Assignment Instructions
Instructions: APA format - Including abstract etc
MGMT414: Week #3 Paper: Include an abstract
2-3 page Paper
For this assignment, you should focus on the reading material for weeks 1-2.
Introduction of Your Paper:
Provide an introduction of the topics that you will discuss below (Base your introduction on our
reading material from week 1-2)
Body of your paper: (2-3 Pages total in length)-Your thoughts should be supported with key
terms from our text and library research.
Each of these sections should be a separate paragraph:
The student will discuss the following in a minimum of two pages (One page per section), but
not longer than three pages:
(Use our text and the library to support your response)
Section #1:
What is the definition, purpose, functions and benefits of strategic planning? Why should an
organization engage in strategic planning? What are the ABCs of strategic planning? Which
questions are answered in the ABCs of planning? When would strategic planning not be
advisable?
Tell me about what strategic planning is NOT. (Use our text AND outside sources to support
your thoughts in this section)
Section #2:
Find an article from our online library or the internet that talks about how to help make a
strategic plan a success. Tell me what the article says and how it will help you understand
strategic planning. (OR) You can also find an article that discusses a successful implementation
of a strategic plan. What did the article say and what was the outcome of the strategic planning
process that was discussed in the article.
Student replies
1. Good afternoon Professor and fellow classmates. This week we were asked to discuss
the following questions. What is a SWOC analysis? A SWOC analysis is a strategic planning
practice that is used to study the internal/external factors that affect the success and development
of an organization. It's used to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of an
organization, its products and competition.
Why would it be important to understand? It is extremely important to understand the
SWOC analysis because it assists to understand in its entirety the aspects of an organization by
offering another point of view of its exercises. It's also important to the organization's planning
process because it keeps the organization on track. Last, along with a stakeholder analysis, the
SWOC analysis helps identify the successes of the organization (Bryson, 2011).
Why would it be important to understand external environmental assessments?
Understanding the external environmental assessment is a necessary part of strategic decisionmaking in organizational ventures. This assists the small business executives to identify the
factors that create opportunities or threats to their organizations. A better understanding of the
implications of external environmental aspects can improve the success as well as the survival
for small enterprises.
What are the main categories of forces and trends that relate to external environments?
According to Bryson (2011), the main categories of forces and trends that relate to external
environments include political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal
categories. Organizations may choose to examine additional categories that are predominantly
related. Strategic planners must make sure that they attend to both threats and challenges in
whatever categories are used (Bryson, 2011).
What do you feel is the most interesting recent issue and trend that is listed in our
reading material that relates to forces and trends? Why? The most interesting recent issues and
trend that relate to forces and trends include:
-Quality of life and conservationism. The concern for the quality of life is expected to increase.
The bases of these concerns are several including the rise of an era when time is more limited
than money for many people.
-Diversity of workforce, custom, and citizenry. The diversity takes many forms, including ethnic,
racial, gender, and cultural. As people live longer, the numbers of senior citizens will resemble
dramatically in most developed economies thus escalating the need for many public services
while at the same time increasing the percentage of people within the taxpaying labor force.
-Continuation of technological change. Many economists view technological novelty as the main
force driving change. Information technologies specifically are main dynamic changes likely to
have remarkable effects on organizational operation, accountability, shareholder empowerment
as well as the issues related to data use and privacy.
-Social and organizational complexity. The complexity is impelled by a number of forces which
includes technological change, the globalization of information and economies as well as the
subsequent interconnectedness of almost everything.
-An emphasis on learning. Individuals, organizations, jobs, and societies cannot progress, given
the pace of change. They must continuously be learning how to do their work well and how to
make the changes they are likely to cope with if they are to play productive roles in shaping the
future.
Kevin
Bryson, J. (2011). Strategic Planning For Public and Nonprofit (4th Ed.). Hoboken, NJ:
Bass/Wiley
Good Evening Class,
SWOC is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Challenges. It is a
important for companies to conduct a SWOC analysis so that they can create a plan of action that
is specifically directed at improving their weaknesses while maintaining their strengths.
Companies must also be aware of potential threats or challenges that may arise both internally
and externally. Anticipating these challenges will allow companies to be proactive in their
preparation to combat what every challenges may arise. External environmental assessments
provide a company with the opportunity to determine competition and prepare to gain
competitive advantage over those in the same industry.
Political, economic, social, educational, and technological forces and trends can have a great
impact on companies. I see the social aspect to be one of the most interesting. Cultural trends
and societal norms have changed drastically over the years, directly affecting exactly how
companies conduct business. Society changes and then legislation changes in order to meet the
trend. The economy changes as businesses are affected by mandates, laws and regulation. The
education system is effected as budgeting changes as a result of the economy. Technological
advances will change based of off the access and quality of education that is given. So we see
this ripple effect the cultural and social norms have on a society. Businesses are affected as a
result of the changes and they must always see trends and "forces" as potential challenges as they
will cause a chain reaction.
Have a great weekend!
-Kirsten
CHAPTER ONE
Why Strategic Planning Is
More Important Than Ever
Usually, the main problem with life conundrums
is that we don’t bring to them enough imagination.
—Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul
Copyright © 2011. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
L
eaders 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 in the past two decades: we have experienced an
aging and diversifying population; extensive immigration and geographic shifts
in population; the changing nature of families; huge bubbles in housing and
stock markets followed by long bear markets and recessions; an apparent
conservative political shift in electoral politics, coupled with major support
among the populace for education and health care reform; tax cuts, levy limits,
and indexing at the same time the federal government and most states are
facing unprecedented debt; dramatic shifts in federal and state responsibilities
and funding priorities; first a closing of the gap between the rich and poor,
and then a reopening of the gap; the emergence of children as the largest group
of poor Americans; dramatic growth in the use of information technology,
e-commerce, and e-government; the changing nature of work and a redefinition
of careers; fears about international terrorism; and even the emergence of
obesity as an important public health concern, as the United States is by far
the most obese country in the world. Perhaps most ominous, we have experienced a dramatic decline in social capital in recent decades, especially among
the less educated and less well off. Social capital, defined as goodwill, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse, is a crucial factor in building and
maintaining personal and family physical and mental health and strong
3
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4 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
communities. The 2008 presidential campaign notwithstanding, 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, 2000; Putnam, Feldstein, and Cohen, 2004). Beyond that, in spite of
economic growth, citizens in the United States and other developed countries
appear to be no more happy now than they were thirty years ago (Eaton &
Eswaran, 2009; Veenhoven, 2009).
Not surprisingly, we have seen sustained attention paid to questions of
government and nonprofit organizational design, 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 (Light, 1997, 2000; Kettl,
2002).
Globally, the spread of democracy and a beneficent capitalism seemed
almost inevitable after the collapse of the Soviet Union some twenty years ago
(Schwartz, Leyden, & Hyatt, 1999; Giddens, 2002). Although democracy has
spread, progress seems far more uneven (Huntingdon, 1998). Thomas Friedman
has argued that the world is becoming “flatter” as a result of globalization
(Friedman, 2000, 2007); Richard Florida (2007), in contrast, argues that the
world continues to be very “spiky,” with many peaks and valleys. Can both
be right? In some ways, yes—but across the board, probably not. In 2009,
twenty years after the adoption of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the
Child, somewhat under nine million children under the age of five died worldwide of causes mostly preventable by inexpensive means, such as clean water,
immunization, or access to generic drugs. The number of deaths is a big
improvement over the 12.5 million under-fives who died in 1990, but there
are still almost 25,000 mostly needless child deaths every day (UNICEF, 2007,
p. 15.). The World Bank (2011) estimates that in 2005 something like 2.6 billion
people subsisted on less than two dollars a day (although the fraction of people
living at that level had declined from 1981 from 70 percent to 48 percent).
Using that criterion of two dollars per day, most readers of this book are astronomically wealthy. Feiock, Moon, and Park (2008) conclude that the landscape
is indeed spiky, and that active governments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations working together, especially on a regional scale, are needed to help
communities stay out of the valleys.
Beyond that, most Western nations and many others face a scenario of low
growth for perhaps a decade, as the excesses of the “noughties” (as the British
call the first decade of the twenty-first century) and costs of the 2007–2009
global recession work themselves out. (In a somewhat parallel way, the third
edition of this book was written in the wake of the 2000 stock market collapse,
subsequent recession, and long bear market following the bursting of the 1990s
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
“dot-com” frenzy; history may not repeat itself, but as Mark Twain noted, it
rhymes a lot.) It is clearly possible that Japan might once again be the low
growth, deflationary “model” for the future, as it was in a very different way
in the 1980s when its economic and business prowess were the envy of all.
Dictators—even tyrants—still abound; concerns about huge labor migrations,
dislocations, and exploitation persist in the United States, European Union,
China, and elsewhere; unemployment rates are high in many, perhaps most,
developed and developing countries; awful catastrophes involving earthquakes,
tsunamis, and epidemics occur all too frequently; many of the world’s forest
and fish stocks are depleted; and so on. As noted, poverty and ill health are
far too widespread, even when some of the worst effects of ill health might
be removed for literally pennies per person per day. Global environmental
change shows up in hotter average temperatures, changed rainfall patterns,
prolonged droughts, an increasing number of catastrophic storms, and increased
skin cancer rates. The Worldwatch Institute claims in State of the World 2010
that worldwide consumerism has put us on a collision course with environmental disaster. Terrorism in several parts of the globe is real and deeply
threatening, and must be countered, if democracy, sane and sustainable economic growth, and peaceful conflict management are to occur. The United
States has been involved in extraordinarily expensive wars of unclear benefit
in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first was undertaken under demonstrably false
pretenses and, though it has brought democracy of a sort to Iraq, has also cost
upwards of 500,000 civilian deaths as a consequence of criminally negligent
planning for the occupation (Rieff, 2003; Allawi, 2008). And Sir Martin Rees,
a renowned astrophysicist and the British royal astronomer, guesses that the
world has only a 50–50 chance of escaping a devastating global catastrophe
of some kind sometime in this century (Rees, 2003).
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
(Gersick, 1991; 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!
