428: Strategic Planning as a Rhythm with Sophia Shaw

Reflections from host Sarah Olivieri ...

Strategic Planning as a Rhythm

Most nonprofits I talk to are not avoiding strategic planning because they don't believe in it. They're avoiding it because the process is heavy, the resulting document is long and hard to act on, and six months later it feels out of date.

So they wait. They wait until something forces the conversation. A new executive director. A board crisis. A funder asking for it. By the time planning starts, the stakes feel enormous, the calendar feels short, and the team feels exhausted before the first meeting. They waited so long, planning is an extra activity that requires planning to plan. The plan that comes out of that environment is almost always too rigid, too future-locked, and too disconnected from the work people are actually doing.

This is the structural pattern. Strategic planning for nonprofits gets framed as an event. A rare event. Rare things carry pressure. Pressure makes the process worse, which confirms everyone's belief that planning is painful, which makes the next planning cycle even longer to start.

The whole loop is fixable. The fix is not a better planning process but a better planning rhythm.

A recent podcast interview with Sophia Shaw left me thinking not just about how to do strategic planning well, but what actually creates staying power in a strategic plan. 

A Plan as a Compass, Not a Roadmap

The mental model most nonprofits inherited for strategic planning is the roadmap. You start here. You end there. You draw the route. You follow it.

A roadmap is built for a destination that is completely knowable and a route that is predictable. But most nonprofits are can't follow a predictable route to well known destination. Most nonprofits are pioneering, forging a path to an imagined, but not fully knowable destination. 

When pioneering, a compass is much more useful.

A compass is different. A compass tells you the direction. It does not tell you the exact route. When the terrain changes, you keep the direction and find or create a new path. The plan still works, because the plan was never about the path. It was about where you're trying to go.

In short:

• A roadmap locks in the route. A compass locks in the direction.

• Nonprofit terrain changes