How would I react to this option?

2. What could be done that would increase my support or decrease my opposition?

The facilitator uses flip chart sheets to record the responses.

Team members do the exercise more than once as they repeatedly modify proposals to increase proposal robustness and political viability, testing each modification with role plays until they are satisfied with the result.

Policy Attractiveness Versus Stakeholder Capability Grid. The policy attractiveness versus stakeholder capability grid is discussed in Bryson, Freeman, and Roering (1986, pp. 73–76) and involves assessing the attractiveness of policies, plans, proposals, or options in general against stakeholder capacities to implement them (see Figure A.6). The grid reveals the proposals that are likely to be implemented successfully because they match stakeholder capabilities and those that are likely to fail because of lack of capability.

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Figure A.6. Policy Attractiveness Versus Stakeholder Capability Grid.

The technique is especially useful in shared-power, no-one-in-charge situations where planners are necessarily led to focus on the proposals that are likely to be implemented successfully. Proposals that are high in attractiveness and capability certainly should be pursued. Proposals that are otherwise attractive but do not match up well with stakeholder capabilities will require a substantial buildup of stakeholder capabilities in order to be implemented. Where the organization might find the resources for the buildup should be explored and discussed during the proposal development, review, and adoption process. Low- attractiveness proposals are best discarded.

The process for constructing one of these grids is:

The facilitator tapes four flip chart sheets to a wall to form a single surface two sheets high by two sheets wide.

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The facilitator constructs an attractiveness versus capability grid and has a list of proposals and a list of stakeholders ready.

The planning team develops criteria to assess the attractiveness of proposals from low to high (in terms of mission, goals, results, outcomes, or stakeholder-related criteria) and capabilities necessary for successful implementation from low to high.

Team members write proposals on self-adhesive labels, one proposal per label, and the facilitator places each label on the grid in the appropriate position after the team has considered both the proposal's attractiveness and the various stakeholders' capacities to implement it.

The team discusses the results and any implications for building necessary capacity among stakeholders and for getting unattractive proposals off the agenda.

The facilitator records the results of the discussion on flip chart sheets.

Techniques for Policy and Plan Implementation In a sense, all of the techniques considered thus far are relevant to policy and plan implementation as they are concerned with helping develop proposals likely to garner significant stakeholder support. But it is still important to focus directly on stakeholders during implementation (Hill & Hupe, 2014; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). Developing a policy and plan implementation strategy development grid can give planners and decision makers a clearer picture of what will be required for implementation and help them develop action plans that will tap stakeholder interests and resources. The technique is adapted from Meltsner (1972), Coplin and O'Leary (1976), Kaufman (1986), and Christensen (1993) and builds on information revealed by previously created bases of power–directions of interest diagrams, stakeholder support versus opposition grids, stakeholder role plays, and policy attractiveness versus stakeholder capability grids (see Exhibit A.3).

The process for filling out one of the grids is fairly simple:

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The facilitator creates a grid on a wall covered with flip chart sheets and assembles the results of previously completed bases of power– directions of interest diagrams, stakeholder support versus opposition grids, stakeholder role plays, and policy attractiveness versus stakeholder capability grids.

The planning team members fill out the policy implementation strategy grid.

The team discusses the next steps and prepares action plans.

The facilitator records the results of the discussion on flip chart sheets.

The final strategic planning function of building capacity for ongoing implementation, learning, and change is also well-served by diligent use of all or most of the stakeholder analysis techniques. Using the techniques helps organizational members stay attuned to their stakeholders; to think, act, and learn strategically; and to keep the need for ongoing responsiveness clearly in mind.

Exhibit A.3. Policy Implementation Strategy Development Grid.

Stakeholders Stake or Interest

Resources Influence Channels Open to Stakeholders

Likelihood of Participation and Manner of Doing So

Supportive Stakeholders Opposing Stakeholders

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Source: Adapted from Christensen, 1993; Coplin & O'Leary, 1976; Kaufman, 1986; and Meltsner, 1972.

CONCLUSIONS As can be seen, a wide variety of techniques are available for performing the basic functions of strategic management. Each technique provides a different kind of information that can at times be of tremendous assistance.

Some might argue that stakeholder analyses involve a lot of rigmarole that produces not-too-surprising results. However, the evidence is now quite strong that a failure to attend carefully to stakeholder interests and information can easily lead to failure (e.g., Deyle & Weideman, 2014; Nutt, 2002; Sandfort & Moulton, 2015). Given the evidence, and given how relatively simple and cheap the technology is, doing stakeholder analyses certainly would appear to be a smart thing to do. Indeed, I would go further and assert that not doing stakeholder analyses would often be very dumb.

But whether the practice is as wise as it can be depends on which techniques are used for what purposes and when, where, how, by whom, and with what results. Each of the techniques has a different purpose and reveals some things while hiding, or at least not highlighting, others. Like any other technique designed to aid strategic thinking, acting, and learning, stakeholder analyses must be undertaken skillfully and thoughtfully, with a willingness to learn and revise along the way.

For some smaller change efforts, a one-time use of one or two techniques may be all that is necessary; for larger change efforts, a whole range of techniques will be needed at various points throughout the process. Hybrid techniques or new techniques may need to be invented along the way. The key point is the importance of thinking strategically about why, when, where, how, and with whom the analyses are to be undertaken and how to change direction when

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needed.

It is also worth noting that stakeholder analyses can be used to advance causes that many people would believe do not serve the common good or create public value. Stakeholder analysis should never be seen as a substitute for virtuous and ethical practices though it may be a part of promoting such practices. One way to avoid outcomes that do not create public value is to begin with an inclusive definition of stakeholders so that the net of considerations about who and what counts is cast widely from the beginning. Another step appears to be undertaking enough stakeholder analyses to prompt the kind of strategic conversations needed to discover a morally and ethically sound version of the common good to pursue. In the end, the analyses certainly do not guarantee that public value will be created, but they may well provide information that guides the organization toward creating such value.

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RESOURCE B Using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Social Media in the Strategic Planning Process

PETER FLECK, JOHN M. BRYSON, and MALLORY MITCHELL

Information and communications technology and social media have changed strategic planning. The use of e-mail, file attachments, strategic planning websites, Web-based searches, file storage, and collaborative word processing are now part of most strategic planning efforts. Beyond that, more electronic tools are frequently being invented and used in tailored ways that can support strategic planning processes. Judicious use of ICT and social media tools can stimulate and support the assembly of the relevant people, perspectives, expertise, and local knowledge in such a way that noticeably better judgments, coordination, collaboration, and effectiveness occur (Leighninger, 2011; Mergel, 2012; Nabatchi & Leighninger, 2015).

Specifically, ICT and social media tools in combination can serve the following important purposes (or functions):

Improving one-way, two-way, and deliberative communication

Assisting with searches for information sources, solutions, people, and other kinds of resources

Assisting with coordination—i.e., making sure things happen in the right place, at the right time, and in the right sequence

Facilitating collaboration (as in developing a shared definition of issues, creating strategies, and getting alignments worked out)

Helping organize groups independent of geography

Helping identify strategic issues

Supporting development or design of strategies ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Facilitating deliberation in support of analysis, synthesis, and choice

Supporting judgment, for example, by ranking, straw polling, or voting

Acting as an external memory or library

The categories are distinct, but not mutually exclusive—for example, communication is part of all the purposes.

This resource has four sections, including the introduction. The second section examines the challenge of creating an organizational culture open to the use of ICT tools beyond e-mail and simple Google searches. The third section presents an array of ICT- and Internet- based tools that may contribute to the effectiveness of strategic planning efforts, elaborates on the specific purposes they might serve, and indicates particular places in the Strategy Change Cycle where they are likely to be most useful. The resource ends with a short concluding section.

ENHANCING ORGANIZATIONAL USE OF TECHNOLOGY The success of using the Internet and Internet-based tools rests on building a technology-embracing organizational culture that extends into and out from the organization to important stakeholders. The issue of Internet use—especially in terms of openness, inside and outside support, and commitment—therefore often becomes a strategic issue to be dealt with as part of the design of the strategic planning process and of the strategic plan itself. (Mentoring organizations that can help this process along exist. One is NetSquared, which sponsors local information-sharing meetings for social innovators working with the Web and technology; see http://www.netsquared.org/.) The simple truth is that organizations that respond effectively to the challenges of using the Internet are the ones most likely to survive; those that do not will not.

Lee and Kwak (2012) offer a useful framework for understanding what

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it might mean for governments to fully embrace what information technology and the Internet might mean for strategic planning. Their Open Government Maturity Model consists of five stages: initial conditions, data transparency, open participation, open collaboration, and ubiquitous engagement (see Exhibit B.1). The majority of public (and nonprofit) organizations are probably in the initial conditions stage in which only limited data are available online and are not updated frequently. Communication is one-way, there is little or no interaction with the public, and evaluation metrics focus on visits and Web pages views.

Exhibit B.1. Open Government Maturity Model.

Level Focuses Outcomes Metrics

1. Initial conditions

Information broadcasting

Government websites are not frequently visited by the public

No or little public engagement

The public takes a passive role

Government is viewed as a black box

No or few metrics are used

Public awareness of government websites

Number of visitors, pages viewed

2. Data transparency

Transparency of government

Increased public

Process- centric metrics

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processes and performance

Data quality

awareness of government data and process

Increased government accountability

Improved data quality: accuracy, consistency, and timeliness

Reduction of FOIA requests and their processing time

Foundation for performance improvement

Foundation for value- added services

Cultural shift to openness begins

The public is engaged through data

Number of data sets published, analysis tools, downloads, and visitors

Percentage of repeat visitors

Data accuracy, consistency, timeliness

Reduction in FOIA requests, backlog, and response time

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3. Open participation

Public feedback, conversation, voting, and ideation

Interactive communications

Crowd-sourcing

Real-time, instant, diverse feedback from the public

Ongoing, community- based conversation and discussion

Reduced cost and time for innovation

More innovation

Increased sense of community centered around government

Cultural shift to openness

The public is engaged through conversation

Process- centric metrics

Number of visitors, followers

Number of comments and ideas posted by the public

Frequency of voting and polling

Number of out-of-control incidents

Usefulness and quality of public comments and ideas

4. Open collaboration

Interagency collaboration

Open collaboration

Synergistic effect of interagency collaboration: time/cost

Process- centric metrics are mostly used, and outcome-

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with the public

Co-creating value-added services

savings and higher quality outputs

Time/cost savings and innovations through open innovation

The public benefits from high-quality, innovative, new services

New policies and rules are made through open collaboration

Effective responses to emergencies and natural disasters

Openness is widely accepted

The public is engaged through projects/tasks

centric metrics are sometimes used

Number of interagency collaborations, public–private collaborations, citizen– government collaborations

Number and diversity of external partners

Number of new value- added services

Time and cost savings

Quality and innovativeness

5. Ubiquitous engagement

Increased transparency, participation,

The public engages through

Both process- centric and outcome-

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and collaboration

Ubiquitous and continuous public engagement

Integrated public engagement

multiple social media channels

The public engages in various government activities through ubiquitous computing platforms

Public engagement throughout lifetime

Virtuous cycles for sustaining public engagement

Openness becomes a norm for government culture

Benefits of open government are fully realized

centric metrics are actively used

Number of mobile users, mobile platforms, applications, and services

Level of integration of open government processes and services

Extent of public engagement throughout lifetime

Net impact on productivity and innovation

Source: Adapted from Lee & Kwak, 2012

The second stage is data transparency, which involves significant ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

transparency in government data, processes, and performance. Here there is somewhat more engagement with the public, often via experiments with social media. Metrics are mainly process-oriented. Moving to this stage entails a particularly significant cultural shift for many organizations—namely, to the idea that transparency should become the default mode of operation. For example, as part of its commitment to the multinational Open Government Partnership (https://www.opengovpartnership.org/), the Obama administration issued the Open Government Directive on December 8, 2009, which required federal agencies to take immediate, specific steps to achieve transparency, participation, and collaboration. Agencies were required to produce biennial Open Government Plans on their Open Government Web pages. The Obama administration also issued three Open Government National Action Plans for the country, the most recent dated October 27, 2015 (United States Government, 2015).

Note that this plan has been archived by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the new administration announced plans in September 2017 to create a fourth National Action Plan. What it will mean in practice is unclear. At eight months in, the administration has been no friend to openness and transparency.

Transparency means sharing internally and externally all the data the organization is producing unless there are strong reasons not to share —for example, reasons involving privacy and security concerns. Technology makes this sharing easier. For example, audio and video recordings of meetings are easy to make and then upload to a website for easy access. Besides allowing stakeholders and collaborators to hear and see what took place, this site will become an archive for future examination and can also aid in finding new stakeholders. The technology exists to make the planning process transparent to stakeholders, the public, and funders (though the extent to which the process should be transparent is always a matter of judgment).

The third stage is open participation. This includes engagement via, for example, interactive communications, seeking public feedback, or stimulating ideation, crowdsourcing, and voting. Encouraging public feedback via a variety of media is common, and the use of social media is becoming pervasive. Metrics continue to be process-oriented. The ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

fourth stage is open collaboration on an intra- and interagency basis and with the public. Co-creation with partners inside and outside the organization is a hallmark of this stage. Outcome-oriented metrics are occasionally used in addition to the by now common process-oriented metrics. The final stage is ubiquitous openness and engagement with the public via multiple social media channels and computing platforms. Few, if any, public or nonprofit organizations have reached this stage.

