How To Avoid The Biggest Nonprofit Strategic Planning Mistakes

One of the biggest complaints that nonprofit leaders and staff have about strategic planning is when a process produces a document but little action. A strategic plan gets written and approved. Yet the goals are not acted on, the plan is not integrated into the organization’s work and the plan gets left on the proverbial shelf.

The knee jerk reaction is to then blame strategic planning itself and say - oh strategic planning just doesn’t work.

Yet the truth is often a little more complicated than that. When a plan does not get implemented, there are many possible reasons for what went wrong. More often it has to do with how the process was carried out, whether what is called a strategic plan is actually either strategic or a plan and/or whether the organization is really ready for change. 

I will explore eight of the most common mistakes that get in the way of an effective strategic planning process. These include:

1. Starting too small

2. Basing planning on anecdotes instead of data

3. Pie in the sky planning

4. Overly complicated

5. Failure to operationalize

6. Not allocating sufficient time and resources to the planning process

7. Not the right time to engage in strategic planning

8. Not actually wanting to change

1. Starting too small

One of the most common mistakes is to start too small. Thinking they want to keep the process under control, senior management and the board often start with themselves. These two groups have a pivotal role in strategic planning, but they should not be the only voices included in the process.

​The traditional process

​Traditionally, the entire process is held by a small leadership group including the board and the executive team. A few key players may be interviewed. A survey could be used to gather information from a wider set of stakeholders. The small leadership group has a retreat and comes up with a draft plan. They then ask for input from their stakeholders. This feels efficient and manageable. 

Yet the stakeholders who are asked for input after the major work has been done are likely to feel like this is a proforma request. Even if the document says “draft”, it usually feels like there is not a lot of room for change. As a result, the feedback you receive is often superficial.  You may even disengage your stakeholders rather than get the ‘buy-in’ you are seeking.

In this case, when leaders talk about  “getting buy in” too often it takes on the meaning of, “I have told you what I want and what we will be doing” and then I assume because I have ‘communicated’ that to you, you are by definition ‘bought in.’  Then leaders wonder why no action is being taken by those left out of the process on the goals set out. 

Flip the script

Instead flip the script and be inclusive. Map your stakeholders. What are the important categories of people who are integral to your success and your future? These may include the community that you’re serving, your volunteers, your donors, your funders, other groups in the community that do complementary work to you. Think through the ecosystem that you live within and then consider how you are going to pull those voices in. For a deeper dive on identifying and including your stakeholders, click here.

Reflection Questions

• Who are the stakeholders who contribute to the success of your work?
• Who has perspectives on your mission that would be helpful to hear from?
• How might you involve them in your strategic planning process?

With this wider group of people, you plan to include, this often means doing a series of input sessions including 1-1 interviews, focus groups and surveys. Engage in a listening tour to gather input and perspectives.

Input summit

Alternatively, you could identify your key stakeholders and gather as many representatives together as possible. Bring them together for a 1-day summit. You may not believe it, but you can have over 100 people in the room and still have a productive conversation. With the support of dialogue technology, you can have even larger meetings – up to 1000 people participating – and have a productive conversation. Everyone does not have to be in the room as there are ways to engage people online as well.  Some tips include:

• Split people into small groups of up to 8 people

• Have each small group self-organize, choosing a facilitator, a timekeeper, a note taker and someone to do the report out

• Use different methods to report out.

• Try a gallery walk, during which each group posts their flip chart of discussion notes, and everyone reads them individually and silently.

• Have them create a headline or a tweet for their summary—and hold it up and read it.

• Have them summarize the key take away from their discussion on a large stickie and post it in one place.

• Use technology specially designed for large meetings (such as CoVision) to capture key takeaways and have a small team on site to synthesize the results in real time.

Inviting anarchy?
Sounds like anarchy? With a good meeting design, it is highly energizing for both the stakeholders and the leadership. Bringing people into the process early helps them feel heard.

If a large event is not feasible, go on a listening tour. This can involve 1-1 interviews, focus groups and surveys to gather diverse perspectives.

Whether that is through a “listening tour” or a summit, the people critical to your mission appreciate the opportunity to provide their input. You are engaging them before the major goals of the plan are selected. They also enrich your conversations that ultimately lead to the final plan.

For either of these options, many organizations are well served by engaging with a strategic planning consultant who can help design an effective engagement event or series of engagements. Each will also generate a lot of information that needs to be synthesized. Organizations benefit from assistance in this important component.

Time to prioritize

A consultant or the small leadership group now makes meaning of the information gathered through the listening tour or generated in the larger session.  Then staff and board will come together to create a strategic plan, aiming for a few major organizational goals. A strategic planning task force will refine the draft plan. Read more here for a deep dive into the process. By flipping the script and being more inclusive, you have the benefit of many people’s thinking, you help them feel heard. Yet leadership is still able to shape the final product.

Want to talk about how you might apply this at your organization? Book a discovery call.

2. Anecdotes rather than data

Be aware of not letting your thinking be swayed by the most recent member/constituent conversation you have had. Or the loudest board voice. Or your most influential donor. How representative is their perspective?

