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Strategic Planning

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Strategic Planning: Fear Not, Help Is Here!

Does the term “strategic planning” strike fear into your heart? Do you imagine being trapped for days in a conference room while your brain is drained dry? What exactly does America’s Byways Resource Center mean by “strategic planning”? Here are some answers and helpful resources for your byway organization.

The basis of strategic planning is your byway’s vision. A byway vision is extremely powerful and motivating. But no matter how carefully crafted, its worth is questionable if it’s just sitting in the corridor management plan (CMP). When byways lose touch with their visions, they tend to stall or drift aimlessly. That’s where strategic planning comes in. It empowers byway leaders and members to evaluate the following questions:

• What do we want to see in place in three to five years as a result of our actions?
• What is blocking us from moving toward our vision?
• What innovative, substantial actions will deal with the underlying contradictions and move us toward our vision?
• What will our specific, measurable accomplishments be for the first year and beyond?

The questions above address the heart of strategic planning.

Strategic planning is:

1. Comprehensive—it focuses on current reality.
2. Intentional—it is derived from Byway members’ choices.
3. Future-oriented—it asks for relevant timelines and milestones.
4. Inclusive—it asks for input from everyone; all stakeholders are included.
5. Responsive to environmental forces—it considers internal or external factors that may be driving or influencing the organization.

Strategic planning occurs effectively in a workshop environment, which involves byway leaders, stakeholders and group members in brainstorming to generate data, clustering the data to look at the new relationships that are formed and naming what will be accomplished and when, discerning the consensus of the group.

Preparation for the workshop includes gathering input from byway leaders and the coordinator to define a set of Pre-Questions. These Pre-Questions are then sent to all possible participants to determine the group’s hopes, needs and wants and relevant background information.

The workshop begins with everyone sharing their answers to the Pre-Questions and determining the day’s desired goals.

Throughout the workshop, active participation is necessary from everyone. How do you gather all of this information? Ideas and input are generated using the entire group and small groups. Here’s a quick overview of the process used in Sections 1-3 (below).

• Context or overview. Discuss where the Practical Vision / Underlying Contradictions / Strategic Directions fit into the complete Plan.
• Brainstorm. The group members generate ideas, as concisely as possible, of what they want to see in the future. All ideas are acceptable, ranging from conservative to innovative, and placed on cards. For example, if someone writes “better communication,” a clearer idea may be “develop a group e-mail system.” It is important that the time frame be far enough into the future for people to imagine that something really can change.
• Cluster. The idea cards from the brainstorming are clustered together to show similar actions, which helps to illuminate an idea. For example, “training” may be used in three or four ideas, yet the intent of each may be different. When combined with other cards, three or four new categories may result.
• Name. The group decides what the cluster of ideas indicates as a focus or accomplishment.
• Result. Describe a plan of action for a promising future that group members have created together.

SECTION 1. PRACTICAL VISION

“What do we want to see in place in three to five years as a result of our actions?”
Pieces of the Practical Vision already exist with each group member and these pieces motivate and inform their actions. This workshop gives everyone the opportunity to share their hopes, dreams and aspirations for the future of the organization and the byway. Everyone has a piece of the puzzle—the vision. When all of the pieces are fitted together, they build a concrete picture to guide the group into the future.

SECTION 2. UNDERLYING CONTRADICTIONS

“What is blocking us from moving toward our vision?”
Contradictions are blocks and barriers that prevent a group from realizing its vision. They are like boulders in the path to the future. They can be found in historic and societal trends, in images and attitudes and in the structures and patterns people create and from which they operate. Contradictions are unquestioned assumptions, mindsets, beliefs and practices that oppose the vision. They are not problems; problems can be fixed. Contradictions are existing realities and may be either internal or external factors that block the way forward.

SECTION 3. STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS

“What innovative, substantial actions will deal with the underlying contradictions and move us toward our vision?”
Successful organizations are driven by their vision. In pursuit of this vision, byway groups focus on scenarios that will break through roadblocks and at the same time, create new courses of action and new directions.

Strategic directions are broad directions that impact the future by:
* Using existing strengths and opportunities within an organization
* Overcoming perceptions, beliefs, assumptions and habits, as well as outmoded patterns, structures and policies, that slow or stop the process

Developing strategic directions is about discovery. The group starts where it is and moves through a process of revelation, seeking and discovering patterns of action that fit together in new ways.

SECTION 4. IMPLEMENTATION

“What will our specific, measurable accomplishments be for the first year?”
Effective implementation of this plan depends on timelines, priorities and task assignments. The actions developed in the previous section will be placed on a timeline and prioritized by the group. Can they be implemented within this time period? Who will be responsible for the implementation? Are the accomplishments measurable? Completion of this section is meant to instill ownership, commitment and accountability within the members of the byway group.

Now What? Your Byways Specialists Can Help
Your group has a practical vision, you’ve addressed many of the roadblocks preventing you from reaching that vision, you’ve developed strategic directions to move the byway forward and you even have priorities and a timeline.

If your byway group recoils in horror at the term “strategic planning”, what type of workshop will encourage full participation? Try calling it something different. How about Action Planning, Byway Sustainability Directions, Future Planning, or, for the Zen group, Future Visioning? Whatever you decide to call it, your America’s Byways Resource Center Byway Specialists can facilitate a workshop tailored to the needs of your byway group. Just give us a call.

And, perhaps most importantly, we won’t desert you after the initial workshop. We’re prepared to present follow-up implementation. No need to reinvent the wheel for new members or to bring everyone up to speed. We use the information developed at the original workshop to help you sustain momentum, create alternative scenarios for dealing with unknowns, develop new short-range actions plans in response to being stuck and/or help the group change or drop parts of the plan that are no longer appropriate. Of course, we’ll be there to help your group celebrate your victories, too.

Developing a future-oriented strategic plan could determine how or whether a byway succeeds. It promotes the sustainability of the byway and the organization. It directs the countless things that can be done into innovative yet practical courses of action or programs that serve as a framework to help a byway group steer its efforts toward the vision.

The above procedure was based on a workshop developed by ICA Technology of Participation “Participatory Strategic Planning, Focusing Collective Power for Change.” Copyright The Institute of Cultural Affairs, 1991-2005. For more information, please contact ICA at www.ica-usa.org or call Marilyn Oyler at 602-468-0605. Used with permission.