What is technologically possible and desirable can collide with the reality that many public and nonprofit organizations are a mix of generational cultures with some ready and willing to use any and all new technologies and others bent on avoiding anything beyond e-mail and a Google search. Creating an enhanced technology and Internet- based culture within the organization is an important part of moving toward more participative and collaborative strategic planning practices using Internet-based technologies.

Initial costs of building a technology-embracing culture must be considered and include such items as adequate hardware and high- speed, dependable, wireless Internet connections. Internet collaboration requires people who are comfortable with their computers, hand-held devices, and a variety of Internet tools.

If you are engaging stakeholders outside the organization, it may be necessary to provide them with some kind of technical support or training. All of this will require a commitment over time to increased technology support and training, but the end result will be a much better fit for collaborative Internet-based work both internally and externally. Unfortunately, many public and nonprofit organizations do not provide much training beyond establishing basic skills. Even more unfortunate is the fact that training budgets are likely to be extraordinarily tight in the face of current budget challenges.

Another concern for those interested in creating a technology- embracing culture has to do with the accessibility of Internet tools and sites by people with disabilities. Challenges facing those with various disabilities should be taken into account when choosing tools for collaborative work. Stakeholders and constituents are likely many and

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varied, and some may have problems with vision, hearing, or use of computers. The choice of tools should take this into account or provide alternative formats that give equal access to information generation, analysis, and use. Reviews are generally available that rate the accessibility of tools, or you could do your own testing. Many Internet resources on accessibility are available (one of the best is the Worldwide Web Consortium's site at http://www.w3.org/WAI), or you can contact a local agency that works with people with disabilities.

Various challenges to the use of technology should not mask the long- term trend toward dramatic impacts on organizational performance, accountability, and stakeholder empowerment brought about by technological change (Mergel, 2012; Nabatchi & Leighninger, 2015). Because we are venturing into new territory with collaborative tools, there is potential for major disruption, which will take time and money to work through but almost certainly will bring substantial rewards. Even if you don't believe in the rewards part, the longer you hesitate to move to embracing the Internet and the tools it enables, the harder it is likely to be because you and your organization will be further behind on the learning and use curve. The tools are getting easier to use all the time, and savvy organizations are learning how to use them wisely.

Of course, policies need to be in place to govern use of information technology and Internet-based tools. Policies are required in the areas of access and inclusion privacy, security, archiving, and governance (Bertot, Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012, esp. p. 36). Not addressing these needs implies tacit endorsement of whatever policies come with the tool (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google Drive, etc.). Policies and strategies also should be in place to address issues of deliberate hacking, sabotage, or hijacking of engagement of efforts by particular stakeholders in ways that undermine the public purposes to be served.

The issue of equal access to all players draws attention to the digital divide in which not everyone has access to the Internet. For that reason, government and nonprofit organizations typically need to have a plan for offline engagement, such as holding physical meetings, snail mail, in-person interviews, and so on.

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THE TOOLS The tools we recommend have five attributes. They are:

ICT or social media-based. The tool makes use of electronic information and communications or social media technology.

Easy to use. The tools do not require extensive training sessions.

Popular. The tools have a following that has chosen the tool rather than other alternatives. Generally, popularity will also increase longevity.

Low friction at the interface. This means that the tool has good usability, intuitive and logical navigation, fast response, and a level of design elegance.

Free or relatively low cost. There are many tools in the free and open source category. In most cases, they work as well as or better than proprietary solutions. A potential trade-off is that with local server installations, you will need a resource to manage the server and application. Proprietary solutions can be problematic no matter how wonderful they sound. Often companies have difficulty keeping up with the latest technologies and protocols or there are security issues.

The ICT and social media tools considered in this resource are organized into the following categories: communication, project management, file sharing, discussion groups, social bookmarking, surveys, knowledge mapping, ideation, presentation, and video. Exhibit B.2 presents a list of websites where the tools themselves or examples of their use may be found. Exhibit B.3 shows the particular strategic planning purposes for which each tool is suited.

Exhibit B.2. Sites Where ICT and Social Media Tools Relevant to Strategic Planning May Be Found.

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Tool Category

Website Where Tool May Be Found

Examples of Use

Communication Facebook facebook.com Create group for

planning team Twitter twitter.com Post publicly

about process Blogs wordpress.com, tumblr.com Both internal

and external communications

Wikis pbworks.com wikispaces.com

Collaboratively edit a knowledge repository

Slack slack.com Alternative to e- mail for project management

Project Management Basecamp basecamp.com Project

management Asana asana.com Project

management Trello trello.com Project

management, to-do lists

File Sharing Google Drive google.com/drive/ Share files of all

types, collaborate on Google Docs

Dropbox dropbox.com Share files Box box.com Share files

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Discussion Groups Google Groups groups.google.com Group

discussions, private or public

Yahoo! Groups groups.yahoo.com Group discussion, private or public

Reddit reddit.com Group discussion, social news aggregation

Social Bookmarking Pinboard pinboard.in Bookmark

sharing Surveys Survey Monkey

surveymonkey.com Conduct surveys, analyze data

Qualtrics qualtrics.com Conduct surveys, analyze data

Google Forms google.com/forms/ Conduct surveys, analyze data

Knowledge Mapping CmapTools cmap.ihmc.us Visually

organize information

Visual Understanding Environment

vue.tufts.edu Visually organize information

Inspiration inspiration.com/inspiration Visually organize

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information Lucidchart lucidchart.com Visually

organize information

DebateGraph debategraph.org Visually organize information

Decision Explorer and Group Explorer

banxia.com/dexplore/ Visually organize information

Ideation Google Sheets google.com/sheets/ Simplify,

analyze data Presentation PowerPoint office.live.com/start/PowerPoint.aspx Create slides

detailing your plan

Google Slides google.com/slides/ Create slides detailing your plan

Prezi prezi.com Create slides detailing your plan

Video YouTube youtube.com Create video

about your plan, perhaps using storytelling

Vimeo vimeo.com Create video about your plan, perhaps using storytelling

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Storify storify.com Create video about your plan, perhaps using storytelling

Communication Tools Social networking provides a way to create and build engagement in a strategic planning process by offering easy ways to open portals for communication and participation. We recommend that organizations have at least one staff member responsible for managing social networks. Ensuring adequate staff capacity enables effective use of a social media strategy, including quicker interaction with users who post responses, positive or negative.

We suggest considering five tools that serve primarily communication purposes as part of a strategic planning process. These include: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, and Slack.

As an aside, note that e-mail will undoubtedly also have a role to play, but it is foolish to rely on it exclusively for strategic planning-related communication. We all use e-mail on a day-to-day basis and almost reflexively go to it when starting a collaborative project such as the creation of a strategic plan. Unfortunately, our e-mail accounts have typically become repositories for anything and everything with inadequate ways of categorizing and archiving messages and attachments. So the potential difficulties of keeping track of and not losing important information are real. E-mail is also subject to human failings such as poorly written subject lines and messages, as well as messages dealing with multiple topics instead of a separate message for each topic. Finally, e-mail provides inadequate institutional memory, so when a new person joins the team, they often do not have access to all that has transpired before. This is an especially important concern for nonprofit organizations dependent on volunteer personnel.

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Exhibit B.3. Matching Web-Based Tools to the Strategy Change Cycle. Key Indicating Purposes These Tools May Serve A. Communication: one-way or two-way

B. Assist with searches (for people, sources, solutions, resources, and so on)

C. Facilitate coordination (helping things happen in the right place at the right time in the sequence)

D. Facilitate collaboration (as in developing a shared definition of issues, creating strategies, getting alignments worked out)

E. Facilitate organizing large groups independent of geography

F. Identify issues

G. Develop or design strategies

H. Help with modeling of problems and solutions

I. Facilitate deliberation (analysis, synthesis, and choice)

J. Facilitate judgment (for example, ranking and voting)

K. Act as an external memory or library

The capital letters in the table below correspond to the purposes listed above. For example, Google Docs can act as an external memory or library (J) while you are initiating and agreeing on a strategic planning process (Step 1).

Tools Communication: one-way or two- way A

Assist with searches (for people, sources, solutions, resources,

Facilitate coordination (helping things happen in the right place at the right time in

Facilitate collaboration (as in developing a shared definition of issues, creating

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and so on) B

the sequence) C

strategies, getting alignments worked out) D

COMMUNICATION Facebook X X - Twitter X X - Blogs X - - Wikis X - - Slack X X X PROJECT MANAGEMENT Basecamp X - X Asana X - X Trello X - X FILE SHARING Google Drive X - - Dropbox X - - Box X - - DISCUSSION GROUPS Google Groups X X - Yahoo! Groups X X - Reddit X X - SOCIAL BOOKMARKING Pinboard X X - SURVEYS SurveyMonkey X - - Qualtrics X - - Google Forms X - - KNOWLEDGE MAPPING******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

KNOWLEDGE MAPPING CmapTools X - - Visual Understanding Environment

X - -

Inspiration X - - Lucidchart X - - DebateGraph X - -

Decision Explorer and Group Explorer

X X X

IDEATION Google Sheets X - - PRESENTATION PowerPoint X - - Google Slides X - - Prezi X - - VIDEO YouTube X X - Vimeo X X - Storify X X -

Facebook. We recommend using both Facebook and Twitter as part of a strategic planning process. Facebook says in its mission statement that its purpose it to connect people “with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them” (Facebook, 2017a). Connections are made through the use of pages, which are profiles managed by each individual or organizational user. Through these pages, users are able to interact

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with one another by sharing photos, online content, or dialogue. With well over a billion users, Facebook is a staple of social media networking.

With regard to strategic planning, Facebook can be used as a means of communication between participants and observers independent of geography. Users of the site are able to interact with pages by “liking,” commenting, or sharing content with their networks. Facebook can be used to facilitate searches, identify issues, and perhaps foster deliberation. The tool also acts as an external memory.

Creating a Facebook account is free, and maintenance of a personal or organizational profile is free as well. Managing a page from a mobile device is possible but more challenging than using a desktop or laptop computer. Only owners of promotional pages have the option to pay to promote their posts in order to be more visible in the news feeds of their followers. This option may be useful to organizations using Facebook to share information with, or gather information from, their followers.

Facebook stores user data within private messages, public or private groups, and personal profiles. Anything posted on the website effectively belongs to Facebook. If the website is used to connect members of a project in one space, such as private group, the creator of the group can control the levels of access available to other group members. This means the creator can decide if all, some, or no group members have the ability to upload or delete files within the group.

By creating an account on Facebook, one agrees to the privacy terms of the company. Many have questioned the transparency of their policies; nonetheless, one must be comfortable giving personal information (birth date, e-mail address, location, etc.) to the website in order to participate. For organizations, Facebook also collects information such as content posted to the website, frequency of use, and engagement with other people and groups (Facebook, 2017b).

Twitter. Twitter is a service for contacts, friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People post tweets, which may contain

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photos, videos, links, and more than 140 characters of text (Twitter, 2017).

Users create profiles in which they provide a brief description of themselves, and all interaction between users occurs in the form of tweets. Users can follow other users, and the tweets of all profiles followed are collected in a timeline, which is constantly updated to reflect new tweets. Twitter allows anyone to follow you and lets you choose whether to follow that person. One can connect with people of similar interests who live anywhere on the globe. In order to interact, users can like, reply to (@reply), or retweet their own followers. You can also start a private conversation or group conversation by using the direct message feature.

Twitter can be accessed from any smartphone, tablet, or computer with Internet access. Creating a Twitter account is free, and the social network offers no services that require payment. For strategic planning, Twitter serves the same purposes as Facebook though it should be noted that engagement is limited due to the 140-character limit, so a dialogue with users would be difficult to sustain. Much like Facebook, anything posted to Twitter is archived. Unique to Twitter is the fact that users can request an archive of all posts since the creation of their account. This means the tool has the ability to store all tweets posted by all users.

Users have the option to make their tweets public or private. For public organizations, the account probably should—and may have to— be public. This allows any Twitter account to follow and engage with the organization without gaining approval first. Account privacy can play a significant role in assisting (or not) with searches for users or specific content. Regardless of whether the account is public or private, users also have the ability to block other users who display inappropriate behavior.

Blogs. A blog (or Weblog) is “a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically [typically in reverse chronological order], that can be viewed in an HTML browser” (Winer, 2003). The hierarchy is centered on the sequence of blog posts, which are the individual articles. Blogs usually allow readers to comment on

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individual posts. Blogs are often thought to be anchored in a personalized journaling style but, in reality, go far beyond that with most major journalism sites—The New York Times, for example— using blogs to inform readers.

Ideally, the strategic planning process itself will be narrated by regular blog posts for both documentation and reflection by participants or observers. The blogs can serve as an engagement tool for stakeholders and the public by reporting on strategic planning progress. As Mergel and Greeves (2012, p. 49) note, blogs “allow an organization to summarize, highlight, and tie together online resources to prove a point of view, or a progress report, or to explain a decision or solicit feedback.”

Allowing open commenting on blog posts can generate public discussion that is helpful for modeling problems and solutions; developing or designing strategies; and facilitating coordination, collaboration, deliberation and judgment. Blogs also provide an external memory.

The blog can also be used to inform what occurs in the future, providing a historical record and possibly analysis of the process. Blogging of this sort can help ensure that the strategic planning effort does not become some kind of rigid recipe for producing standardized objects called strategic plans. The capacity of blogs to document is also useful for helping the organization and others better understand how what works in one situation may or may not be transferable to other situations.