This is why taking a comprehensive approach to your listening tour and including a truly representative sample of the people important your organization’s future is so important.

What data do you already have?

What data do you already have available about your organization? And how are you using it to inform your thinking? What data is missing? Is it current? ​Think about asking 1-2 people working on your strategic plan to gather reports and research, summarize it and share it with the larger group.

And data doesn’t just mean numbers and graphs - most of the data you need for strategic planning will be qualitative – gathered through interviews, focus groups, and/or surveys.

Listening tour

As you put together your data gathering/listening tour plan, be aware of how people - especially those you support – are likely to need support and resources to give an hour to be part of a focus group. Consider what challenges and barriers someone might need to overcome to participate. Plan to compensate people for their time, provide childcare, or provide access to transportation. All those different things really enable all the voices you need to hear to be part of the process.

Sharing these data with the planning group will provide them with a more grounded view of the current state of the organization.

Reflection Questions

• What data and reports do you have about your organization?
• How current is it?
• Whose perspective does it represent?
• What is missing or outdated?

3. Pie in Sky Planning

Organizations usually look for ways to stretch themselves and set ambitious goals during a strategic planning process. But when it is going too far? When your strategic planning group gets caught up in grand visions, the plan can end up having little connection to reality. Have you considered what it will take to get from here to your vision? Does the plan just add new things? Have you made decisions about what you are going to stop doing? 

When your goals are so lofty or such a departure from what you are currently doing, the plan is likely to end up just talk. The goals bear no resemblance to the actual current capacity of the organization. Because the gap is too wide, the plan is actually demoralizing instead of energizing.

Grounded in reality, yet aspirational
Ground your thinking in research and data that provides a realistic summary of your current state - your strengths to build on and challenges to contend with. The planning group will then be better able to create stretch goals that are also realistic to achieve. Goals that fully embrace the true capacity of the organization. Or take the time to identify what additional capacity will need to be added to achieve the goal. As well as what it will take to add that capacity. These leading practices will help ensure that your plan will be put into action rather than just sitting on the shelf.

Want to talk about how you might apply this at your organization? Book a discovery call.

Reflection Questions

• Where are you more comfortable - in big vision conversations or in the “how are we going to make this happen” conversations?
• How do you find a balance between vision and implementation?
• What capacity does your organization have right now? Where are you directing that capacity?

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4. Overly Complicated

Getting overly complicated can show up a few different ways. Sometimes it’s the process itself. Organizations trip themselves up when they try to tackle too many strategic issues through one planning process. The process gets bogged down. People forget why they started the process in the first place. At the end of an overly complicated process, people are often so tired that they have little energy to implement the wonderful plan they have just created. Keep your focus on two to three major strategic issues and keep the process moving for success.

The plan itself can also be overly complicated. A strategic plan that ends up too long and too detailed often tries to nail down all the actions steps in advance.  The big ideas get lost in the pages and pages of graphs and Gantt charts.  This is often the case when an organization attempts to have their strategic plan also serve as an implementation plan.

Keep it simple for more flexibility

Keep the strategic plan itself simple – a few pages with 3-5 big goals, action steps and success indicators that will orient the work of the organization. The details of who does what by when should go in an implementation plan that focuses on shorter time frames. This might be the first year’s work plan or six months or even a quarter. Choose the time frame that works best for your organization when translating your bigger picture strategic plan into an implementation plan.

Reflection Questions

• What are the 1-3 strategic issues that your planning process needs to focus on?
• When you are doing medium term planning (3-5 years out), what level of detail do you find useful?
• If you have been taught that all goals need to be “SMART,” when has doing this been useful and when has it gotten in the way?

5. Failure to operationalize

Implementation planning

Failing to operationalize the plan is one of the most frequently mentioned challenges by consultants working with organizations on strategic planning. A first step towards operationalizing the plan is to create a separate implementation plan for shorter time frames (6 months/1 year) that details who will do what by when that I just described.

In addition, when your strategic plan is not connected to your regular management practices, you set yourself up for failure. What is already working within your organization to plan and track work? Build on the practices and habits you already have.

Staff and volunteer work plans need to be driven by the large strategic goals with details on what action steps will move the organization closer to those goals. I worked at one organization at which a lot of effort was expended to connect volunteer groups actions to the strategic plan. Yet the strategic plan had no impact on staff work plans. This practice missed a key element to increase the likelihood of the plan’s success.

Budgeting

Budgeting is a second key area for operationalizing the plan. Remembering that a budget is nothing more than a plan in numbers. When the budget does not support the strategic goals then progress is unlikely. Are new initiatives being adequately supported with investment?

Monitoring progress

Be sure to create a process for monitoring progress. What will your process look like for  making tweaks to the plan as needed?  Staff and volunteers should be reviewing it regularly, acknowledging and celebrating where progress has been made and adjusting as appropriate. Where could you easily integrate this process in? Could you add it as an agenda item to regular board and staff meetings? Do you need to set a separate set of check ins if strategic planning is a new practice for your organization?