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
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6 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
self-directed behavior problematic at best. As Booker Prize–winning novelist
Salmon Rushdie says, “Most of what matters in your life happens in your
absence” (1981, p. 19). More recently, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Junot
Díaz asserts: “It’s never the changes we want that change everything” (2008,
p. 51). Only if you are lucky are the changes for the better and 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 (Cleveland, 2002; Kettl, 2002, 2008). These changes have become
dramatically apparent since the mid-1970s. The U.S. economy is now intimately integrated with the economies of the rest of the world, and events
abroad have domestic repercussions. My wife and I own an American-made
car—a Toyota Camry. The Chinese government is both keeping the United
States afloat by buying our debt, and causing trouble with its undervalued
currency for U.S. manufacturing and other industries, and to our balance of
payments. It is hard to see how long this bilateral system can be sustained—
because it simply is unsustainable in the long run. When I was growing up,
the Soviet Union was the enemy; now the Evil Empire, as President Ronald
Reagan called it, does not exist, and my young Eastern European students
don’t have much knowledge of it. The current Russian Federation is an ally
on many fronts, but clearly problematic, just as Russia was in World War II.
Threats to U.S. oil and natural gas supplies from abroad prompt meetings in,
and actions by, the White House, intelligence agencies, and Departments of
State, Defense, and Homeland Security. And the Middle East remains a powder
keg affecting interests across the globe.
Distinctions between policy areas are also hard to maintain. For example,
both educational policy and arts or cultural policy are seen as a type of economic development and industrial policy 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
a way of controlling health care costs.
Finally, the boundaries between public, private, and nonprofit sectors have
eroded. National sovereignty 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
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
government—responsibilities, and we increasingly rely on private and nonprofit organizations and associations for the production and 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, and 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 last fifteen years, and the
federal government the big loser. As the second decade of the twenty-first
century begins, the federal government is quite frequently the last resort when
it comes to dealing with the most complex social and economic problems. (The
Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank really were the last resort in avoiding
a depression as a result of the 2007–2009 financial crisis, but now the resulting
massive federal debt makes federal responses to important challenges perhaps
no less needed, but even harder to sell.) 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; Frederickson & Frederickson, 2006).
The blurring of these boundaries means that we have moved to a world in
which no one organization or institution is fully in charge, and yet many are
involved, affected, or have a partial responsibility to act (Cleveland, 2002; Kettl,
2002, 2008; Crosby & Bryson, 2005). 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? Drawing in part on the work of Olsen and Eadie
(1982, p. 4), I define strategic planning as a deliberative, disciplined approach
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8 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
to producing fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an
organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and 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 noted
in the Preface, deliberative strategic planning can be helpful for purposes of:
(1) gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing information to consider its strategic
significance and frame possible choices; (2) producing considered judgments among key decision makers about desirable, feasible, defensible, and
acceptable missions, goals, strategies, and actions, along with complementary
initiatives, such as new, changed, or terminated policies, programs, and
projects, or even overall organizational designs; (3) addressing in effective
ways key organizational issues or challenges now and in the foreseeable future;
(4) enhancing continuous organizational learning; and (5) creating significant
and enduring public value. 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, these settings
include formal and informal forums linking speakers and audiences in order
to create and communicate meaning and foster learning (Moynihan & Landuyt,
2009). In addition, formal and informal arenas—in which legislative, executive,
and administrative decisions are made—and formal and informal courts—
where underlying laws and norms are reinforced or modified, and residual
conflicts left over from policymaking or executive decisions are managed—
must be designed and used. 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 kinds of settings, because they are where meaning is
created and communicated—meaning that 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 landscape of thoughts and patterns”
that might exist in an audience, and thus “the pathways” that might exist from
Bryson, J. M. (2011). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations : a guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement.
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
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), trust in the judgment and goodwill 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 deliberative 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 deliberative pathways already existing within audiences’
heads. Other features of effective deliberation include: speakers and audiences;
information gathering, analysis, and synthesis; the development and framing
of choices; the development of persuasive arguments; judgment; intellect and
emotion; reasonable objectivity, but also partiality and passion; at times transparency and publicity, and at other times secrecy, so that people can develop
and consider the full range of options, including the “unthinkable” or “unspeakable”; and at all times listening and respecting what others say, at least until
final choices are made (Garsten, 2006, pp. 127–129, 131, 191–194). The basic
form of a reasonable statement is to make a claim because of reasons based
on evidence. Deliberation occurs in situations requiring choice; the basic form
of a deliberative statement is choice based on reasons in order to achieve ends
(Barzelay, 2009; see also Simons, 2001, pp. 155–178; Dunn, 2004, pp. 89–134).
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. Cicero in particular
emphasized this point, as one would expect. He may have been Rome’s greatest orator—whose oratory once saved the Republic from a coup, thereby
earning himself the Senate’s accolade of pater patriae, “father of his country”—
but he also faced more than one angry mob and the likes of Julius Caesar,
Mark Antony, and their armies. He endured exile and in the end had his throat
slit by one of Mark Antony’s henchmen (Everitt, 2003; Freeman, 2008).
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 (Stone, 2002).
Many find the lack of definitiveness in deliberation frustrating. It takes time
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10 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
to build and maintain an appreciative audience for deliberation—as with
poetry, classical music, and jazz.
In short, at its best, strategic planning requires deliberation informed by
broadscale 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 psychotherapist and theologian Thomas Moore thinks are
necessary to deal with individuals’ life conundrums.
One useful way to think about strategic planning is presented in Figure 1.1.