Wordpress.com and Tumblr.com are the two leaders in this area. Both are free at the starter level and relatively easy to use. Wordpress allows you to upgrade for more features including turning off advertising on your site. Tumblr remains free and is supported by advertising. They both allow for private, password-protected blogs. Both also go beyond blogging and will let you create a full-blown website.

Wikis. Wikis are tools that allow for the collaborative development of documents by many people. The tools allow people to edit the main document online by using a simple interface. The result is a

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collectively authored text. Wikis are a staple of online collaborative work (Leighninger, 2011). They are based on the assumption that “groups of people who want to collaborate also tend to trust one another” (Shirky, 2008, p. 111); wikis won't work absent a basic level of trust.

Wikipedia is one of the best examples with its more than 3 million user-contributed articles. Kendall, Nino, and Staley (2008) explored San Jose State University's library's use of a wiki to create a dynamic online workspace with an informal, community-building capability and found that it benefited the strategic planning process among library employees.

Wikis feature “collaborative authoring with lightweight content management features such as lists of changed pages, author tracking, and locking” (Wood, 2005). Wiki systems also have version control and rollback and make it very easy to add new pages and create links. The ease of editing—including page deletions—could be an issue for hierarchically structured organizations though wikis can be secured to smaller groups for writing and larger groups for reading, and doing so could help solve the problem.

Although wikis are fairly simple to use, they do require some training, especially if the intent is to use them for actual file storage of documents in addition to collaborative writing and editing. Wiki pages are often not formatted for final publication, requiring that text be moved to a word processing application, such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word, before final publishing.

Two examples of wikis are PBworks (http://www.pbworks.com) and Wikispaces (https://www.wikispaces.com). PBworks has six different products: AgencyHub, BusinessHub, LegalHub, ProjectHub, WikiHub, and Professional Services. Free levels allow 15 internal users, five external users, as many as five wikis, and 50MB of storage. A limited free wiki edition may work for smaller organizations. Upgrades cost $20 per user per month but do provide unlimited wikis and substantial storage space (PBworks, n.d.).

Wikispaces offers two types of wikis: education and “everyone else” with a heavy emphasis on education. Only the educational version is

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free, and you have to certify that you will use it only for education (Wikispaces, 2015). According to Zukerman (2012), “Wikispaces makes it easy to get started by providing friendly, readable documentation.” Prices start at $10 per month for the Plus Plan (https://www.wikispaces.com/content/pricing; accessed May 19, 2017).

Google also has an offering in the wiki category called Google Sites (https://sites.google.com). According to Augustine (2016), “Creating a project wiki using Google Sites is an easy process.” It is part of the Google Apps for Work productivity suite and is free and accessible if you have a free Google account whether you join Google Apps or not.

Slack. According to TechCrunch (http://techcrunch.com/topic/product/slack/3/; accessed May 24, 2017), Slack was launched in August 2013 by co-founders Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson, and Serguei Mourachov. Slack is designed to be a communication tool for teams that provides real-time messaging and archiving and search capabilities. Slack offers private groups, direct messaging, and ongoing chat rooms organized by topic. All content is searchable from one search box. Slack integrates with many third-party services and supports community- built integrations. Slack provides apps for Mac, iOS, Android, and Windows, a Web version, and a beta client for Linux.

Slack occupies the space between communication and project management (https://slack.com; accessed May 24, 2017). Slack is not really a project management tool, but it is an extremely flexible communication tool. According to Manjoo (2015), Slack has features “that make it perfectly suited for work, including automatic archiving of all your interactions, a good search engine and the ability to work across just about every device you use.” Because it is hosted online and “is extremely customizable” corporate technology departments generally have no issues setting it up (Manjoo, 2015).

According to the Slack website, you create a Slack account and then invite other team members. It's free to use; the limitations are it will archive only 10,000 messages and it will hook up with 10 outside services only (Google Apps for example). Even at the free level, you

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can have multiple teams with no limit on the number of members. You communicate within Slack via channels or direct messages and can also upload files (they appear in the channel/message stream) and images.

Beyond the free level, there are currently two other paid levels: Standard ($6.67 per month per user) and Plus ($12.50 per month per user). (Those are the rates if you are billed annually; rates are slightly higher if billed monthly.)

Project Management Tools Earlier we noted the difficulties of relying on e-mail for helping manage a strategic planning process. As a result, it is best to make use of some sort of project management software. Basecamp was an early entry in the field, but more have appeared on the scene, including Asana and Trello. Each of these tools facilitates project-based communication, coordination, and collaboration independent of geography, and each also acts as an external memory or library.

Duffy (2015) says that project management services are “real-time workspaces [that] let team members and outside partners keep an eye on every detail that brings a project to fruition.” They also record the history of the project so new people can get updated quickly. The services we review accomplish all of these things but in very different ways. They also allow you to store files (such as documents and pictures) and share them. In some cases, they will let you set up subgroup areas with privacy restrictions. All of them are based on the “freemium” model, which means “a product or service (typically a digital offering or application such as software, media, games or web services) is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for proprietary features, functionality, or virtual goods” (Freemium, 2016). For most organizations, free should be adequate.

Basecamp. According to Templeton (2014), “The Basecamp brand name is one of the most powerful and evocative among project management software packages. Its mountaineering metaphor fits superbly with images of teams of people bringing their skill set to a single location before embarking on tasks designed to eventually ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

conquer the obstacles in front of them.” Anyone familiar with project management software has likely heard of Basecamp.

An administrator or team manager creates a new project in Basecamp then invites people to participate via e-mail invitations. Basecamp supports file sharing, internal discussions in forums, working together on documents, assigning tasks, and checking due dates via the software's integrated calendar. There are project templates. The software is safe and secure (Basecamp Security Overview, n.d.). There are also official mobile apps for both iOS and Android operating systems, and the site itself is mobile-friendly and responsive. According to Cabot and Wilson (2009), “its developer explicitly aimed to support certain collaboration and project management practices, and to keep it…simple.”

Basecamp offers a free account, and each account can have multiple projects, which is usually enough for a small organization. For example, Seward Neighborhood Group (http://sng.org) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, manages several events yearly with a single account. For unlimited Basecamp sites allowing for different teams, pricing starts at $29 per month, and there are no per-user fees.

Basecamp 3 was released in November 2015 and was a significant rewrite of the software (Hempel, 2015). Because most companies and organizations use Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar, Basecamp decided to forego the familiar grid-based calendar, in which the dates run horizontally, and instead incorporates a line-by-line agenda view, in which the dates run vertically (n.d.). You do not have to upgrade to the latest Basecamp, but for existing free accounts there is no charge. Many small organizations with minor project management needs will opt not to upgrade as training everyone in the new version would take too much time.

Asana. Asana is another project management tool in which users can create, assign, and track tasks (https://asana.com/). As they are completed, progress can be monitored by all users within a project. Users can also communicate with one another via a chat feature, and attachments can be easily uploaded via Google Drive or Dropbox. Data storage is cloud-based, so files can be accessed from any Internet-

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connected device.

Asana is not recommended for small teams because the variety of features can complicate, rather than simplify, the project management process. Asana has a basic package available for free for teams of as many as 15 people and a paid premium membership subscription with additional features for teams of more than 15 people.

Trello. Trello is a project and task management tool “that gives you a visual overview of what is being worked on and who is working on it” (Gray, 2015). It was released at a TechCrunch event by Fog Creek founder Joel Spolsky (Rao, 2011). It uses the Kanban system, developed by Toyota as a “system to keep production levels high and maintain flexibility” and is best described as a “whiteboard filled with post-it notes” (Gray, 2015).

According to Minchew (2015), “Trello allows users to track a project on a customizable web page called a board.” Each project has a board with multiple lists consisting of multiple cards. The card is the “most basic and flexible part of the system” (Gray, 2015). It represents a discrete element of a project such as an item on a to-do list. You can drag cards from list to list. A simple Trello board could have two lists: To Do and Done. Once a To Do item is done, you drag it to the Done list. According to Minchew (2015), “each list can contain one or more cards, and each card can contain a world of data, including members involved in the task, time-stamped comments, attachments, labels, due dates, and checklists.” Trello cards can also have attached images and colored labels (Gray, 2015).

At the free level, “there are no restrictions on the number of boards, cards, or organizations that users…can create” (Minchew, 2015). “Board elements are all drag and drop,” making it incredibly easy to reorder lists on the board and transfer cards between lists (Minchew, 2015).

File Sharing Tools Effective strategic planning project management inevitably involves file sharing. We discuss three file sharing tools that are particularly

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appropriate: Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box.

Google Drive. Google Drive features a document creator (Google Docs) for both word processing and spreadsheets, a drawing program, an online form generator for gathering information into a spreadsheet, and the ability to upload, store, and share any type of file (https://www.google.com/docs/about/). Google Drive provides cloud storage for Google Docs and will allow import and export from and to popular formats, including Microsoft Office files and Adobe PDFs, so there is no problem sharing files with people not using Google Docs. It also allows for uploading files of any format, similar to Dropbox (discussed in the next section). Google Docs has excellent sharing capabilities, allowing you to easily share with one person or a group. All documents can also be published to the Internet for either limited or public viewing.

For a strategic planning team, Google Docs and Google Drive can support a number of purposes either locally or at a distance, including communication, developing or designing strategies, facilitating coordination and collaboration, and providing an external memory, archive, and file repository.

When collaborating on a document in the Google Drive system, the “owner” can provide different permissions to different users. This ultimately determines who has the ability to view, edit, or comment on the documents. The revision history of the document is also saved, so previous versions are always available.

The Google Drive (and Google Docs) system is available at no cost when you sign up for a free Google account. In spite of Google's functionality, groups may hesitate using it due to privacy issues concerning Google's mining of personal data for advertisers and the fact that Google does serve up ads in Gmail. (Ads are not visible in the Docs system.) It should be noted that though Google does look at your e-mail to try to target ads to your preferences, it does not see you as an individual or link the data directly to you. Google Drive has excellent local syncing for editing your files offline when you are not connected to the Internet. Note as well that working online works best with faster Internet access speeds. Participants working from home could have

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slower access speeds and be frustrated when editing documents.

Dropbox. Dropbox is a cloud-based tool for storing documents, photos, and other files (https://www.dropbox.com/). It makes sharing files with others locally or at a distance easy as users can create folders around particular topics. Users can also send links to folders and files to others, including nonusers of Dropbox. It is available as an app for your computer, so files can be stored directly to the Dropbox folder on your computer without signing in to the website. The files are then synced to your folder on the Dropbox website.

Users have the option of one free or one paid plan. The free plan, Dropbox Basic, includes limited (2GB as of this writing), but still substantial, storage compared to the paid plan, Dropbox Pro, which comes with 1TB of storage. Dropbox Pro is the best option for strategic planning due to the increased storage and additional sharing controls.

Box. According to Duffy (2016), “Box isn't quite as well known a syncing and storage service as its most famous competitor, Dropbox, but it is a highly reliable and full-featured tool.” Like Dropbox, it is a cloud-based tool for storing documents, photos, and other files (https://www.box.com/).

Box includes a free plan for individuals that allows as much as 10GB of storage space compared to Dropbox's 2GB limit. But Box has an upload limit of 250MB per file, whereas Dropbox will let you upload files as big your total storage area. That could be a problem for Web designers or video editors but should not pose issues for simple file and image sharing when collaborating on a project. The Box Personal Pro plan costs $10 per month and lets you upload files as large as 5GB with a total of 100GB of space.

The Box program works like Dropbox in that you create a new folder on your computer and everything you put into that folder syncs to the Box “cloud” and across all the devices where you've installed the Box app (Duffy, 2016). Both Box and Dropbox have mobile apps available. For strategic planning, both can support communication and coordination, as well as provide an external memory or library.

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Discussion Groups Strategic planning inevitably involves a great deal of discussion. Here we discuss three online tools that can help focus and advance discussion: Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups, and Reddit.

Google Groups. Google Groups (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!overview) is a free online tool for sharing information through discussions. Users can join existing groups or create their own. By having all group members in one place, it is easy to coordinate in-person meetings and find others with similar interests.

Google Groups can accessed at any time from any Internet-connected device. Permission to create or remove content can be granted to all group members or to select members with select permissions. For example, group owners, managers, and members may all have varying degrees of access to the group.

Yahoo! Groups. Yahoo! Groups is a free online tool for sharing information through discussions. Users can join existing groups or create their own (https://help.yahoo.com/kb/groups/SLN15010.html). With all group members in one place, coordinating in-person meetings and finding others with similar interests is easy. Additionally, each group has a control panel where the owner and moderator can customize tools and permissions for group members.

Yahoo! Groups gives users the ability to upload files and videos, share links, and create databases to suit the needs of the group. This can be extremely helpful in strategic planning as all materials could be saved in one space along with any discussion. The Groups tool also easily integrates with Yahoo! Calendar, so scheduling events is simplified.

As of this writing, however, it is unclear what the future of Yahoo! Groups is because Verizon acquired Yahoo's core business in 2016. The deal closed in June 2017. There are thousands of subscribers to Yahoo! Groups, so it's unlikely that Verizon will shut it down, but the uncertainty may be a good reason to use Google Groups or Reddit.

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Reddit. Reddit is an online forum in which users can contribute to subsections of the forum called subreddits. Subreddits are dedicated to particular topics and are essentially their own community. Reddit users can subscribe to a variety of subreddits, and each has its own rules and guidelines for its subscribers.

