Collaborative Strategic Planning

Organizations today face complex challenges that require more than a traditional, top-down, decide-and-delegate approach to strategy. To adapt and thrive, they must evolve—not just in goals, but in the routines and processes that drive daily action. The intersection of evolutionary economics, dynamic capabilities, pragmatic strategy, and Strategic Doing provides a powerful theoretical and practical framework for this kind of adaptation. EVOLUTIONARY ECONOMICS Evolutionary economics sees economic change as an evolutionary process, where routines—collective patterns of behavior—are the units of selection. Organizations experiment with new routines (variation), adopt those that work best (selection), and embed successful ones (retention). The ability to create, modify, or abandon routines—dynamic capabilities—is essential in turbulent environments. DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES Dynamic capabilities explain how firms can purposefully create, extend, or modify their resource base to stay competitive in rapidly changing environments. They are about agility—sensing and shaping opportunities and threats, seizing opportunities, and transforming assets to maintain relevance. PRAGMATIC STRATEGY Pragmatic strategy complements these ideas by emphasizing practical, iterative approaches to strategy. Rather than relying on rigid, deductive plans, pragmatic strategy employs abductive logic—generating and testing hypotheses through action, feedback, and adjustment. STRATEGIC DOING Strategic Doing operationalizes these principles, providing a structured and collaborative process for developing and implementing strategies in open networks. With four questions and ten rules, Strategic Doing provides networks and teams a structured, rigorous, and fast process that helps them co-create new routines and capabilities. Strategic Doing's four core questions: - What could we do? (Identify and link assets to explore opportunities) - What should we do? (Prioritize the most promising options) - What will we do? (Commit to specific, actionable experiments) - What’s our 30/30? (Meet every 30 days to review, learn, and adjust) This cycle mirrors evolutionary learning: generating variation, selecting and testing ideas, and embedding what works as new routines. Strategic Doing enables rapid adaptation, breaks down silos, and drives measurable outcomes by turning strategy into a living, evolving process. THE FRAMEWORK By connecting evolutionary economics (the development and selection of new routines), dynamic capabilities (sensing and shaping opportunities), pragmatic strategy (iterative, hypothesis-driven action), and Strategic Doing (disciplined, collaborative practice), we now have a theoretical and practical framework that explains how organizations can continuously evolve. This integrated approach enables organizations to develop new capabilities, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and thrive in a rapidly changing environment.

40 people walked into a room with 40 different versions of the future in their heads. By the end of the day, they were building one. This month I facilitated a Vision and Growth Planning Summit for Westside Waldorf School. The morning opened with 40 voices. By afternoon, a working group of 20 got into the specifics. The day closed with a two-hour board session where decisions got made. The group got smaller as the work got sharper. By design. What made it work? Here's what I've learned, and what you can steal for your next strategy and planning session. 1. Listen before you enter the room. Stakeholder conversations are where the real agenda gets built. Depending on the project, that might mean a few weeks of conversations or several months. Talk to the decision-makers and the people closest to the work. 2. Co-design the session with the key leaders. Collaborate on the structure, the flow, the goals. It takes more time and iteration, it's almost always more effective. When leaders help shape the day, they show up as champions, not just participants. 3. Invite people to state their intention. There's science behind this. Set the context first: the vision, the stakes, what this day is for. Invite each person to share their intention. It shifts the room from a group of individuals into a community with shared purpose. Every time. 4. Name the common ground before you explore the differences. Surface the shared goals first. Name them. Let the group refine them. When people know what they agree on, they can disagree productively on everything else. 5. Create a home for every idea, issue, offer, and ask. Designate space on the wall for the key themes. Direct people to write and post. The quiet thinkers and the big talkers contribute in roughly equal measure. Nothing gets lost. The room stays on track. 6. Don't leave without next steps. A beautiful conversation that ends without clarity is a missed opportunity. Use dot voting, round-robins, or ranked choices. Build the action plan together, in the room, before anyone leaves. 7. Communicate out, or the good ideas die. Two things need to happen. First, a warm message back to all participants capturing the highlights. This isn't just documentation. It's fuel. It keeps momentum alive. Second, a full report to key leaders: the specific ideas generated, the priorities surfaced, the action steps, the 90-day plan. Together, they help turn a great day into a lasting shift. I'm so fortunate to get to work with committed, intentional, inspired leaders like Evan Horowitz and Anjum Mir. Strategy and planning sessions are one of the highest-leverage investments a leader can make. Done well, they don't just create a roadmap. They create belief in the vision, in each other, in what's possible. If you're preparing for a planning retreat, a leadership summit, or an organizational pivot and want to think through your approach, let's connect. #StrategicPlanning #Leadership #OrganizationalTransformation

