We’ve been talking about networks and net-centric leadership; we’ve been talking about emergence, about the “leaderless organization,” about intuiting the future, about new technology and the shape of things to come. We’ve been talking about a massive paradigm shift, the implications of which we can’t yet begin to grasp. It is all incredibly exciting and incredibly scary at times. And as we look at all of this it becomes increasingly important to look at core aspects of our work in order to find out how or if these will fit in our new world.
We are not the first ones to wonder about the impact of traditional strategic planning in the work of social change but I find it incredibly important that we take a look at it from this angle of “emergence.” If what we are trying to do is to create space – to make room for the future that is trying to emerge – then what does it mean to “strategically plan” for this? I certainly hope we have all moved beyond the Stalinist dream of mechanical five years plans – the fact is these never worked! But we do plan, we do formulate our vision of the world we are trying to build, we do look at the steps we need to take to get where we want to go – so what is it that we are trying to do?
I’ve been thinking of it in terms of a “strategic sketch,” a set of parameters to be placed in a field of infinite potential, a series of temporary sign posts that allow us to name our place and act from there. I see the “strategic sketch” as a set of goals and steps that become ever more imaginative as we make it everything contingent on following the call of our highest aspirations and all the amazing signs that emerge along the way.
10 comments:
Provocative question considering our business. I'd say that strategic planning is only relevant to the extent that it serves as means for a conversation, when it becomes the straight jacket by which a group or an organization will operate, it's no longer useful.
On the issue of paradigm shift and strategic plans, for a true paradigm shift to take place we have to be willing to recognize that the moment we complete our strategic plan it is obsolete. The only things that remain are the intentions or direction, the intention to continue a dialog, the intention to live by a specific philosophy and it's world view. How can a strategic plan be real, a strategic plan does not exist in the real world it only exists on the means on which it has been captured, be that paper or soft methods. Strategic plans are still important and I intend to be humble and realistic about its true value. Only functionalists and radical structuralists consider strategic plans as real.
Do we really shift paradigms? or do we plainly and simply change our points of view????
I've been thinking, since first reading this, of John Paul Lederach's concept, in his book "The Moral Imagination", about the importance of creating platforms of adaptive relationships that can respond to constant change.
So what's the importance of strategic planning? There's much about a shared creation of a sense of direction - thoughmore as the North Star -- a direction to which we aspire, than, as Julia says, as a straight jacket tying us to specific approaches. At the same time, strategic planning was immensely helpful as an approach to help with moving planning to a strategic level. In that vein, the "plan" itself may be less significant than the platform built by the shared experience of working together and the shared view and sense of direction.
In Buddhism, there's a concept that "the map is not the territory" which seems appropriate in this discussion -- a clear understanding of the limitations of the map/plan, while not needing to move, then, to discarding the notion of map/plan altogether. Rather, perhaps seeing it as a reference point from which we can deviate...a strategic sketch? And yet, what's next? What are the limitations of what we've been doing? What can we do to contribute even more deeply? And, critically important, to what extent does (or doesn't) strategic planning contribute to social change?
"The map is not the territory" is precisely the phrase that I used in a conversation with Bridge about our strategic planning process with them. The point I intended to make was that strategic planning is an important exercise that does not end with the creation of the plan itself. The plan certainly helps to set an informed and collective direction, but it also ideally develops an ongoing practice of asking strategic questions, conducting internal and external scans, engaging stakeholders in reflective conversation, etc. It's about developing those sometimes seldom used muscles. With this in mind, I think it's important to ask how much effort goes into the creation of the document, of "getting it right," versus developing processes that continue to bring out the collaborative intelligence of the group in quesiton.
I'm with you all about the significance of strategic planning or strategic sketching to set collective intention. I agree, too, that the act of thinking and planning together is where meaning is created, and that the resulting documents and maps do not fully capture or adequately represent the territory. I'm also persuaded of the value of strategic planning or sketching to enable organizations, coalitions or other groupings to prioritize their actions and build agreements about how they will use resources.
I continue to wonder about the ways that planning or sketching can catalyze and sustain social change, in addition to enabling specific organizations and other groupings to agree on how they will spend their collective time, talent and treasure.
On the one hand, so much of what we know about dramatic, movement-based changes that transform societies result from a combination of forces and circumstances that cannot be planned into existence. And, yet, we also know that there is an element of paying attention and being prepared that enables activists to see and capitalize on those moments when they begin to appear. There's the both/and aspect of thinking that we can rely on planning to transform the world. In some ways we can't. At the same time, we have to!
Once you take as given the notion that we can, in fact, plan in ways that contribute to larger social dyanmics, and that we also have to be attentive to forces around which we cannot plan, we can ask a different question about techniques and methods.
It seems to me that an strategic planners often overlook an important component of a strategic exploration--let's not even call it "planning." That is the discipline of helping groups to explore what will actually make significant, lasting differences in the world. How, in other words, how can we enable groups to arrive at ways of doing and being that stand a reasonably good change of transforming the world in ways that are consistent with their vision or intentions? What are new (or old!) ways of facilitating the kind of thinking that generates useful insights about the highest leverage things to do (or not do) in order to move toward their collective intentions? And, as an initial step, how do we ensure that they are discovering enough about the issues and situation from enough points of view to even understand the nature of the thing they want to change?
I think our practice of careful stakeholder analysis and participatory design help to ensure that the wisdom will be in the room. And, I also feel the need to invent or rediscover other ways to shake up the thinking and configure the planning experience so that folks don't just come to agreement on what they want to do, or are willing to do, but that they will arrive at a deep shared understanding and commitment to what they must do in order to make their vision a reality.
Something else that I've been thinking about recently is the opportunity that strategic planning provides organizations and/or coalitions to think about where they fit in the larger ecosystem of actors working for social and environmental ends. So often it seems that any single actor feels that it has to do everything on its own and be all or many things to all or many people. Having the chance to think about what one does well (or best) and to also recognize the strengths of others in the field may result in a more ultimately impactful sharing of the load, viewing other organizations as collaborators, not competitors.
Curtis' comments remind me of two things... an article by Rob Lehman of the Fetzer Institute that urges folks to think about "common workers" rather than competitors; and a section in an ancient version of the strategic thinking workshop (that is not in the Total Access or the KMS) that has a section called Competitive Analysis. It's built around Michael Porter's book Competitive Strategy. At one point in the development of our strategic planning toolkit, we decided that we should adapt this material to create a "collaborative analysis" process. This might be something we should dust off and consider developing.
Here's an interesting link called "Beyond Strategic Planning" that I heard about from Albert Ruesga this week:
http://www.lapiana.org/consulting/research/sf.html
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