Each subreddit has moderators and administrators. Moderators ensure that posts within a subreddit are relevant to its dedicated topic, and they have the ability to approve or remove posts from any contributor. Administrators have the same duties as moderators but are paid employees of Reddit who ensure that the website remains easy for users to use.

For strategic planning, subreddits dedicated to the project's topic or geographic area could be good places to share and gather information from the public. It is easy for users to reply to each other's comments, so an engaging discussion could be had between users. Reddit is free to use and could be an ideal sounding board.

Social Bookmarking Tools Mathes (2004, p. 2) describes social bookmarking as “a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of Web resources” with the help of user-generated metadata to create a “grassroots community classification of digital assets.” We consider the social bookmarking tool Pinboard.

Pinboard. Pinboard (https://pinboard.in) was developed by Maciej Ceglowski, who still runs it. The focus is on personal management of bookmarks using tags to organize them. There is an $11 annual fee for the service (http://pinboard.in/faq#cost). One of the big advantages to Pinboard is there are no ads and no graphics, “just easy, easy bookmarking and tagging” (Arrington, 2009). Pinboard also integrates with Twitter, creating a searchable archive of your tweets and creating bookmarks of your tweeted links.

After creating an account in Pinboard, you can work with browser- based tools (basically buttons on your browser's toolbar) that make saving bookmarks to your account very simple. When you find a site

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you wish to bookmark, you click the button and a window pops up on- screen, giving you the chance to add extra metadata, including tags and a comment. In most cases, Pinboard will suggest tags that you have used in the past for similar sites or that others have used for that particular Web page in the bookmarking system. Once you have saved the bookmark to your account, the window disappears and you can continue your Web browsing. By default, all bookmarks are public and anyone—whether or not they have an account in Pinboard—can access them. (There is a private option available if you are not comfortable with sharing.) Your bookmarks exist on the network (in the cloud) but can be downloaded to your computer in a format compatible with most browser bookmarking systems.

Pinboard allows you to subscribe to other users' accounts or to a particular tag or tag grouping. This allows easy sharing of websites among a group. Tags could be agreed upon beforehand to aggregate content of interest. An organization could create a special tag utilizing an abbreviated form of its name. Using Pinboard encourages exploration and serendipitous discovery. You can explore tags of interest on topics relevant to your organization, then tag them with your custom tag to easily share with your collaborators. Pinboard indicates how many have saved a particular page in the system, creating a kind of popularity gauge.

Pinboard incorporates user-added keywords—tags—to manage the organization of data. Mathes (2004, p. 5) also points out problems with ambiguity of the tags as different users apply different meanings to the same tags. The lack of synonym controls leads “to tags that seemingly have similar intended meanings, like ‘mac,’ ‘macintosh,’ and ‘apple’ all being used to describe materials related to Apple Macintosh computers” (p. 6). Using a custom tag—based on an organization's name, for example—for collaboration would help with this as the tag would represent a trusted source.

(The previous edition of this book discussed a bookmarking tool called Delicious. In June 2017, Maciej Ceglowski, founder of Pinboard, purchased Delicious. The site is read-only as of June 15, 2017. Prior users' bookmarks will still be accessible.)

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Tools for Doing Surveys Online surveys support communication, issue identification, helping model problems and solutions, developing or designing strategies, facilitating judgment, and providing an external memory or library. We examine three survey tools: SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, and Google Forms.

SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey is an online tool for creating and distributing surveys. The website provides templates but also allows users to create their own. There are four plans with varied levels of customization and data analysis, ranging from free to $65 per month per user. With this tool, users can distribute the survey to their own pool of respondents or use targeted markets provided by SurveyMonkey for a fee.

For strategic planning, SurveyMonkey can be useful for gathering feedback from participants or other stakeholders. Survey results can be easily analyzed and visualized using the website or transferred to other tools such as Microsoft Excel. It also easily integrates with other platforms such as Salesforce, Hootsuite, and MailChimp. SurveyMonkey requires an Internet-connected device and basic knowledge of survey design.

Qualtrics. Qualtrics provides a platform for survey creation and distribution, including certified Net Promoter Score integration. Its primary uses are for gathering consumer and employee feedback. Surveys can be made for use online, offline, or through text for any mobile device.

It also features a dashboard-style presentation of statistics for easy analysis and benchmarking. There are more than 30 types of graphs for data visualization and the ability to export reports to Adobe or Microsoft products.

Qualtrics is capable of market segmentation, market research, product testing, and a range of other marketing needs. Customers have the ability to make profiles for survey respondents so the appropriate respondents can be easily selected. For academics, the platform offers

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tools specific to their needs including institutional assessments and program administration.

Google Forms. Google Forms is a free online tool for collecting and organizing information through surveys. Users have the option to use predesigned templates and formats or customize the surveys with a logo, video, or other media.

Responses are automatically collected and easily analyzed in Google Sheets. Surveys and their responses are saved in cloud storage and are accessible from any Internet-connected device at any time or location. If users download the app to their computer, surveys can be accessed offline as well. Additionally, as edits are made, they are saved automatically in a revision history.

Knowledge Mapping Tools Vail (cited in Folkes, 2004, p. 2), defines knowledge mapping “as the process of associating items of information or knowledge, preferably visually, in such a way that the mapping itself also creates additional knowledge.” Maps typically involve statements linked to one another by lines or arrows in such a way that relationships among the statements are made clear. Relationships may be logical, temporal, associational, or causal, meaning that one thing causes or leads to the other. The visual strategy mapping process discussed in Chapters 2 and 7 is a kind of causal mapping.

Internet-based knowledge mapping may be used to assist strategic planning in a variety of ways that includes all of the purposes outlined above and in Exhibit B.3. Specifically, mapping can support brainstorming, information sharing, and dialogue around stakeholder analyses, environmental scanning, strategic issue identification, strategy formulation, organizational visioning, and the implementation process. Mapping, in other words, is an extraordinarily powerful strategic planning tool.

The types of knowledge mapping most directly relevant to strategic planning go by different names, including cognitive mapping, causal mapping, visual strategy mapping, action-oriented strategy mapping,

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oval mapping, and mind mapping (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2014, pp. 187–196; Bryson, Ackermann, Eden, & Finn, 2004, pp. 329–342). Different types of mapping organize information differently and, therefore, produce different kinds of knowledge.

A basic distinction is between mapping done by individuals and mapping done by groups. Cognitive mapping is the term reserved for mapping by individuals. Siau and Tan (2005, p. 276) describe it “as a technique to elicit an individual's belief systems regarding a problem domain” with “great potential in overcoming some cognitive problems and facilitating understanding among stakeholders.” Scavarda et al. (as cited in Folkes, 2004, p. 4) says cognitive mapping “is a representation of an individual's perception of a particular topic” using nodes and links:

The nodes represent a concept, variable, issue, entity, or attribute and can be represented by a single word, phrase or paragraph. Nodes can include hyperlinks to additional information such as Web pages or to other nodes. The links represent the relationships between the nodes.

There are a variety of group mapping techniques. As noted earlier, visual strategy mapping is John Bryson's preferred approach to developing strategies; the approach was discussed briefly in Chapters 2 and 7 and is presented in much more detail in Bryson, Ackermann, and Eden (2014), and Bryson, Ackermann, Eden, and Finn (2004). See also the instructional video at https://civios.umn.edu/case_study/visual-strategy-mapping-groups/. Purpose mapping, discussed in Chapter 3, is also a form of causal mapping.

The terms mind map and concept map are often used interchangeably, but usually a mind map has one central concept, whereas a concept map can have several. Additionally, mind maps are more about creative note taking while concept maps are typically used to explore knowledge (or misperceptions) (Folkes, 2004, p. 7). Both can be created by individuals or groups.

There are many tools for knowledge mapping available online, and most are free. Several allow both private online spaces for internal

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collaboration and the ability to engage the public in the process. In this section, we consider Cmap, Visual Understanding Environment, Inspiration, Lucidchart, DebateGraph, and Decision Explorer and Group Explorer. When evaluating knowledge mapping software, keep in mind the following criteria:

1. Is it Web-based and compatible with all standard Web browsers (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari) and computer operating systems (Windows and Mac OS X)?

2. Is it easy and intuitive to use and offers the ability to easily restructure the map?

3. Is it free or low cost? Some Web mapping tools have a free version as well as an expensive premium version.

4. Is there a choice of public or closed-group collaboration? There should be the ability to have accounts and restrict access and the option to allow anyone to view it.

5. Does the software allow the export of data to standard formats for republishing? For example, the JPEG image format is recommended as the most compatible with multiple software applications such as Microsoft Word, Web pages, e-mail, and so on.

6. Are there customizable features such as font choices and sizes and colors of nodes?

Using knowledge mapping software can require some training. Interfaces can be complex with many options and initially hidden features. Someone will need to read the manual and practice using the software. It may also require staff time to follow up on the process if it's not done as a team.

Cmap. Cmap Tools is a software environment developed at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) that enables users, individually or collaboratively, to represent their knowledge using concept maps, to share them with peers and colleagues, and to publish them (http://cmap.ihmc.us/). CmapTools is for collaborative work or for individuals. It is a very flexible tool that allows for linking

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to outside resources. It's based on the concept of a low threshold, high ceiling, which indicates that it is easy to learn but very powerful. The tools are compared to a word processor for ease of use (Cañas et al., 2014).

Novak and Cañas (2008) state that the tool provides extensive support for collaborative work during concept map construction. They go on to say that the maps built with CmapTools can be stored on servers “where anybody on the Internet can access them.” Many of these servers are public. A Web browser is all that is needed to browse through a published concept map.

The basic IHMC CmapTools software is free (though the owners do request a donation) for educational institutions and U.S. federal government agencies, and the software is being offered free as a beta test version to other users, including commercial users. Rather than use a website, you download the software from the site and install it on your computer. Windows and Mac software is available. Once installed, it can create maps on the IHMC cloud server. An example of a Cmap is presented in Exhibit B.4. The Cmap website includes a number of useful resources, including many examples of Cmaps: http://cmap.ihmc.us/.

Exhibit B.4. Cmap Displayed in Cmap Viewer.

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Source: http://cmapskm.ihmc.us/viewer/cmap/1064009710027_1637638703_27098; accessed June 30, 2017.

Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) VUE is similar to Cmap and is maintained and supported on a Tufts University website. VUE is described as “a concept and content mapping application, developed to support teaching, learning and research and for anyone who needs to organize, contextualize, and access digital information. Using a simple set of tools and a basic visual grammar consisting of nodes and links, faculty and students can map relationships between concepts, ideas and digital content” (http://vue.tufts.edu/about/index.cfm).

VUE is a flexible tool that can access digital content via the Internet or other sources. VUE also offers useful presentation options, including a “pathways” feature that allows presenters to create annotated trails through their maps, which can help foster understanding of the connections between nodes and what they mean. The pathways ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

feature also provides a “slide view” of the information on the map, which allows presenters to “focus on content (slide view) while preserving the information's context (map view), by way of a single toggle between the two views” (http://vue.tufts.edu/about/index.cfm). VUE also provides support for analysis of maps with the ability to merge maps and export data for import into statistical packages for analysis.

VUE is open source and licensed under the Education Community License v2. VUE is a free download and works on Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms.

Inspiration. Inspiration presents itself as a “graphic organizer” (http://www.inspiration.com/Inspiration). The tool was developed initially for classroom teachers but is more generally applicable. It can be used for visual mapping, outlining, and writing and making presentations. There are four “views,” which are actually suites of tools: diagramming, mapping, outlining, and presenting. Particularly valuable features include a wide array of symbol icons that can be incorporated into a substantial number of customizable templates. The software comes with very limited analytic capability. It sells as a download for less than $40.

Lucidchart. Lucidchart is a commercially available knowledge mapping software that the owners refer to as a “diagramming software” (https://www.lucidchart.com/). Many diagram templates are available, including ones typically used for engineering, business, and general project management. The software includes limited analytic capability. Teams can sign up for $20 a month paid annually; individual users can sign up for $5 per month paid annually for the basic service or $9 per month paid annually for the premium service. The company claims to have more than 5,000,000 users.

The software runs in the cloud, so no download is required. It can be used from most any device, and because it has templates and drag- and-drop functionality, it is fairly easy to use. The software integrates with other productivity tools, including Google Apps, and content may be drawn from YouTube, Dropbox, and Facebook. Files can also be

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imported from and exported to Visio.

DebateGraph. Although social and online media have made it easier and faster to communicate, it is less clear that this is always a good thing. It often seems that the increase in sheer quantity of discussion is at the expense of the quality of real dialogue. DebateGraph is an online tool that attempts to counter this trend, doing its best to reap the advantages of online engagement while avoiding some of the pitfalls (http://debategraph.org).

DebateGraph is a special kind of mapping tool whose goal is to “create a new kind of public service that enables local and global communities of people to think together by collaboratively building and editing comprehensive and succinct maps of complex debates that accurately present all sides of the debate from a neutral standpoint, free of repetitive clutter and ‘noise.’” (DebateGraph, 2015)

In terms of knowledge mapping, it is related to a concept map, allowing multiple concepts and a remarkable ability to drill down on questions (called debate topics). The basic logic structure of a DebateGraph is presented in Exhibit B.5. A DebateGraph map of the Obama White House's Open Government Initiative focused on transparency is presented in Exhibit B.6. DebateGraph has an extensive array of tools for color coding and grouping responses to issues.