Reflection Questions

• What are your regular work planning practices?
• How do you currently monitor progress on projects and initiatives?
• When you have done strategic planning in the past, have you taken the step of creating an implementation plan?
• How might you integrate a medium-range 3–5-year plan into your regular management practices?

Keep it simple

Keep it simple – both in your planning process and in writing the plan itself. Think about how you will operationalize the plan and integrate it into your regular management practices at the beginning of the process.

 Want to talk about how you might apply this at your organization? Book a discovery call.

​6. Not Allocating Enough time

​Some organizations make their process and plan too complicated. While others go in the other direction by underestimating what is needed for a comprehensive strategic planning process. They do not allow enough time and do not allocate enough resources to support the process. This can manifest itself in the notion that strategic planning is just about getting together on a Saturday for a planning retreat.

This can lead to a rushed process that results in a superficial analysis. This often ends up with business as usual – even if there is a grand vision – because there was not sufficient thought put into the implications of the plan. A planning process that seeks to set organizational goals for a three-to-five-year time horizon takes a lot more than pulling together a group for a day-long retreat.

Reflection Questions

• How much time do your staff and board have to dedicate to a planning process?
• Are you ready to dedicate time and resources to gathering input from a wide range of stakeholders?
• To what extent will you be able to prioritize the planning process? What might get in the way?

7. Is it the right time?

In addition to allocating time and resources, your organization needs to be ready and willing to engage in strategic planning for it to be a success. Some factors to consider:

• Do you have enough time, mental space and human resources to fully engage in the process? While nonprofit leaders often feel the squeeze of too much to do and not enough time - and taking the time to step back and think bigger picture is very important. Yet if you and your organization truly cannot show up and engage, this probably isn’t the right time.

• Are you in crisis? When we are in crisis, our perspective and thinking narrows. We are focused on what is right ahead of us. This is how the brain works. But it also means that trying to do long-term thinking and planning when you are in that head space just isn’t feasible. You can engage in short term planning and an abbreviated process could be appropriate with a shorter time horizon for planning.

• Are you about to go through a leadership transition? Sometimes an outgoing executive director will want to do strategic planning as they are preparing to leave the organization to “cement” their legacy. I urge you to resist this impulse. When you are planning to leave and are ready to let your board know, engaging in short term assessment and planning will be appropriate. Let the next  3–5-year plan be in the hands of your successor.

Reflection Questions

• What is prompting you to consider strategic planning currently?
• What might get in the way of being able to fully engage in the process?
• How stable is the organization and what feels like a reasonable time horizon for planning at this time?

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8. Not really wanting to change

Rushing the process can also be a symptom of the most fundamental reason a planning process will fail – not really wanting to change. When influential stakeholders do not want to make the changes that some are advocating for in the organization, or if they are not willing to make hard choices, the plan will likely fail. 

​Resistance

​Often times people bemoan ‘resistance’ to a process, demonizing the people they label as resisters.  There is often talk of how to overcome resistance to change. A better approach is to investigate what is motivating the resistance. Approach those who are working against or just not working towards the envisioned changes and talk with them. Learn about what is going on with them – what are their fears and hopes?  There often are good reasons for their resistance and addressing their concerns can strengthen the plan. There may be more common ground than you realize.

Are stakeholders bought into the vision?

Are the stakeholders are truly bought in to the new vision? Or alternatively – people want change and yet are not willing to do the things that would get them there. Simply having the desire is not enough. It is like saying, “we want to be innovative; we just don’t want to do anything new.” There may be lip service to change but underneath the commitment is not there.

Reflection Questions

• How adaptable is your organizational culture currently?
• Who will be willing to consider new perspectives and who might be hesitant?
• Are there nonnegotiable items that are not up for discussion?

Before you launch on the planning process, assess the organization’s willingness and capacity to embrace change.

Want to talk about how you might apply this at your organization? Book a discovery session.

Avoiding the Mistakes to Engage in Strategic Planning that Works

To summarize the common pitfalls that cause strategic plans to sit on the shelf and not be put into action are:

• Starting too small and not building buy in

• Basing your planning on anecdotes instead of gathering data on your current state, your strengths, areas for growth and opportunities for the future.

• Pie in the sky planning, unmoored from reality

• A process that is too complicated and a 3–5-year plan that is too detailed

• Failing to operationalize your plan

• Not allocating enough time to the process

• Launching a process at a time when your organization and stakeholders are not ready.

• Not actually being ready or willing to change

To have a successful process, I encourage you to:

• Map your stakeholders and integrate them into the whole process - make it truly participatory for real buy in and commitment

• Make sure you have dedicated time in the process for data gathering, analysis and meaning making

• Be realistic about how much time and energy a process will take

• Balance your stretch goals and aspirations with a clear sense of your capacity

• Keep the plan simple and flexible

• Agree on a monitoring and tweaking process and commit to regular check ins.

• Operationalize your plan in shorter time frames - quarterly, six months or a year - to get into the nitty gritty.

• Assess your readiness before you start, including the willingness to disturb the status quo.

Want to be sure your strategic planning works, reach out to talk about getting expert assistance.