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 go, 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; ways to restructure, reengineer,
reframe, or repurpose (Scharmer, 2009); budget allocations; and other strategies and vehicles for change. Getting from A to B involves clarifying vision,
mission, and goals. Getting from A to C is the process of strategy formulation;
getting from B to C is strategy implementation. To do strategic planning well,
you need to figure out A, B, and C and how they should be connected 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 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
concepts, activities, procedures, tools, and techniques 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 its best, the purpose of strategic planning in
the United States and elsewhere is to help public and nonprofit organizations
“create public value,” in Mark Moore’s compelling and evocative phrase
Bryson, J. M. (2011). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations : a guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement.
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
si
Vi
on,
Mission, and Goa
ls
A
B
Where You Are
Mission and mandates
Structure and systems
Communications
Programs and services
People and skills
Budget
Support
Where You Want to Be
Mission and mandates
Structure and systems
Communications
Programs and services
People and skills
Budget
Support
Fo
n
How to Get There
Strategic plan
IT and HR plans
Communications
Hiring and training
Restructuring and reengineering
Budget allocations
pl
Im
ul
io
y
rm
C
at
Copyright © 2011. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
em
y
en
teg
tati
Stra
on
STRATEGIC
ISSUES
St
ra
te
g
Figure 1.1. The ABCs of Strategic Planning.
Source: Bryson & Alston, 2004.
(Moore, 1995, 2000). Moore discusses creating public value primarily as the
responsibility of individual managers, whereas I see creating public value more
broadly as an individual, group, organizational, and community responsibility.
Creating public value 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 very 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—it is about organizing
our best and most noble hopes and dreams, making them reasonable and
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12 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
actionable, and bringing them to life. In this sense, strategic planning is about
“the manufacture of transcendence” (Krieger, 2000) and finds its inspiration
in the deepest sources of “the real American Dream” (Delbanco, 1999). Beyond
that—in the United States and elsewhere—strategic planning is meant to help
its practitioners and beneficiaries “pursue significance” (Denhardt, 1993)—in
short, to create significant and enduring public value.
Most of the work on strategic planning has focused on for-profit organizations. Until the early 1980s, strategic planning in the public sector was
applied primarily to military strategy and the practice of statecraft on a grand
scale (Bracker, 1980). That situation changed, however, with the publication
in 1982 of J. B. Olsen and D. C. Eadie’s book, The Game Plan: Governance
with Foresight, which marks the beginning of sustained applications of strategic
planning to the broad range of public organizations, and of scholarship on
how best to do so. Strategic planning for nonprofit organizations has proceeded
in parallel, with the most important early publication being Barry (1986). I am
pleased to say that the first three editions of this book, published in 1988,
1995, and 2004, also played an important role in expanding the use of strategic
planning by public and nonprofit organizations.
Experience has clearly demonstrated that strategic planning can be used
successfully to help:
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• Public agencies, departments, or major organizational divisions (for
example, Barzelay & Campbell, 2003)
• General-purpose governments, such as city, county, state, or tribal
governments (for example, Kissler, Fore, Jacobson, Kittredge, &
Stewart, 1998; Hendrick, 2003)
• Nonprofit organizations providing what are basically public services
(for example, Stone, Bigelow, & Crittenden, 1999; Vila & Carnales,
2008)
• 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 (for example, Nelson & French, 2002;
Burby, 2003; Innes & Booher, 2010)
• Entire communities, urban or metropolitan areas, regions or states
(for example, Chrislip, 2002; Wheeland, 2004)
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
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
areas, and regions or states.) Though 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”—
although 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 or not 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—often 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
in which 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 new
arenas, and coordinating the activities and actions of numerous relatively
independent people, groups, organizations, and institutions (Bardach, 1998;
Burby, 2003; Huxham & Vangen, 2005; Innes & Booher, 2010).
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, 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 total quality management, reinvention and
reengineering, downsizing and rightsizing, along with the revolution
in information technology. Now people are asking us to take on
performance management, balanced scorecards, knowledge
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14 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
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.”
• “We know a leadership change is coming and want to prepare
for it.”
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• “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 (for
example, Nutt & Backoff, 1992; Barry, 1997; Nutt, 2002). 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. The
Oxford Reference Dictionary (Hawkins, 1986, p. 855, defines thinking as
meaning “(1) to exercise the mind in an active way, to form connected ideas,
(2) to have as an idea or opinion, (3) to form as an intention or plan, (4) to
take into consideration, or (5) to call to mind, to remember.” In keeping with
the spirit of this definition, I define strategic thinking as thinking in context
about how to pursue purposes or achieve goals. This also includes thinking
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
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 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 (Bryson, 2010a; Vila & Carnales, 2008). In short, strategic planning
is an approach to facilitate these kinds of thinking, acting, and learning.
Strategic thinking, acting, and learning are promoted by more systematic
information gathering about the organization’s external and internal environment and various actors’ interests, thoughtful examination of the organization’s successes and failures, clarification of future direction, establishment of
organizational priorities for action, and in general attention to the acquisition
and use of productive knowledge and skills. For many organizations, “strategic
planning has become a natural part of doing business”—the regular deliberations about key concerns are a central feature of “moving the organization
forward and increasing its effectiveness” (Barry, 1997, p. 10). In short, strategic
planning can be used to help organize and manage effective organizational
change processes in which the best is kept, while the organization figures out
what to change.