Exhibit B.5. The Basic Logic Structure of a DebateGraph.

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Exhibit B.6. A Simplified DebateGraph Map of the White House Open Government Initiative.

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Source: http://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=20843&vt=ngraph&dc=focus

Although it was established to facilitate debate on complex topics— abortion, peace in the Middle East, the global financial crisis—

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DebateGraph can be used as a more traditional concept map to explore ideas relating to strategic planning. For example, each point on a map can be rated, “turning it into a kind of multi-dimensional poll” with the map changing automatically and reflecting support from other readers (Sciencewise, n.d.) and facilitating decision making. E-mail alerts are available to let you know when the map changes. Debate maps can be made public (even embedded in websites) or kept private to a select group.

Decision Explorer and Group Explorer. Decision Explorer was created for use by, and has been used extensively with, teams of senior and middle managers for strategy making. Decision Explorer is a causal mapping software that captures means–ends relationships, enables the visual representation (i.e., a picture) of a causal map that can be continuously updated to reflect the changes in thinking, and supports a variety of analyses of the structure of the maps created. All of the computer-generated maps reproduced in the main body of this book have been created using Decision Explorer (it is John Bryson's preferred mapping software because of the powerful analytic capabilities that come with it) (Banxia Software, 2017).

Decision Explorer is a visual interactive software that is most often used with a laptop computer and data projector. It is available through www.banxia.com. There is a free demonstration version. A personal version is available for $150 that allows as many as 300 concepts (statements) per model. With the purchase of Bryson, Ackermann, and Eden's 2014 strategy mapping workbook, Visual Strategy, comes an opportunity to download a free copy of a special version of the software that includes more capability than the standard demonstration version available from Banxia. Full versions of the software that support very large maps and have enhanced analytic capability, or are part of site licenses, are more expensive.

Statements and causal relationships are captured and assigned attributes as part of constructing a map. The software displays extracts of the map according to user-defined requirements. Thus the extracts —maps—are not static pages but dynamic views of a much larger map. The maps can be analyzed in a variety of ways in order to find, for

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example:

Potent statements that have great influence

Clusters or groups of closely linked statements

Statements that have many links in or out

Feedback loops that highlight vicious or virtuous loops

Maps or sections of maps can be extracted into other programs or pasted into Word or PowerPoint for wide dissemination.

To facilitate higher productivity in strategy-making teams, Eden and Ackermann developed a group support system (GSS) that allows group members direct interaction with Decision Explorer. This software, called Group Explorer, uses participant laptops that are networked together into a local area network that is controlled by a master “chauffeur” computer that is managed by the facilitator. In this way, participants are able to simultaneously add statements and links to the map displayed on the data projector. Thus, the round-robin stage of gathering statements is aided by the availability of anonymity and the fast process of participants contributing. The software also allows participants to express preferences about strategic priorities, choose to veto particular options, and also rate proposals and clusters. The facilitator is able to see the progress of mapping and participant contributions to the developing map anonymously.

Ideation Tools Ideation refers to “the capacity for or the act of forming or entertaining ideas” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ideation; accessed June 30, 2017). Ideation is thus an important part of strategic planning, perhaps especially as part of the issue identification and strategy formulation process. In effect, all of the ICT and social media tools presented so far can support ideation, but so, too, can the snow card process discussed in Chapter 5. In this section, we highlight one additional tool: Google Sheets.

Google Sheets. Google Sheets is a free online tool for organizing and analyzing data. Users can choose from predesigned spreadsheets or

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customize them to suit the data. Google Sheets can be easily converted to and from other platforms such as Microsoft Excel.

It's easy to simplify and visualize data using charts and graphs. Sheets are saved in cloud storage and accessible from any Internet-connected device at any time or location. If users download the app to their computer, sheets can be edited and saved offline as well. Additionally, as edits are made, they are saved automatically in a revision history.

Presentation Tools Strategic planning processes typically involve a number of presentations. Information produced via many of the tools already discussed might be incorporated into useful presentations. The Inspiration software includes a presentation component. Here we highlight three additional tools: PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Prezi.

PowerPoint. Microsoft PowerPoint is a free online tool for creating presentations (https://office.live.com/start/PowerPoint.aspx). Users can choose from premade templates or customize them to suit their needs. It's easy to add images, videos, or Internet links to presentations. Presentations can be saved online in cloud storage so they are accessible at any time from any Internet-connected device. They can also be viewed offline. Collaboration is made easy by allowing users to send a link to the file, thereby providing others with permission for viewing and editing. The version history allows users to view drafts of revisions and make comments on the slides for other collaborators to view.

Google Slides. Google Slides is an online presentation tool that is free to use with a Google account (https://www.google.com/slides/about/). The program provides themes and templates that are easy to use or customize based on presentation needs and content. Images, videos, and Internet links can be easily embedded, and the presentation can be easily converted to and from other platforms such as Microsoft PowerPoint.

Presentations are saved in cloud storage and are accessible from any Internet-connected device at any time or location. If users download

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the app to their computer, presentations can be edited and saved offline as well. Additionally, as edits are made, they are saved automatically in a revision history.

For strategic planning, Google Slides makes collaboration easy. Presentations can be shared with other Google users, and the “owner” of the original content can grant collaborators a range of editing access. Collaborators can also chat and leave comments while all are using the same document, allowing changes to be seen in real time.

Prezi. Prezi is an online presentation tool offering customizable templates and striking, animated visuals (https://prezi.com/). Users choose a template and edit it to suit their needs and content. Presentations are saved in cloud storage, so they are available from any Internet-connected device at any time or location. Depending on the user's membership plan, presentations can be accessed offline using the Prezi app for Windows or Mac. Prezi is a particularly useful tool for presenting information to external stakeholders that allows the same information to be presented with fewer slides than PowerPoint.

There are four plans from which users can choose—three for individuals and one for teams. Each plan has varying degrees of privacy and offline access. Only the basic, fairly limited individual plan is free, and the others are billed annually, with prices ranging from $5 to $13.25 per month.

Video Tools Strategic planning efforts also may be helped through use of online video resources, including YouTube, Vimeo, and Storify. The main purposes to be served are communication (e.g., about the process), searches (e.g., of topics on YouTube or other video resources), and serving as an external memory or library (e.g., of strategic planning events).

YouTube. YouTube is an online platform for watching and sharing original videos (https://www.youtube.com/). Users create a channel in which all of their uploaded videos are stored, and playlists can be

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created by classing videos of interest as “favorites.” Viewers can comment on videos and share with others using the video's hyperlink. Videos can be tagged and categorized so they are easily searchable when attempting to identify issues, sources, or people.

Vimeo. Vimeo is an online tool for uploading and viewing videos. Users can upload videos and receive statistics on how often it is viewed. The videos are available on any Internet-connected device and are easily shareable with others. Videos can be tagged and categorized so they are easily searchable when attempting to identify issues, sources, or people. Users can also engage with one another by commenting on videos.

There are three membership plans: basic, plus, and pro. The basic version is free to use and comes with limited storage; the pro plan is $200 per year and comes with the most advanced features available.

Storify. Storify allows users to create a story, narrative, or presentation by incorporating material from social media and news sites available from the Storify platform (https://storify.com/). The website then allows users to weave together selected posts to create a coherent stream of content. From there, the stream of content can be shared with the desired audience via the Web. Storify claims to have more than 2,000,000 stories archived on its system.

The basic service is free. There is also an enterprise plan that provides additional functionality. Collaboration is made easier if all contributors are on the enterprise plan.

CONCLUSIONS In this resource, we have looked at using ICT and Internet-based tools to support a strategic planning process. As Shirky (2008, p. 20) notes, because of the Internet, “we are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action.” Some organizations have already embraced the Internet, but others will have to take time to shift to a more technology-enabled, collaborative, organizational culture. Some

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training will be necessary, and digital inclusion and accessibility issues should be taken into account. The issue of transparency should also be examined with a probable bias toward more openness.

The tool categories covered in this Resource included communication, project management, file sharing, discussion groups, social bookmarking, surveys, knowledge mapping, ideation, presentation, and video. We have also stressed the need to dedicate resources and staff to the use of these tools and to creating an online and networked archive where an organization can store, according to a good taxonomy, all relevant documents and files that are parts of that particular strategic planning cycle.

ICT and social media tools clearly can enhance the strategic planning process. As in pre-Internet days, the final goal is a plan that has the mutual support of staff, board, and stakeholders and a plan that is implemented. What the Internet and social media tools offer are potentially more efficient, effective, and democratic methods for sustaining the conversation that leads to the plan and its successful implementation.

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REFERENCES Ackermann, F., & Eden, C. (2011). Making strategy: Mapping out strategic success. London, England: Sage.

Agranoff, R. (2012). Collaborating to manage. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

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NAME INDEX

A Ackerman, D.

Ackermann, F.

Ager, D. V.

Agle, B. R.

Agranoff, R.

Ahlstrand, B.

Ai, W.

Albers, A.

Albert, S.

Albrechts, L.

Alford, J.

Alston, F. K.

Alvesson, M.

Andersen, D. F.

Anderson, S. R.

Andreason, M.

Andrews, C.

Andrews, R.

Angelou, M.

Angwin, D.

Arbury, C.

Aristigueta, M. P. ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Aristotle

Arrigoni, A.

Arrington, M.

Asimov, I.

Augustine, A.

B Bachrach, P.

Backoff, R. W.

Bacon, F.

Bakewell, S.

Balducci, A.

Baratz, M. S.

Bardach, E.

Barry, B. W.

Barzelay, M.

Baumgartner, F. R.

Beckett, S.

Behn, R. D.

Bekkers, J.J.M.

Belz, A.

Benner, M. J.

Ben-Yehuda, G.

Berger, R. A.

Bernarda, G.

Berra, Y.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Bertot, J. C.

Birks, N.

Bitektine, A.

Blackmar, J. M.

Blanchard, K.

Block, P.

Bloomberg, L.

Boal, K. B.

Bohr, N.

Boin, A.

Bolman, L. G.

Booher, D. E.

Boone, D.

Borgogni, L.

Borins, S.

Boswell, J.

Bouckaert, G.

Bout, L.

Bowman, R. A.

Boyd, R.

Boyne, G. A.

Boyte, H. C.

Bozeman, B.

Brams, S.

Braun, E.

Braybrooke, D.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Brewer, G. A.

Bridges, S.

Bridges, W.

Bromiley, P.

Bruer, J.

Brutus, M.

Bryant, J. W.

Bryce, H. J.

Bryson, J. K.

Bryson, J. M.

Buechner, F.

Bunch, C.

Burby, R. J.

Burke, E.

Burke, W.

Butterfield, S.

C Cabot, J.

Caesar, J.

Caldeira, G. A.

Cambré, B.

Cameron, K. S.

Campbell, C.

Cañas, A. J.

Carver, J.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Casebeer, A.

Ceglowski, M.

Chait, R. P.

Chaleff, I.

Chattopadhya, P.

Chenok, D.

Chermak, T. J.

Chrislip, D. D.

Christ, B.

Christensen, K. S.

Christensen, R. K.

Chun, Y. H.

Cicero

Clarke, A.

Clegg, S.

Clinton, W. J.

Coates, P. M.

Cohen, D. J.

Cohen, R.

Cohen, S.

Cook, B. J.

Cook, F. L.

Cooper, P. J.

Coplin, W.

Cornforth C.

Costello, E.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Cothran, D. A.

Crosby, B. C.

Crossan, M. M.

Cunningham, G. L.

D Damrosch, L.

Davis, B. S.

Davis, G. F.

Deal, T. E.

De Chardin, P. T.

DeHart-Davis, L.

Delbanco, A.

Delli Carpini, M. X.

Denhardt, J. V.

Denhardt, R. B.

Dewey, J.

Deyle, R. E.

D'Haem, D.

Díaz, J.

Dickens, K.

Dixon, R.

Dodge, G. E.

Drucker, P.

Duffy, J.

Dukerich, J. M.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Durden, L.

Dutton, J. E.

E Eberstadt, N. N.

Edelenbos, J.

Eden, C.

Edwards, L. H.

Eimicke, W.

Emerson, K.

Epstein, P.

Eshuis, J.

F Fairhurst, G.

Faragher, J. M.

Faulkner, W.

Feldman, M. S.

Feldstein, L.

Fellini, F.

Ferlie, E.

Fernandez, S.

Ferragina, E.

Finn, C. B.

Fisher, R.

Flaubert, G.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Fleck, P.

Flyvbjerg, B.

Folkes, C.

Fording, R. C.

Frankfurt, H. G.

Franklin, B.

Frederickson, H. G.

Freeman, H. E.

Freeman, P.

Freeman, R. E.

French, S. P.

Frentzel, W. Y.

Freud, S.

Friedman, T. L.

Friend, J. K.

Friesen, P. H.

Fuller, M.

G Gaebler, T.

Garnett, J. L.

Garsten, B.

Garud, R.

Gastil J.

Gawande, A.

Geuijen K.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Gibbons, M. J.

Gibson, W.

Gide, A.

Gilbert, W. S.

Gilens, M.

Gilman, S. C.

Gilmour, J. B.

Gladwell, M.

Glassner, B.

Glick, W. H.

Goethe, J. W.

Goldratt, E. M.

Goodsell, C. T.

Gould, S.

Graf, M. M.