Many organizations underperform—not because they lack strategy, but because they fail to hear the unvarnished truth from their employees. The gap between organizational design and strategy execution often remains unspoken due to fear, hierarchy, and organizational silence. Enter the Strategic Fitness Process (SFP) from Harvard Professor Michael Beer: A collaborative action research method that helps leaders: ☑ Break down organizational silence ↳ Employees and stakeholders share honest, constructive feedback without fear. ☑ Align structure, leadership, and processes ↳ The right design supports strategy execution—avoiding silos, inefficiencies, and disengagement. ☑ Foster continuous learning and adaptability ↳ Organizations must reinvent themselves constantly to stay competitive. Example: Hewlett-Packard (HP) HP’s Santa Rosa Systems Division was struggling—conflicting priorities, lack of coordination, and disengagement threatened performance. By implementing SFP, they: ✔ Adopted a matrix structure to improve cross-functional collaboration. ✔ Created a strategic management process for better resource allocation. ✔ Built a culture of trust and transparency, leading to dramatic performance improvement. Organizations don’t fail because of poor strategy—they fail because they don’t listen, adapt, and evolve. The best leaders create environments where the truth is heard and acted upon. Ps. If you like content like this, please follow me 🙏

  Facilitation… making space for those not in the room. It happens more often than we’d like. You design a strategic planning session. The date is set. The room is ready. And then some board or staff members cannot attend. I facilitated two in-person strategic planning sessions for a nonprofit where this happened. Session 1 was a full day. Nine board members and senior leaders attended; unexpectedly, seven other members could not attend on the day. Using the Technology of Participation Strategic Planning process, we developed five-year goals, identified key challenges and strengths, and drafted initial strategies. The group left energized and aligned. One member said, “I am amazed at how much we accomplished and with such unity in such a short time.” Three weeks later, Session 2 brought together seven people from the first session and the seven who had not attended. The purpose: affirm the goals and finalize strategies and a one-year action plan. It could have unravelled. It didn’t. Why? Because we intentionally designed for the absent voices. Here is what made the difference: 1️⃣ Name who needs to be involved. At Session 1, we asked: Who needs to be part of the next conversation? Who will reach out? 2️⃣ Personally connect. Absent members were contacted and walked through the key discussions and decisions. 3️⃣ Send a clear session report. No surprises. No vague summaries. 4️⃣ Provide structured reflection questions. Using the ORID framework: • What questions do you have? • What stood out? • What are you pleased about? • What concerns you? • What do you agree with? • What needs to change? 5️⃣ Open Session 2 with equal voice. We began by inviting all participants, new and returning, to respond to the report. 6️⃣ Frame absent members as offering “second thoughts.” Not critics. Not disruptors. Contributors. 7️⃣ Take the time. We spent 2.5 hours discussing the previous decisions, an hour longer than planned. It was worth every minute. The result? Most goals were affirmed. A few were refined. Some wording shifted. The group quickly created a one-year action plan because they were fully aligned. Involving absent board or team members is possible. But it does not happen by accident. Design it as intentionally as you design the original workshop. When you do, people feel heard. 😀 Work feels honoured. 👏 And decisions hold. ✔️ How have you handled “not everyone was in the room” moments?  

During strategic planning, there is no perfect activity that will prove which strategy is the best. There is also no single person with so much expertise, they can tell you which strategies your nonprofit should choose. I've been posting about 'strategy perfectionism' this week. The good news is, there is an antidote. Instead of looking for the perfect strategy, create an adaptive process. A good facilitator will help your team collaborate and: ✓ Gain clarity on the key elements that matter most. ↳ Those key elements should not be changing even during uncertainty. ✓ Develop clear decision making structures. ↳ Which decisions will be consensus, voting, done by a rubric with criteria (such as in the image below), consultative or top-down. ✓ Assign clear ownership. ↳ This may be a mix of a strategic planning steering committee or leadership team and individual positions. ✓ Improve the way you communicate. ↳ A good strategic plan will give you a framework to consistently communicate your big picture impact, even when you pivot. ✓ Finally, a good strategic planning process helps you strengthen your change management systems. ↳ This means acknowledging that strategies will change, and having a transparent, clear process for updating those strategies. ✨Strategic planning is inherently collaborative. ✨ There is no need to get your strategy perfect from the start… → If you develop the right structures and processes to continue to collaborate and adapt even after planning is done. What is your favorite tip to have a more adaptive approach to strategic planning?