The second benefit is improved decision making. Improved decision making
is really crucial, since recent studies have indicated that at least 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 their 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,
and resilience, which flow from the first two. Organizations engaging in
strategic planning are encouraged to clarify and address major organizational
issues, respond wisely to internal and external demands and pressures
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16 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
(including those for accountability), and deal effectively with rapidly changing
circumstances. They are encouraged, in other words, to be well managed. And
while 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 (Light, 1998, 2000;
O’Toole & Meier, 2003; Coggburn & Schneider, 2003; Boyne & Gould-Williams,
2003; 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 continue to create
public value into the future (Bryson, Gibbons, & Shaye, 2001). Porter (1985,
pp. 33–61) refers to this linkage of inputs, processes, and outputs in firms as
a “value chain,” and if the chain does not produce value in the marketplace
at reasonable cost, the firm is in danger of going out of business. In the case
of public and nonprofit organizations, we can say that the value chain must
create public value at reasonable cost, or else serious consequences are likely
to ensue. 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 (Bryson, 2003; Heintzman & Marson, 2005).
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 (Eden
& Ackermann, 1998). 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 (Holzer, Lee, & Newman, 2003; Hill & Lynn, 2009). 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 (Suchman, 1995).
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.
As Don Schön (1971) pointed out long ago, our big challenges in education,
health, employment, poverty, the environment—you name it—typically need
to be conceptualized at the supra-organizational 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,
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
but typically must do so in partnership with others or by somehow taking
those others into account (Kettl, 2002, 2008; Crosby & Bryson, 2005; 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,
2007; Crosby & Bryson, 2010). The result probably should be some sort of
concerted institutional redesign effort at the system level (for example, Brandl,
1998; Lake, Reis, & Spann, 2000; Bryson & Crosby, 2008) that enhances intellectual, human, and social capital at both the societal and organizational levels
(Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998).
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 (Kim, 2002). Human, social, political, and intellectual
capital can increase. Morale can improve based on task accomplishment.
Further, employees or organizations that can create 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 at its best surely must count as a “smart practice,” which Bardach defines as a “method of interacting with a situation that
is intended to produce some result; . . . [and] also involves taking advantage
of some latent opportunity for creating value on the cheap” (1998, p. 36).
Strategic planning is smart, because it is relatively easy to do; is not all that
time- and resource-intensive, particularly when matched against the costs of
potential failure; seeks out relevant information; makes use of deliberative
argumentation, which is an important route to producing wise judgments; and
would seem to go hand in hand with the craft of creating public value (Lynn,
1996; Bardach, 1998; Hill & Lynn, 2009). Strategic planning can be a highly
cost-effective tool for finding or creating useful ideas for strategic interventions
and for figuring out how to organize the participation and coalition needed to
adopt the ideas and protect them during implementation (Mulgan, 2009).
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. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that any organization would
experience all or even most of the benefits of strategic planning the first time
through—or perhaps even after several cycles of strategic planning. 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
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18 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
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 (Mintzberg, 1994;
Barry, 1997; Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009). There are two compelling
reasons for holding off on a formal strategic planning effort. First, strategic
planning may not be the best first step for an organization whose roof has
fallen—keeping in mind, of course, that every crisis should be managed strategically (Mitroff & Anagnos, 2005; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007). 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
(Dutton, Frost, Worline, Lilius, & Kanov, 2002). Second, if the organization
lacks the skills, resources, or commitment of key decision makers to engage
in deliberative strategic planning, or 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. For example, one might argue that strategic planning will be of little use if the costs of the process are likely to outweigh any
benefits, or the process takes time and money that might be better used elsewhere. These concerns may be justified, but recall that the purpose of strategic
planning is to produce fundamental decisions and actions that define what an
organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why it does it. In Chapter
Three I will argue that strategic planning probably shouldn’t take more than
10 percent of the ordinary work time available to any key decision maker
during a year. When is the cost of that time likely to outweigh the benefit of
focusing on the production of fundamental decisions and actions by their
organization? In my experience, hardly ever.
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
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, 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 (Behn, 1988; Barzelay & Campbell, 2003; Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel,
2009). Unfortunately, muddling typically results in a chronic suboptimization
of organizational performance, and key external and internal constituencies
therefore may be badly served (Barzelay, 1992; Osborne & Plastrik, 1997;
Andrews, Boyne, Law, & Walker, 2009).
Strategic planning also probably should not be undertaken if implementation is extremely unlikely. To engage in strategic planning when effective
implementation will not follow is 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 key decision makers in organizations 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,
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20 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
arenas, and courts; the key decision makers may not participate. Even if they
do take part, needed deliberations may not necessarily occur. And if these
deliberations do occur, needed actions may not necessarily be taken as a result.
There is an available set of concepts, procedures, tools, and practical guidance
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, and so possible
failure is always lurking in the footsteps of incipient success.
When used in wise and skillful ways by a coalition of interested parties,
strategic planning can help organizations focus on producing effective decisions and actions that create public value, further the organization’s mission,
meet its mandates, and satisfy key stakeholders. But 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.
A standard distinction is to argue that leadership is “doing the right things”
whereas management is “doing things right.” My own view is that leadership
and management both involve doing the right things and doing them well, but
if one sticks with this rather simplistic distinction, clearly strategic planning
is first and foremost about articulating mission, mandates, vision, goals, and
the nature of the common good and public value to be created—doing the
right things—and management is about making sure those things are done
well through strategies and operations at reasonable cost. But no matter what
your view of the similarities and differences between leadership and management, both matter, and both are needed if strategic planning is to succeed—
since it won’t succeed by itself!