Grashow, A.

Gray, K.

Greeves, B.

Gresham, Sir T.

Grossback, L. J.

Gross, V. C.

Guibert, J. D.

H Haack, P.

Haass, R.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Hacker, J. S.

Halligan, J.

Hall, J. L.

Hall, P.

Hamm, G. F.

Hankingson, G.

Hansen, D.

Harens, L.

Hatch, M. J.

Hatry, H.

Heath, C.

Heath, D.

Heifetz, R. A.

Heikkila, T.

Hempel, J.

Henderson, C.

Hernes, T.

Herzberg, F.

Hickling, A.

Hill, C. J.

Hillier, J.

Hill, M.

Hochschild, A. R.

Hodges, B.

Hoelting, J.

Hogan, M. F.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Hood, C.

Hopkins, B. R.

Horntvedt, J.

Howlett, M.

Ho, Y. C.

Huber, G. P.

Huff, P.

Hughes, O.

Hunt, J. G.

Hupe, P.

Hutchinson, P.

Huxham, C.

I Ignatius of Loyola, St.

Ingraham, P. W.

Innes, J. E.

Isenberg, N.

Isett, K. R.

J Jacobs, L. R.

Jaeger, P. T.

Janis, I. L.

Jarzabkowski, P.

Jenkins-Smith, H. C.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Jenkin, T. A.

Jewitt, B.

Johansen, B.

Johnson, D. J.

Johnson, F. P.

Johnson, G.

Johnson, J.

Johnson, L.

Johnson, S.

Jonas, H. C.

Jones, B. D.

Jones, J. G.

Jordan, G. B.

Jung, C. S.

K Kahneman, D.

Kahn, S.

Kamensky, J. M.

Kant, I.

Kaplan, R. S.

Kapucu, N.

Kaufman, H.

Kaufman, J. L.

Kavaratzis, M.

Kay, J.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Keegan, M. J.

Kelemen, R. D.

Kelman, S.

Kendall, S.

Kenis, P.

Keramidas, O.

Kerschreiter, R.

Kettl, D. F.

Khademian, A. M.

Kim, J. H.

Kinder, T.

Kingdon, J. W.

King, M. L., Jr.

Klijn, E.-H.

Knowlton, L. W.

Koput, K. W.

Kornberger, M.

Kotler, P.

Kotter, J. P.

Kouzes, J. M.

Krasner, S. D.

Kroll, A.

Kwak, Y. H.

L Lampel, J.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Landuyt, N.

Lane, H. W.

Latham, G. P.

Law, J.

Lee, D.

Lee, G.

Lee, N. R.

Leighninger, M.

LeRoux, K.

Lewin, K.

Lewis, C. W.

Lewis, D. E.

Light, P. C.

Lincoln, A.

Lindblom, C. E.

Lindstrom, R.

Linsky, M.

Lipman-Blumen, J.

Lipsey, M. W.

Lokkesmoe, K. J.

Luna-Reyes, L. F.

Lusk, A.

Lynn, L. E., Jr.

M Maass, G.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

MacKean, G.

Mandelbaum, S. J.

Manjoo, F.

Mannak, R. S.

Mantell, N.

March, J. G.

Marcus, A.

Marcus Aurelius

Margetts, H. Z.

Marris, P.

Marx, K.

Mathes, A.

Maynard-Moody, S. W.

McGuire, M.

McKegg, K.

McKnight, J.

McLaughlin, J. A.

Meier, K. J.

Meltsner, A. J.

Mergel, I.

Merton, R. K.

Mesch, D.

Michel, A.

Mickelthwait, J.

Mihm, C.

Miles, R.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Miller, D.

Milward, H. B.

Minchew, T.

Mintzberg, H.

Mitchell, M.

Mitchell, R. K.

Moldoveanu, M.

Moore, M. H.

Moore, T.

Morgan, D. F.

Moulton, S.

Mourachov, S.

Moynihan, D. P.

Mukerjee, I.

Mulgan, G.

Musheno, M. C.

N Nabatchi, T.

Needham, C.

Nelson, A. C.

Neustadt, R. E.

Newcomer, K.

Newman, D.

Nino, M.

Niven, P. R.

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Nohrstedt, D.

Norton, D. P.

Novak, J. D.

Nutt, P. C.

O Obama, B. H.

Obstfeld, D.

O'Leary, M.

O'Malley, E.

Ongaro, E.

O'Reilly, C. A.

Osborne, D.

Osborne, S. P.

Osterwalder, A.

Ostrom, E.

O'Toole, L. J., Jr.

Özerdem, A.

P Paarlberg, L. E.

Page, B. I.

Page, S. B.

Palmer, P. J.

Pandey, S. K.

Papadakos, T.

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Parkinson, C. N.

Pasha, O.

Pasteur, L.

Patton, M. Q.

Pauling, L.

Perls, F.

Perry, J. L.

Peters, T. J.

Petitta, L.

Pfeffer, J.

Phillips, C. C.

Piderit, S. K.

Pierson, P.

Pigneur, Y.

Piketty, T.

Piotrowski, S. J.

Plastrik, P.

Plato

Poister, T. H.

Polley, D. E.

Pollitt, C.

Poole, M. S.

Popp, J. K.

Posner, B. Z.

Powell, W. W.

Powers, R.

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Presley, E.

Provan, K. G.

Putnam, R. D.

Q Quick, K. S.

Quinn, R. E.

R Raab, J.

Radnor, Z.

Raelin, J. A.

Rainey, H. G.

Rao, L.

Raynor, J.

Reagon, R.

Reese, E.

Regnér, P.

Renz, D. O.

Richardson, G. P.

Riggio, R. E.

Riker, W. H.

Rilke, R. M.

Rochet, C.

Roering, W. D.

Rogers, E. M.

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Romme, A.G.L.

Romzek, B. S.

Roosevelt, F. D.

Roosevelt, T.

Roper, E.

Rosenbloom, D. H.

Ross, A.

Rossi, P. H.

Rousey, J.

Rowley, T. J.

Rubin, I. S.

Rughase, O.

Rukeyser, M.

Rushdie, S.

Ryan, W. P.

Rybak, R. T.

S Sabatier, P. A.

Salamon, L. M.

Salancik, G.

Salisbury, Lord (Robert Gascoyne-Cecil)

Sanders, B.

Sandfort, J.

Sartre, J.-P.

Sawhill, J. C.

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Scavarda, A. J.

Scharmer, C. O.

Scheffert, D.

Schein, E. H.

Schively Slotterback, C.

Scholes, K.

Schön, D. A.

Schram, S. F.

Schuh, S. C.

Schulman, C.

Schultz, M.

Schultz, P. L.

Schwarz, R. M.

Scott, J. C.

Scott, R.

Scott, W. R.

Seligman, M.E.P.

Selznick, P.

Senge, P. M.

Seo, D.

Seuss, D.

Shakespeare, W.

Shaye, G.

Shelley, M.

Shirky, C.

Siau, K.

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Simon, H. A.

Simons, H. W.

Simons, R.

Smith, A.

Smith-Doerr, L.

Snow, C.

Socrates

Solomon, R.

Soss, J.

Spee, P.

Spencer, L.

Spicer, A.

Spolsky, J.

Staley, S.

Steinbauer, P.

Stern, E.

Stevens, W.

Stijn, A. J.

Stone, D. A.

Stone, M. M.

Streib, G.

Stroebel, J.

Suddaby, R.

Su, M.

Sundelius, B.

Sun Tzu

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Sutcliffe, K. M.

Swain, D.

T Talbot, C.

Taleb, N. N.

Tan, X.

Taylor, B. E.

Templeton, S.

Terry, R. W.

't Hart, P.

Thomas, J. C.

Thomas, J. D.

Thompson, L.

Throgmorton, J. A.

Tilly, C.

Tocqueville, A. de

Tolkien, J.R.R.

Toynbee, A.

Truman, H. S.

Trump, D.

Tuchman, B.

Tummers, G.

Tushman, M. L.

U ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Ury, W. L.

V svan Buuren, A.

Vance, J. D.

Van der Heijden, K.

Van de Ven, A. H.

van Dick, R.

Van Dooren, W.

Vangen, S.

Van Loon, N. M.

Van Quaquebeke, N. V.

Van Slyke, D. M.

Vasile, L.

Vella, J. A.

Vendenabeele, W.

Venkataraman, S.

Verweij, S.

Vidal, I.

Vining, A. R.

Voltaire

Voorberg, W. H.

W Wade, W.

Waeger, D.

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Walker, R. M.

Walzer, N.

Waterman, R. H.

Weber, K.

Wehipeihana, N.

Weible, C. M.

Weick, K. E.

Weidenman, R. E.

Weiksner, G. M.

Weimer, D.

Weiss, J. A.

Whitehead, A. N.

White, R. E.

Whittington, R.

Wholey, J.

Wichowsky, A.

Wiedenfeld, N.

Williamson, D.

Willoughby, K.

Wills, G.

Wilson, G.

Wilson, J. Q.

Winer, D.

Wood, D. J.

Wood, L.

Woodridge, A.

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Wordsworth, W.

Wray, L. D.

Wright, B. E.

Y Yates, S.

Z Zukerman, E.

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SUBJECT INDEX

A ABCs of Strategic Planning

Accenture (Minneapolis)

Accountability

action plans for

Barry's strategy typology for nonprofit

customer-focused strategies for stakeholder

entrepreneurial budgeting for

environmentalism and climate change

government strategies to increase

identifying mandates for increased

increased public demand for

INTOSAI created to increase

programs and projects for increased

resource management

stakeholder

standardized testing for educational

strategic planning

technology used to increase

Action plans for implementation

Adaptive strategic issues

Affinity diagram (or snow card process)

Agenda control ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Aging and diverse populations

Alignment of strategic issues

Alternative dispute resolution methods

American dream

American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

American Revolution

Amherst H. Wilder Foundation mission statement

The Art of War (Sun Tzu)

Assets

asset test for 501(c)(3) status on

SWOC/T on distinctive

B Bases of Power-Directions of Interest Diagram

Basic Analysis Technique

Behavioral competencies

Benchmark or goal management approaches

Black Swan events

Branding strategies

governments and nonprofits

place-based

positive

Budgeting

entrepreneurial

gap between strategic planning and

government approach to

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

implementation

performance-informed and results-based

resource allocation

strategy development

Bureaucratic imprisonment

C Case studies. See City of Minneapolis; International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI); Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA)

Champions

dialogue for addressing strategic issues

having realistic hopes for strategic planning outcomes

should promote having a SWOC/T analysis

strategic planning and implementation work by

See also Leadership roles

Change

Black Swan events

coalition of implementers, advocates, interest groups supporting

enforcing new principles and norms of

holding information to help participants cope with

implementation of

organizational system adaptations or

providing psychological safety and time to grieve

as the rule rather than the exception

six trends driving government

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understanding the sensemaking context to effect

window of opportunity for

See also Trends

CitiStat system

Citizen change role

City of Minneapolis

City of Minneapolis's 2014–2017 Strategic Plan initial agreement in the

community indicators for living well

danger of competition with new priorities

dialogue and deliberation for meaningful process in

fire department goals, objectives, tactics (2014–2017)

Minneapolis Strategic Plan (2014–2017)

performance indicators for living well in

place-based branding by

power differences in

programs and projects for change in

sponsorship leadership in case of

strategic issues of

strategic management system of the

strategic planning in the

strategy reassessment and revising by

three-step search process for strategy development by

vision established by the

See also Strategic planning

City of Utrecht purpose mapping

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Civic republicanism trend

Civil War

Climate change

See also Environmental resources

Coalition building

leadership role in

for sustaining change

Cognitive competencies

Collaborative leadership roles

fostering fellowship and collective or

Gary Cunningham on strategic planning

Collaborative management model

Communication

dialogue and deliberation to create meaningful process

implementation

between key decision makers

providing psychological safety during change

social media

Communities/collaborations

benefits of using a strategy plan for

guiding vision that includes purpose and values by

public value created by

resource allocation and management

Strategy Change Cycle roles for members of

when strategic planning is not appropriate for

Competitive contracts

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Conflict management

political leadership and

resolving residual disputes over change

Connectors

Consensus

advantage of strategic planning that accommodates existing

communication between key decision makers to facilitate

See also Initial agreements

Contract management model

Core competencies

cognitive, emotional, behavioral

definition of

distinctive

identifying organizational

livelihood scheme and relationship to

Critical success factors (CSFs)

identifying organizational

setting goals for

SWOC/T analysis to identify

Culture of fear

Cutback management

D D-Day invasion (World War II)

Debugging process

Decision makers. See Key decision makers

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Decision points in strategy development

Democracy in America (Tocqueville)

Democratic government. See Government

Demographic changes

aging and diversifying

megatrend of

migration, immigration, and refugee

Demonstration projects

Desired outcomes

environment SWOC/T

implementation

organizational mandate

organizational mission and vision

strategic issues identification

strategic planning

strategy formulation and adoption

strategy reassessment and revising

vision establishment

See also Purpose; Strategic actions

Digital lifestyles megatrend

Direct approach to strategic issues

Direct vs. staged implementation

Disjointed incrementalism

Distinctive assets

Distinctive competencies

Diverse population trend

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Division of Fish and Wildlife (Department of Natural Resources)

Doctrine of no surprises

Downsizing

E Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) [United Nations]