Agencies: strategic planning is a language your people must learn to GROW accounts. The best way to teach it is to involve them in strategic planning for the agency. It's a world they haven't been exposed to. YOU have. They haven't. - vision / mission exercises - planning methodologies (the OKRs, the EOS...) - decision making frameworks - quarterly business reviews - budgeting, P&Ls Why do you think you do it naturally and they get stuck on tactics? Peter Caputa, one of the most methodical strategic planners I know helps hundreds of agencies ask better questions and gain access to strategic planning conversations with their clients - simply by being transparent with the planning cadence at Databox. I saw it in the Q4 consulting cohort we did for agencies. A little exposure gets people thinking and asking different questions. - "how do you plan as an organization?" - "how do you make strategic decisions?" - "are you following any methodologies or do you have a home grown process?" - "what are management's top priorities next quarter?" Great starting points. But when it comes to having better business conversations nothing beats DOING it for yourself. Pick a methodology and include your team in the process. They'll start asking better questions and uncovering unknown client initiatives and unmet client needs. #agency #strategy

The last time I developed a strategic plan, we accomplished almost 90% of it in 4 years. But, we had a lot of eye rolls in the early stages. Why? Because most people's experience find strategic planning to be: 🔹 Rarely about strategy 🔹 A time-intensive, fancy wish list 🔹 Planned from the top down 🔹 Filled with beautiful words that don’t have much meaning 🔹 Missing accountability 🔹 An exercise so “leaders can do what they want anyway” 🔹 Missing buy-in from the people who actually have to do the work. 🔹 Not tied to your institution’s vision and values. But the two biggest issues are that strategic plans are all too often: 🛑 Go unfinished 🛑 Don’t communicate the big picture - what's the point of it all? So, here are 4 ways that helped our process and manage our progress along the way: 1️⃣ Make it about STRATEGY. 👉 What core values are shaping our organizational behaviors and decisions? 👉 What do our plan's various tasks and initiatives ultimately accomplish? (a.k.a. What’s the big picture?) 👉 What are the key priorities we need to focus on? (Where do we need to focus, what capabilities need to be in place, what processes must change?) 2️⃣ Make it TRANSPARENT 👉 Make it inclusive. If you expect people to contribute to the work give them a role in developing the plan. 👉 Share the data you collect (not just your process or number of townhalls or surveys completed) 👉 Communicate the WHY and HOW of any decision-making. When it's decided what is and is not important, people want to know the process and rationale. 3️⃣ Ask Tough Questions 👉 How will we benefit if we accomplish this strategy and build this vision? 👉 What would it mean if we don’t? 👉 What are we saying ‘no’ to with this strategy? 👉 What does accountability look like? Who is responsible for specific tasks? 👉 What are appropriate deadlines? 4️⃣ Revisit It Often. 👉 Once your plan is finished, keep people informed. Schedule recurring “check-in” points so you or committee chairs can provide progress reports. 👉 Use every opportunity to share WHAT is the ultimate goal and WHY it is important. 👉 Make it clear HOW every individual’s efforts are contributing to this ultimate goal (faculty, staff, and other stakeholders need to know how their work is connected). Finally, make sure your systems, processes, and workflows are working for your plan and not inadvertently against it. Strategic planning gets a bad rap, but it's usually because of poor implementation. When done well, it's one of the best ways to get everyone on the same page and working toward common goals. --------------------------------- ♻️ Repost this to help other academic leaders. 💬 Follow for posts about higher education, leadership, & the arts. #LeadershipGoals #HigherEdSuccess #HigherEducation #departmentchairs #deans #programmanagers #academicleadership #LeadershipSkills

🚀 In 2025, the most strategic discipline in TA and HR isn’t just recruitment—it's turning workforce planning into a live, business-critical capability. According to Deloitte, silos are now the biggest barrier. 📌 What they found: Horizontal expansion → workforce planning must bring together HR, Finance, Technology, Operations and Business Strategy instead of being isolated in one function. Vertical expansion → give managers and employees access to data and insights (dashboards, “what-if” scenarios) so planning isn’t just top-down but inclusive and real time. Leaders like Network Rail and Roche are already slashing hiring & training time or giving employees direct visibility into talent needs. 🎯 Why this matters to TA leaders: If workforce planning remains a periodic HR project, you’ll keep reacting rather than anticipating. When you embed talent intelligence into business strategy, you accelerate speed, agility and alignment—and that’s where you deliver executive-level impact. Talent acquisition, employer branding, and TA tech all become stronger when planning is connected to strategy and data, not locked in isolation. 🔑 Take-away for your leadership agenda: Position your TA team as a strategic partner in workforce planning by: Networking outward—collaborate with finance, ops, IT and business units on same page headcount, skills and role models. Pushing for democratized data at manager level—so talent moves from core TA/HR team to being business-owned. Using “what-if” planning to tie talent actions to business outcomes (not just requisitions)—and brand this as part of your employer-brand story. Imperative: break the silo, build the bridge. When SWP (Strategic Workforce Planning) becomes business strategy + talent strategy + data strategy, TA doesn’t just support—it leads.