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,
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009). Strategic planning can help organizations develop
and implement effective strategies, but organizations also 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 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, although there clearly are
occasions when imposing order, taking control, and imposing appropriate
sanctions are appropriate. Key leaders, managers, and planners can best use
strategic planning as a deliberative educational and learning tool to help them
figure out what is really important and what should be done about it. Sometimes
this means following a particular sequence of steps and preparing formal strategic plans, but not necessarily. The ultimate end of strategic planning should
not be rigid adherence to a particular process or the production of plans.
Instead, strategic planning should promote wise strategic thought, action, and
learning on behalf of an organization and its key stakeholders. It should be
used 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 Intelligent Practice
The vast majority of public and nonprofit organizations now claim to engage
in strategic planning (Poister & Streib, 1994; Berry & Wechsler, 1995; Berman
& West, 1998; Joyce, 1999; Poister & Van Slyke, 2002; Poister, 2003). Exactly
what they mean when they say that is unclear. All that is really clear is that
strategic planning in general is an idea whose time appears to have come.
Specifically, the idea that strategic planning is something that skilled leaders
and managers do is well past the “tipping point” (Gladwell, 2002) and is now
an idea “in good currency” (Schön, 1971). Doing strategic planning has become
accepted practice—and indeed, when done well, it is an intelligent practice.
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 cost-benefit analysis,
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22 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
planning-programming-budgeting systems, zero-based budgeting, management by objectives, continuous improvement, downsizing, contracting out,
reinvention, reengineering, and a host of other techniques trumpeted by a
cadre of authors and management consultants. They have also, all too often,
seen the techniques fall by the wayside after a burst of initial enthusiasm.
Managers in particular are frequently, and justifiably, tired of “buzzword
bingo” and feel as if they are the victims of some sort of perverse management
hazing or status degradation ritual (Schein, 1987, pp. 84–86).
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, 1995, p. 54;
Christensen, 1999; Stone, 2002; Mulgan, 2009).
Most of these new management innovations have tried to improve 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 that
word. Public and nonprofit organizations (and communities) embody 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 (Wildavsky, 1979; March & Olsen, 1995; Stone, 2002).
Let us pursue this point further by contrasting two different kinds of decision making: the “rational” planning model and political decision making. The
rational planning model, a rational-deductive approach to decision making, is
presented in Figure 1.2. This model begins with goals; policies, programs, and
actions are then deduced to achieve those goals. If there is a traditional planGoals
Policies
Programs
Actions
Figure 1.2. Rational Planning Model.
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
ning 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.
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 consensus does not matter. The assumption just does not hold
in most circumstances. Only in fairly centralized, authoritarian, and quasimilitary bureaucracies will the assumption hold—maybe (Roberts & Wargo,
1994).
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 inductive, not 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 the conflicts 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 (Lindblom,
1965, 1990; March & Olsen, 1989, 1995; Weick, 2009).
Most general
policies
More general
policies
Policies and
programs
Issue
area
Figure 1.3. Political Decision-Making Model.
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24 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
Now, the heart of the strategic planning process discussed in Chapter Two
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 more effective, and, if practiced consistently, may even make
their professional lives easier (Janis, 1989; Nutt, 2002). Since every key decision maker in a large public or nonprofit organization is, in effect, a political
decision maker (Bolman & Deal, 2008), strategic planning can help these decision makers 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 actually improves political decisions, as well as programs, policies, and learning how to do better, by joining political acceptability to administrative feasibility 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, research by Judith Innes (1996; Innes &
Booher, 2010) and her colleagues demonstrates 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. 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. While the planning and decision making that go 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 in fact quite rational by ordinary definitions of
the term. 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 (Nutt, 2002; Moynihan & Pandey, 2010; Mulgan, 2009).
To use another example, in many organizations and communities there
exists a broad-based consensus on basic purposes and values—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. In particular, the
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
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remaining issues are likely to revolve around what would have to be done in
order 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 assured. Furthermore,
by gathering relevant information, asking probing questions, and focusing on
how best to raise the 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 (Flyvbjerg, 1998). 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
(March & Olsen, 1989, 1995; Nutt, 2002; Stone, 2002; Innes & Booher, 2010;
Eden & Ackermann, 2010).
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 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.”
Functionally, strategic planning involves the kind of deliberative, disciplined
work intended to help clarify organizational purposes, mandates, goals, and
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26 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
Exhibit 1.1. Strategic Planning and Strategic Management:
Definitions, Functions, and Approaches.
Copyright © 2011. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Strategic Management
The integration of strategic planning and implementation across an
organization (or other entity) in an ongoing way to enhance the
fulfillment of mission, meeting of mandates, and sustained creation of
public value
Functions
Strategic planning
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.
Implementation
The effort to realize in practice an
organization’s (or other entity’s)
mission, goals and strategies, the
meeting of its mandates, continued organizational learning, and
the ongoing creation of public
value.
Designing and integrating kinds of
work that have to be done in a
reasonably formalized way, for
the sake of clarifying organizational purposes, mandates, goals,
issues, strategies, and requirements
for success; the work includes
use of deliberative settings to
foster collective strategic thinking,
acting, and learning around key
issues.
Designing an appropriate formal
strategic management system and
the placement and role of
strategic and operational planning
within it.
Addressing the kinds of work that
should be done in a reasonably
formalized way, for the sake of
building the enterprise’s capacity
for, and delivery of success over
time; the work includes linking
purposes, people, structures,
processes, resources, political
support, and learning in productive ways.
Clarifying the purpose and placement of the strategic planning
function within a governmental
or nonprofit organizational
design.
Linking budgeting, performance
measurement, and performance
management to: meet mandates;
achieve agreed mission, goals,
strategies, and requirements for
success; allow for desirable
changes in ends and means to
emerge over time; and achieve
significant public value.
Making use of forums and
formative evaluations to tailor
and adjust strategies during
implementation to increase
chances of success.
Making use of forums and
summative evaluations to help
judge the degree to which success
has been achieved, and whether
new ends and means should be
pursued.
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
A strategic planning approach is a
kind of response to circumstances
recognized as challenges that
people judge to require a
considered, collective, and often
novel response.
Copyright © 2011. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Approaches
to Fulfilling
the Functions
Such responses are part of
complex social problem solving,
inseparable—and in many ways
indistinguishable from—other
parts of the same thing. Still, for
purposes of discussing enterprises
in which planning plays a role, it
is advantageous to use strategic
planning to characterize this
“part” of response scenarios to
challenges.
A widely used approach is the
Strategy Change Cycle (Bryson,
2004), which includes attending
to context and developing and
linking purposes, strategies,
participation, and the coalitions of
support needed to adopt desirable
changes and protect them during
implementation, as well as
building capacity for ongoing
implementation, learning, and
change.
Approaches to, or kinds of,
strategic management systems:
Integrated units of management
(or layered or stacked units of
management), including use of
cascaded Balanced Scorecards
Strategic issues management,
including PerformanceStat
systems
Contract models
Portfolio approaches
Collaboration models:
Lead organization
Shared governance
Partnership administrative
organization
Goals or benchmark approaches
Hybrid models, that is,
combinations of two or more of
the above
Source: Adapted in part from M. Barzelay and J. M. Bryson, “Two Views of Strategic Planning,” unpublished manuscript, January 2010; and Bryson, 2010a, p. S256.
strategies. It also includes designing an effective and responsive strategic management system that will build the 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
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28 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
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 Ten. 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 function of, implementation and strategic management kept clearly in mind.
Copyright © 2011. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Three Examples of Strategic Planning
Throughout this book the experiences of three organizations (one public, one
nonprofit, and the third a cross-sector 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 was a strategic planning consultant for two of the organizations, although the extent of my involvement
varied. Each of these projects represented an action research project in which
the aims included developing theory and guidance for practice (Eden &
Huxham, 1996). I had no involvement in the third organization’s planning
effort other than the fact that the chief planner was a former student and a
student team in my strategic planning class prepared a case study of the
process (Enke, Nguy, Sullivan, & Zenk, 2009).
The first of the three organizations described here is the Minneapolis Park
and Recreation Board (the Park Board), which oversees one of the nation’s
premier municipal park systems. The Park Board is a semi-autonomous part
of the government of the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Park Board
has its own separately elected board and its own taxing powers, subject to
some oversight by other parts of Minneapolis government. The nonprofit is
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WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
The Loft Literary Center, a nationally famous writers’ support organization
founded in 1974 and headquartered in Minneapolis. The Loft serves thousands
of people each year through classes, mentoring, readings, in-school and incommunity programs of many kinds, and efforts to build an audience for
literature.
The third organization is MetroGIS, a cross-sector, completely voluntary
collaboration of three hundred units of government, businesses, and nonprofit
organizations serving the seven-county Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area, whose purpose is to help its members address their shared
geographic information needs and help them get the most out of their existing
resources. This purpose is accomplished through the collaboration’s voluntary
efforts to: (1) implement regional solutions to geospatial information needs
shared by its stakeholder organizations, and (2) address policy and procedural
barriers that inhibit widespread sharing of geospatial data or geographic information. MetroGIS’s sole purpose is to foster collaborative solutions and it does
so by providing a forum (or fora) for defining collaborative solutions to shared
geospatial needs; it does not own any geospatial data or operate any geographic
information system (GIS). The forum is coordinated by a small group of public
servants housed within—but not reporting to—the region’s metropolitan government, the Metropolitan Council (MC). The MC is the primary sponsor of
MetroGIS. One full-time MetroGIS staff coordinator, along with 3–4 members
of the Council’s GIS Unit—who together average approximately 1.5 full-time
equivalent (FTE) for this purpose—comprise the dedicated support team.
These individuals, in turn, leverage support resources on a project-by-project
basis from the stakeholder community to define and implement the subject
regional solutions. Although the support team is employed by the MC,
MetroGIS does not report to the Council. The MC has representation on
the MetroGIS Policy Board. Decisions of the board, which are made by consensus by all affected and relevant parties, authorize the regional solutions to
shared geospatial needs. MetroGIS has won numerous national and international awards for its work. A number of other less detailed examples are used
as well to clarify the discussion.
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (Park Board). The Park Board
was created in 1883 through an act of the Minnesota Legislature and is a semiautonomous body of nine independently elected commissioners overseeing one
of the country’s largest and best municipal park systems. The Park Board has
dual roles of natural resource steward and program provider and has received
numerous awards and accolades for its work—including having USA Today
say it is the “closest to park nirvana” among U.S. park systems (http://
www.minneapolisparks.org).
The Park Board is responsible for governing, maintaining, and developing
the Minneapolis park system, which serves millions of visitors each year
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30 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
(Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, 2007). The Park Board manages 182
park properties comprising 6,732 acres of land and water. The properties
include local and regional parks, playgrounds, golf courses, gardens, picnic
areas, biking and walking paths, nature sanctuaries, and a 55-mile parkway
system, as well as cultural and historical sites such as the Minneapolis Sculpture
Garden and the nineteenth-century Stone Arch Bridge (that my wife and I see
from our living room window) across the Mississippi River.
Minneapolis voters elect Park Board commissioners during general elections
every four years; three are elected at-large and six represent geographical park
districts. Commissioners, among other responsibilities, develop park policies,
enact ordinances governing the use of park facilities, and hire the superintendent of parks. At the end of 2009 the superintendent oversaw approximately
450 permanent year-round, 225 part-time, and many seasonal employees. At
the end of fiscal year 2009 the Park Board had revenues of approximately $71.7
million and expenditures of approximately $68.9 million.
As noted, the Park Board is semi-autonomous. This has led to occasionally
complicated relationships with other governmental bodies, particularly the City
of Minneapolis, depending on who the mayor and city council members are.
The commissioners’ powers include the ability to levy property taxes and own
land within and outside the City of Minneapolis. However, the city can determine a cap for the property tax levy. Resulting power struggles have sometimes
created a difficult political environment for the Park Board. For example, in
2002 a majority of Park Board commissioners voted to spend almost $5.8
million to purchase and rehabilitate a riverfront building (Brandt, 2002). Some
vocal citizens and elected officials felt that the tax dollars could be better spent
on park services or infrastructure improvements at park centers. Minneapolis
mayor R. T. Rybak vetoed the decision, but the Park Board overrode the veto,
which heightened strains between the city and its Park Board (Brandt, 2002).
The action led to temporary budgetary difficulties.
By the early part of the new millennium, the Park Board was in an uncomfortable position. The commissioners’ internal bickering made it very difficult
to hire a new superintendent (Grow, 2003). The agency faced financial difficulties, city demographics were changing, other agencies’ planning efforts required
a response, and a series of public missteps strained the Park Board’s relationships with some government bodies and parts of the community at large. As
a 2003 Minneapolis Star Tribune article lamented: “The Park Board has been
a sorely divided body for several years, at war internally over matters of staff,
budget and procedure” (Grow, 2003, p. 2B).
In 2001, the Park Board contracted with a planning consultant to begin a
strategic planning process. Although the consultant conducted initial interviews with commissioners, the planning process was delayed by budgetary
and administrative changes. At the beginning of 2004, new Interim
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Superintendent Jon Gurban began reorganizing the staff and procurement
processes. He began by restructuring the organization into cross-functional
teams across three newly delineated districts and assigned a district administrator to each one. These changes provided needed vertical and horizontal
integrative capacity and accountability that had not existed before. He also
promoted Jennifer Ringold in July 2005 to Citywide Planner to lead an upcoming strategic planning effort. She began working on the project in earnest in
August 2005 and made her first presentation to the board in October 2005. In
January 2006, four new commissioners, who had run on a platform of change
and been elected, joined the Park Board. Under Gurban’s leadership, Ringold’s
day-to-day direction, and the new board, the strategic planning process was
fully under way.
The Loft Literary Center (The Loft). The Loft began in the early 1970s when
a group of then-unknown writers who wanted to learn from and support each
other gathered in a loft above a Minneapolis bookstore. The Loft was officially
founded in 1974 and incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1975. Many
of the Loft’s founders went on to national and international fame, including
Garrison Keillor, Robert Bly, Patricia Hampl, Jim Moore, Phebe Hanson, and
others. The organization has grown to include 2,800 members and the list of
established writers of regional, national, and international renown has grown
as well. The Loft has become the nation’s largest and most comprehensive
literary center. It is now located in the award-winning Open Book literary arts
building in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Loft both grew out of, and helped
build, one of the most literate and book-friendly regions in the country (http://
www.loft.org). (And it pleases me greatly to live across the street from the
Loft and the Open Book and its coffee shop.) At the end of 2007, when
the strategic planning process began, the Loft had 19 full-time employees. At the
end of 2009, that number had been trimmed to 15 full-time and one part-time
employees and a pool of about two hundred regular contract creative writing
teachers. Total revenues at the end of fiscal year 2009 in the midst of the recession
were around $1.8 million, whereas expenses were around $2.0 million, prompting the reduction in staff and a new, quicker round of strategic planning.
The Loft offers services for readers and writers at every level. Children’s
literature, poetry, playwriting, novels, memoirs, the spoken word, and other
literary forms and media are all featured. There are readings by well-known
local, national, and international authors; classes; weekend genre festivals;
competitions and grants; open groups; writer’s studios; mentoring programs;
and so on. The list of the Loft’s alumni and guests reads much like a Who’s
Who of American letters.
The Loft also has a tradition of strategic planning, having prepared plans
for 1996–2001, 2002–2007, and now 2007–2012. This last planning effort is the
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