Economic issues

current challenges of managing

Great Depression

Great Recession recovery

See also Globalization

Education

implementation and guidelines on

standardized testing for accountability in

“80–20 rule,”

Emotional competencies

Energy follows attention principle

Entrepreneurial budgeting

Environment

holding

process context features of internal and external

understanding the sensemaking context of

Environmental assess-ments

external environment

internal environment

organizational highs, low, and themes exercise for

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the process of

purpose of

snow card process or affinity diagram for

SWOC/T analysis considerations for

SWOC/T as part of process design and action guidelines

SWOC/T desired immediate outcomes

SWOC/T for MEDA (2014)

SWOC/T longer-term desired outcomes

Environmentalism trend

Environmental resources

See also Climate change

European Union (EU)

Examples. See City of Minneapolis; International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI); Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA)

External environment

assessment of the

immediate desired outcomes of SWOC/T

longer-term desired outcomes of SWOC/T

process context features of

purpose of assessing the

understanding the sensemaking context of

F The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)

Financial issues

entrepreneurial budgeting ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

gap between strategic planning and budgeting

government approach to budgeting

implementation budgeting

performance-informed and results-based budgeting

resource allocation budgeting

strategy development

Finders of strategy

501(c)(3) status

Five-part process strategy development

The Flies (Sartre)

Frankenstein (Shelley)

Frist Amendment right of assembly

G Gallup Poll (2016)

Given-ness and possibility tension

Globalization

changing trends and events due to

interconnectedness of

megatrend of accelerating

See also Economic issues

Goal displacement

Goal or benchmark management approaches

Goals

critical success factors (CSFs)

displacement of

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MEDA Strategic Framework (2016–2020)

Strategy Change Cycle use of the

Government

American public out of sync with public policies of

branding strategies for

budgeting approach used by

compatibility of strategic planning with new approaches of

public value activities by democratic

six trends driving change in

sovereignty “leakage” by

stakeholder map for a

strategies for increased accountability by

Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) [1993]

Government Performance and Results Modernization Act (GPRMA) [2010]

Grand strategy plan

Great Depression

Great Recession recovery

Gun deaths and violence

H Hay Group Leadership

H.M.S. Pinafore (Gilbert)

The Hobbit (Tolkien)

Holding environment

Human resources

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alignment of

assessing readiness for change

behavioral competencies

logic model on

mission to provide to

personnel implementation guidelines for

psychic income of

psychological safety during change

strategic documents on implementing

tensions involved in

See also Resources

Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Hybrid management models

I Immediate desired outcomes

environment SWOC/T and

implementation and longer-term

organizational mandate for

organizational mission and vision for

strategic issues identification

strategic planning focus on

strategy formulation and adoption

vision establishment

Implementation

action plans for

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budget role in

danger of competition with new priorities

debugging process during

desired immediate and longer-term outcomes

limitations of strategic plans for ongoing

as moving target

overview of

performance measurement and management during

process design and action guidelines

programs and projects

purpose of

strategy documents developed for

summative evaluations during

Implementation guidelines

communication and education

direct versus staged

general

personnel

process design

Implementers

developing a coalition of

strategic planning role of key

Strategy Change Cycle role of

transfer tested changes in other

Indirect approach to strategic issues

Individualism trend

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Inequality problems

Information and communication technology (ICT) strategy

Initial agreement development

City of Minneapolis's 2014–2017 Strategic Plan

decide who is involved in planning process

finding the right people

hold an opening retreat

by large human service organization

MEDA's 2016–2017 strategic plan

North End Area Revitalization (NEAR) process followed for

outcomes likely to be needed for successful planning

process design and action guidelines for

sequential “initial” agreements along the way

Initial agreements

process for developing a

what it should contain

See also Consensus

Institute of Cultural Affairs

Integrated units of management

Interconnectedness

domestic and international spheres

global

how challenging changes are aggravated by

policy areas

public, private, and nonprofit sectors

Interest group coalitions

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Internal environment

assessment of

immediate desired outcomes of SWOC/T

longer-term desired outcomes of SWOC/T

process context features of

purpose of assessing the

understanding the sensemaking context of

International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) [United Nations]

adoption of strategic plan by

created to ensure increased accountability

danger of competition with new priorities

dialogue and deliberation for meaningful process in

implementation adjustments by

initial agreement process for 2017–2022 strategic plan in the

INTOSAI board as sponsor for strategic planning process of

mission and vision of

as a network administrative organization (NAO)

power differences in

programs and projects for change

strategic issues of

strategic management system of

strategic planning in the

strategy change or succession at

strategy reassessment and revising by

supreme audit institutions (SAIs) working with

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SWOC/T analysis (2014) of

See also Strategic planning; United Nations

Issue tensions approach to strategic issues

K Key decision makers

dangers of jumping to solutions

doctrine of no surprises adopted by

the faulty “80–20 rule” often used by

gaining support for strategic plans from

importance of attention and commitment of

importance of communication between

making and implementing decisions in arenas

“organizational stupidity” of

providing critical resources

role in establishing a vision by

strategic issue agenda to address by

strategic planning legitimacy through buy-in of

Strategy Change Cycle role of

strategy development role of

See also Leadership; Leadership roles

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

critical success factors (CSFs) compared to

description of

implementation strategy documents that include

MEDA Strategic Framework (2016–2020)

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Knowledge exploitation

L Layered units of management approach

Leadership

definition of

strategic planning and implementation roles of

strategic planning requirement for effective

See also Key decision makers; Stakeholders

Leadership roles

complexity of strategic planning

conflict management and enforcement of change norms

fostering collective leadership (and followership)

how Gary Cunningham has worked to fulfill his

interconnected tasks and

making and implementing decisions in arenas

process facilitators

understanding the context of

understanding the people involved

using dialogue and deliberation to create meaningful process

See also Champions; Key decision makers; Sponsors

Learning forums

Learning. See Strategic learning

Legal issues

Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) [1993]

Government Performance and Results Modernization Act

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(GPRMA) [2010]

strategy development and

Legitimacy

changing American dream and struggles for

decision maker buy-in to planning process for

required for strategic planning for change

sovereignty “leakage” effect on

stakeholder buy-in to planning process for

strategic planning role of perceived

Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Livelihood scheme

Loft Literary Center Map (Minneapolis)

Logic models

findings of strategy codifying organizational

human resources

organizational

Longer-term outcomes

environment SWOC/T and

implementation immediate and

organizational mandate on

organizational mission and vision

strategic issues identification

strategic planning process for

strategy formulation and adoption

of SWOC/T analysis

vision establishment

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M Management information system (MIS)

Mandates

desired longer-term outcomes and process design and action guidelines

process design and action guidelines for clarifying

public value indicated by

purpose and immediate desired outcomes

step of identifying

The March of Folly (Tuchman)

“Megatrends”

description of

Hay Group's identification of six

MetroGIS system (Minnesota)

Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA)

core values of

danger of competition with new priorities

dialogue and deliberation for meaningful process in

Gary Cunningham's leadership role in

implementation adjustments made by

initial agreement process for its 2016–2017 strategic plan in the

MEDA Strengths, Weaknesses, and Strategic Implications (2014)

place-based branding by

policy field map of relationships of

programs and projects for change

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Strategic Framework (2016–2020)

strategic issues of

strategic planning in the

strategy change or succession at

strategy reassessment and revising by

three-step search process for strategy development by

vision, mission, and values of

See also Strategic planning

Mindfulness

mindful organizing

strategic planning purpose to instill

Minneapolis fire department (2014–2017)

Minority Business Development Cohort (MBCD)

Mission

expanded into early vision of success

identified as a strategic issue

longer-term desired outcomes

process design and action guidelines for clarifying

public value indicated by

purpose and immediate desired outcomes

strategic planning starts by clarifying the

Mission statements

Amherst H. Wilder Foundation

description of the

International Organization of Supreme Audit Institution (INTOSAI)

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Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA)

Socratic dialogue questions used to structure the

stakeholder analysis or SWOCT/ analysis as prelude to

N National Center for Health Statistics

National sovereignty

A Natural History of the Senses (Ackerman)

Natural resources

Network administrative organizations (NAOs)

The New Atlantis (Bacon)

Nonprofit organizations (NGOs)

accountability of

Barry's typology of typical strategies

branding strategies

core competencies

as externally justified

501(c)(3) status to

four categories of voluntary failure by

management information system (MIS) of

media reports on reformers' strategic plans for

public value activities of

public value created by

10 interconnected categories of forces or trends affecting

value proposition of

values of public and

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when strategic planning is not appropriate for

See also Public organizations

North End Area Revitalization (NEAR)

North Korean nuclear threat

North Point Health and Wellness Center (Minneapolis)

Northwest Area Foundation

Nuclear war threat

O Ohio Department of Mental Health

Opening retreats

reaching initial agreement by holding a

suggested format for a strategic planning

Operational versus strategic issues

Organizational culture

clarifying philosophy, values, and

leadership role in enforcement of change norms and

strategy formulation role of

Organizational highs, low, and themes exercise

“Organizational stupidity,”

Organizations. See Nonprofit organizations (NGOs); Public organizations

Organization test for 501(c)(3) status

“Our Miserable 21st Century” (Eberstadt)

Outcomes. See Desired outcomes

P ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

Participation Planning Matrix

Partisan mutual adjustment

Passionate Politics (Bunch)

Performance budgeting system

Performance-informed budgeting

Performance measures

City of Minneapolis

difficulties associated with

implementation and role of

key performance indicators (KPIs)

why they must be tracked

PerformanceStat system

Personnel implementation guidelines

Philanthropic amateurism

Philanthropic insufficiency

Philanthropic particularism

Philanthropic paternalism

Pilot projects

Place-based branding

Planning teams

clarifying mission values

formulating strategies

fostering collective leadership and fellowship

identifying organizational mandates

identifying strategic issues

implementation planning and managing

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initiating and agreeing to strategic planning process

strategic plans developed by

Policy fields

analysis of

description of

mapping MEDA's

Political decision-making model

Political influence

Political issues

agenda control

alternative dispute resolution methods for difficult

avoid bureaucratic imprisonment

coalition building

difficulties during implementation

partisanship

political influence dynamics and management

political test for 501(c)(3) status

sensitivity to power differences

Populations

aging and diversifying

migration, immigration, and refugee

Portfolio management approach

Power differences

Power Versus Interest Grid

Prelude (Wordsworth)

Principles-focused strategizing

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MetroGIS system (Minnesota) created using

strategy development using

Procedural justice of planning

Process design and action guidelines

clarifying mandates and mission

environmental assessments

establishing a vision

implementation

initial agreement development

strategic issues identification

Strategy Change Cycle on features of

strategy formulation and adoption

strategy reassessment and revising

See also Strategic actions

Process facilitators

description of effective

strategic planning guidelines for

Programs and projects

City of Minneapolis, MEDA, and INTOSAI

communication guidelines

demonstration projects

implementation of

personnel guidelines

Project demonstrations

Project Management Institute

Psychic income

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Psychological safety

Public organizations

core competencies

cutback management or downsizing in many

as externally justified

management information system (MIS) of

media reports on reformers' strategic plans for

public value created by

10 interconnected categories of forces or trends affecting

uncertain and interconnected environments challenging

value proposition of

values of private and

when strategic planning is not appropriate for

See also Nonprofit organizations (NGOs)

Public policy. See Government

Public value

created by communities

democratic government activities that create

implementation that adds

mandates, mission, and values of organizational

NGO activities that create

Public value chain

Purpose

of assessing the environment

identifying strategic issues

implementation

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organizational mandate

organizational mission and vision

strategic management

strategic planning

Strategy Change Cycle first step of

strategy formulation and adoption

strategy reassessment and revising

See also Desired outcomes

Purpose mapping

City of Utrecht example of

description of

supplies, participants, and process of

Q Quality of life

R Rational planning model

Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector (Osborne and Gaebler)

Relational contracts

The Republic (Plato)

Requiem for a Nun (Faulkner)

Resource allocation/management

accountability for

action plans for

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authorization of resources

budgeting for

clarifying mandates and mission for

for conservation of resources

initial agreement on

monitoring for

network

pilot program

policy fields

shared governance

strategic approach to

strategic planning for

strategies for

summary map for

SWOC/T analysis on controllers over

vision of success for

See also Strategic management systems

Resources

available for strategic planning

committed

competing demands on

decision makers providing critical

environmental

INTOSAI

limitations of government

organizational abilities that draw on

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stakeholder claims to

See also Human resources

Results-based budgeting

Roman Catholic religious order strategic issues

RSS (rich site summaries)

S Shared governance approach

Snow card process

Social capital

Social media

communication strategy on using

implementation and role of

Sovereignty

blurring of national

“leakage” between private and public

Sponsors

having realistic hopes for strategic planning outcomes

should promote having a SWOC/T analysis

strategic planning and implementation work by

See also Leadership roles

Stacked units of management approach

Staff guidelines

Staged vs. direct implementation

Stakeholder accountability

creating system for

******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

customer-focused strategies for key

Stakeholder analyses

Basic Analysis Technique

identification and techniques for

Participation Planning Matrix

Power Versus Interest Grid

as prelude to mission statement

reviewing the techniques for

Stakeholder Influence Diagram

See also SWOC/T analysis

Stakeholders

caution against using customer label to

definition of

finding the right ones for planning process

five-step process for identifying the

gaining support for strategic plans from

how organization responds to key

managing conflict between

providing sense of procedural justice to

strategic planning legitimacy through buy-in of

strategic plan support by

Strategy Change Cycle planning buy-in by

strategy development role of

See also Leadership

Strategic actions

articulating expected consequences of desired

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as benefit of strategic planning

Daniel Boone example of

Strategy Change Cycle on desired outcomes and

See also Desired outcomes; Process design and action guidelines

Strategic intent

Strategic issue agenda

key decision makers' agreement on

leadership role in controlling

Strategic issues

adaptive versus technical

champions for dealing with

definition of

framing of

“litmus test” to measure

operational versus

organizational mission identified as a

sorting them out and their implications

statement on consequences of failure to address

Strategy Change Cycle use of the

strategy formulation and adoption to address

Strategic issues identification

alignment approach to

City of Minneapolis example of

direct approach to

goals approach to

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how the strategic issues be described

immediate and longer-term desired outcomes of

importance for strategic planning

indirect approach to

INTOSAI example of

issue tensions approach to

Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA) example of

process design and action guidelines for

purpose of

Roman Catholic religious order

SWOC/Ts used for

systems analysis approach to

vision of success approach to

visual strategy mapping approach to

Strategic issues management model

Strategic learning

Daniel Boone as example of

emphasize during implementation

as strategic planning benefit

strategy development and

Strategic management

approaches to fulfilling functions of

definition of

functions of

implementation

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purposes and functions of strategic planning and

seven major approaches to or systems of

Strategic management systems

City of Minneapolis

collaboration models

considerations for building a

contract models

goal or benchmark approaches

guidelines for building

hybrid models

integrated units of management

portfolio approaches

strategic issues management

Virginia Performs Scorecard at a Glance

See also Resource allocation/management

Strategic planning

ABCs of Strategic Planning

ability to accommodate existing consensus advantage of

Daniel Boone example of

definition of

deliberative processes and practices of

dialogue and deliberation to create meaningful process

as “front end” of strategic management

getting started with

identification and resolution of strategic issues using

to instill “mindfulness” and support sensemaking

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as an intelligent practice

key implementers should be involved in

leadership roles in effective

legitimacy of

purpose of

purposes and functions of strategic management and

what it is not

when it is not advisable

why it is becoming a standard practice

See also City of Minneapolis; International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI); Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA)

Strategic planning benefits

directly benefiting the people involved as

enhanced effectiveness of broader societal systems as

enhanced effectiveness, responsiveness, resilience, and sustainability as

enhanced organizational legitimacy as

improved decision making as

strategic thinking, acting, and learning activities as

Strategic planning models

political decision-making model

rational planning model

See also Strategy Change Cycle

Strategic planning process

balancing given-ness and possibility tension of

for desired longer-term outcomes

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developing an initial agreement

ensuring sense of procedural justice of

getting clear about the purpose

have realistic hopes for the

overview of the

for planning focus and desired immediate outcomes

procedurally rational

Strategic planning starting steps

1: start where you are directly involved

2: having compelling reason to undertake strategic planning

3: remember there is no substitute for leadership

4: be attentive to requirements for success

5: remember to have key decision makers talk to one another

6: attention and commitment of key decision makers importance

7: surprising payoffs from strategic planning

8: outside consultation and facilitation can help

9: keep in mind potential benefits

10: when strategic planning is not appropriate

Strategic plans

additional sections that can be included in

adoption of the

collaborations and use of

description and function of

formal

gaining stakeholder support of

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limitations for ongoing implementation

simple form of a written

table of contents included in

when they are not adopted

Strategic thinking

as benefit of strategic planning

Daniel Boone example of

Strategic typologies

Barry for nonprofit strategies

Hood and Margetts's public-sector strategies

Mils and Snow's organizational strategies

Osborne and Plastrik's public-sector strategies

Strategic waiting

Strategies

the art of creating good

definition of

formulating and adopting

implementation of

reassessing and revising

resource allocation and management

typologies of

Strategy Change Cycle

applying the process throughout the organization

applying to functions across boundaries

as both a strategic management and planning process

causal logic of the

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Daniel Boone example of strategic thinking, planning, and learning

description of the

illustrated diagram of the

making use of vision, goals, and issues

overview of the

planners, decision makers, implementers, and citizen roles in

sequencing the steps of

strategic planning for integrated units of management

tailoring the process to specific circumstances

See also Strategic planning models

Strategy Change Cycle steps

1: initiating and agreeing on strategic planning process

2: identifying organizational mandates

3: clarifying organizational mission values

4: assessing the organization's external and internal environments (SWOC/T)

5: identifying strategic issues facing an organization

6: formulating strategies and plans to manage the issues

7: reviewing and adopting the strategies and plan

8: establishing an effective organizational vision

9: developing effective implementation process

10: reassessing strategies and strategic planning process

Strategy change or succession guidelines

Strategy development

decision point during

financial costs and budgets associated with ******ebook converter DEMO Watermarks*******

five-step process for

principles-focused strategizing for

process design and action guidelines for

visual strategy mapping process for

Strategy development approaches

five-part process

principles-focused strategizing

visual strategy mapping (VISM)

Strategy formulation and adoption

the art of effective

desired immediate and longer-term outcomes

introduction to

logic models of

Metropolitan Economic Development Association's Strategic Framework (2016–2020)

Minneapolis Strategic Plan (2014–2017) example of

process design and action guidelines

purpose of

role of culture in

strategic issues to focus on for

strategic plans

top-down and bottom-up

Strategy maintenance guidelines

Strategy reassessment/revising

building a strategic management system

description of

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process design and action guidelines

purpose and desired outcomes

when it is time for

Strategy reassessment/revising guidelines

building strategic management system

general

strategy change or succession

strategy maintenance

strategy termination

Strategy termination guidelines

Summative evaluation

Supreme audit institutions (SAIs)

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [United Nations]

SWOC/T analysis

comparing SWOT analysis to the

critical success factors (CSFs) and competencies identified by

desired immediate outcomes of environmental

environmental assessments using

INTOSAI's SWOT analysis

longer-term desired outcomes of environmental

MEDA Strengths, Weaknesses, and Strategic Implications (2014)

opening retreat for strategic planning

organizational assessment using

organizational highs, low, and themes exercise for

as prelude to mission statement

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resource allocation and management

snow card process or affinity diagram for

stakeholder analysis provides valuable prelude to

strategic issues identification using

strengths and weaknesses are often highly similar in

See also Stakeholder analyses

System adaptations

definition of organizational

planning for desired

Systems analysis

framing strategic issues using

strategic issues identification using

T Tax issues

501(c)(3) status of NGOs

organizational collection of government

Technical strategic issues

Technological change

continuation of

megatrend of innovative

Technology

increased accountability through tools of

information and communication technology (ICT) strategy

knowledge exploitation to get the most out of

rapid changes and innovation in

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strategic development and role of

Tension fields

balancing given-ness and possibility tension

SWOC/T analysis to clarify the

Tensions approach to strategic issues

Terrorism

Trends

driving governmental change

six global “megatrends,”

U.S. and global events and

See also Change

U United Kingdom

Brexit decision (2016) by the

studies on mixed outcomes of implementation in the

United Nations

association of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) for members of

General Assembly of the

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the

See also International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) [United Nations]

United States

changing trends and events affecting the

declining social capital in the

Eberstadt's “Our Miserable 21st Century” report on the

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gun deaths per year in the

increased inequality issues in the

low public trust in institutions and partisanship in the

presidential election (2016) of the

studies on mixed outcomes of implementation in the

10 interconnected categories of forces or trends in the

transitions with continuity and not revolution in the

U.S. Department of Commerce

U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)

U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)

U.S. presidential election (2016)

V Value chain

Value proposition

internal assessment to understand the

organizational

Values

clarifying organization

megatrend of individualization and pluralism

Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA)

strategic planning starts by clarifying the

Violence

culture of fear associated with

urban murder rates and gun deaths

war and terrorism threats

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Virginia Performs system

architecture of the

Virginia Performs Scorecard at a Glance

Vision for Virginia of the

Vision

International Organization of Supreme Audit Institution (INTOSAI)

Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA)

purpose and immediate desired outcomes

Strategy Change Cycle step of establishing

Vision for Virginia (Virginia Performs)

Vision establishment

challenges involved in process of

City of Minneapolis

desired immediate and longer-term benefits of

overview of

process design and action guidelines for

Vision of success

identifying strategic issues

for implementation

mission expanded into early

Visual strategy mapping (VISM)

identifying strategic issues using

Loft Literary Center Map (Minneapolis)

strategy development using

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W War

fear of terrorism and

threat of nuclear weapons and

World War II D-Day invasion

Wildlife resources

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WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT Go to www.wiley.com/go/eula to access Wiley’s ebook EULA.

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  • COVER
  • TITLE PAGE
  • TABLE OF CONTENTS
  • LIST OF FIGURES AND EXHIBITS
    • Figures
    • Exhibits
  • PREFACE
    • SCOPE
    • AUDIENCE
    • OVERVIEW OF THE CONTENTS
    • COMPANION STRATEGIC PLANNING WORKBOOKS
  • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR THE FIFTH EDITION
  • THE AUTHOR
  • PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING
    • CHAPTER ONE: Why Strategic Planning Is More Important Than Ever
      • DEFINITION, PURPOSE, AND BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING
      • DEFINITION, PURPOSE, AND BENEFITS OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
      • COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS
      • SUMMARY
    • CHAPTER TWO: The Strategy Change Cycle: An Effective Strategic Planning and Management Approach for Public and Nonprofit Organizations
      • A 10-STEP STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS
      • TAILORING THE PROCESS TO SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES
      • SUMMARY
  • PART TWO: KEY STEPS IN THINKING, ACTING, AND LEARNING STRATEGICALLY
    • CHAPTER THREE: Initiating and Agreeing on a Strategic Planning Process
      • PLANNING FOCUS AND DESIRED IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES
      • DESIRED LONGER-TERM OUTCOMES
      • GETTING CLEAR ABOUT THE PURPOSE
      • DEVELOPING AN INITIAL AGREEMENT
      • PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES
      • HAVE REALISTIC HOPES FOR THE PROCESS
      • SUMMARY
    • CHAPTER FOUR: Clarifying Organizational Mandates and Mission
      • MANDATES
      • MISSION
      • STAKEHOLDER ANALYSES
      • THE MISSION STATEMENT
      • PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES
      • SUMMARY
    • CHAPTER FIVE: Assessing the Environment to Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Challenges
      • PURPOSE
      • DESIRED IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES
      • LONGER-TERM DESIRED OUTCOMES
      • EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENTS
      • INTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT
      • THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS
      • PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES
      • SUMMARY
    • CHAPTER SIX: Identifying Strategic Issues Facing the Organization
      • IMMEDIATE AND LONGER-TERM DESIRED OUTCOMES
      • EIGHT APPROACHES TO STRATEGIC ISSUE IDENTIFICATION
      • SUMMARY
    • CHAPTER SEVEN: Formulating and Adopting Strategies and Plans to Manage the Issues
      • PURPOSE
      • DESIRED IMMEDIATE AND LONGER-TERM OUTCOMES
      • THREE APPROACHES TO STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT
      • PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES
      • SUMMARY
    • CHAPTER EIGHT: Establishing an Effective Organizational Vision for the Future
      • DESIRED IMMEDIATE OUTCOMES AND LONGER-TERM BENEFITS
      • AN EXAMPLE
      • PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES
      • SUMMARY
    • CHAPTER NINE: Implementing Strategies and Plans Successfully
      • PURPOSE AND DESIRED IMMEDIATE AND LONGER-TERM OUTCOMES
      • PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS
      • THE SPECIAL ROLE OF BUDGETS
      • PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES
      • SUMMARY
    • CHAPTER TEN: Reassessing and Revising Strategies and Plans
      • PURPOSE AND DESIRED OUTCOMES
      • BUILDING A STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
      • PROCESS DESIGN AND ACTION GUIDELINES
      • SUMMARY
  • PART THREE: MANAGING THE PROCESS AND GETTING STARTED WITH STRATEGIC PLANNING
    • CHAPTER ELEVEN: Leadership Roles in Making Strategic Planning Work
      • UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT
      • UNDERSTANDING THE PEOPLE INVOLVED, INCLUDING ONESELF
      • SPONSORING THE PROCESS
      • CHAMPIONING THE PROCESS
      • FACILITATING THE PROCESS
      • FOSTERING COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP (AND FOLLOWERSHIP)
      • USING DIALOGUE AND DELIBERATION TO CREATE A MEANINGFUL PROCESS
      • MAKING AND IMPLEMENTING DECISIONS IN ARENAS
      • ENFORCING PRINCIPLES AND NORMS, SETTLING DISPUTES, AND MANAGING RESIDUAL CONFLICTS
      • SUMMARY: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER AND PREPARING FOR ONGOING STRATEGIC CHANGE
    • CHAPTER TWELVE: Getting Started with Strategic Planning
      • THE THREE EXAMPLES REVISITED
      • GETTING STARTED
  • RESOURCES
    • RESOURCE A: A Guide to Stakeholder Identification and Analysis Techniques
      • AN ARRAY OF TECHNIQUES
      • CONCLUSIONS
    • RESOURCE B: Using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Social Media in the Strategic Planning Process
      • ENHANCING ORGANIZATIONAL USE OF TECHNOLOGY
      • THE TOOLS
      • CONCLUSIONS
  • REFERENCES
  • NAME INDEX
  • SUBJECT INDEX
  • END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT