Brooklyn's Progress
October/November 2006

BY VR SMALL 

Over the years, strategic planning has grown into what is known in the industry as strategic management. Strategic management is a four-part strategy that employs strategic thinking, strategic planning, strategic implementation, and evaluation strategies.  Strategic management converts the strategic planning strategies that many organizations were using as a one-time event into an ongoing management process.  All the elements remain constant, but the key focus moves to effectively managing the process.

1) Strategic Thinking: This is the first step in the process where we focus on our internal and external influences by conducting an environment scan that entails examining your past, current and future needs identified by your internal stakeholders: volunteer leadership (board of directors), human capital (staff) and clients/customers.  The external scan should look more broadly at environmental issues affecting your industry/ market.  Unfortunately, this is where many organizations fall short and fail to look beyond their immediate environment to recognize regional, national and even global issues that may impact the future of their organization.  The truth is, your ability to control these environments is limited, but understanding the impact they can have on your organization positions you to make informed, proactive decisions about your future or what we call “alternative futures.”

2) Strategic Planning: Strategic planning involves applying the information obtained from your environment scan to your organization’s current position to begin projecting for the future. You should revisit and even rewrite, if necessary, your organization’s mission – your reason for existing as an organization.  Once you are clear on your mission, you should begin to create your vision for the future of the organization. Your mission is a daily act, but your vision gives your mission a long-term focus.  For example, your mission could be to end homelessness, while your vision might be that by 2010 you will reduce occurrences of homelessness in your region by 50%.  Once you are clear on your mission and vision, you are charged with developing a rolling multi-year strategic plan.  There are several key points to consider when moving forward to develop your multi-year strategic plan that is too lengthy to mention in this column, but this is where professional guidance can be helpful.

3) Strategic Implementation: So now you have a plan, but that is not enough. Your plan is just a guide to achieving your performance outcomes.  During strategic implementation your strategy will be put into action.  Our company developed a strategy we call “Performance Impact Management (PIM)” that is designed to help organizations maintain their focus on performance outcomes and impact. For example, an executive responsible for development who participated in the course I conducted for the Institute of Organizational Management titled, “Measuring Organizational Success,” raised more than $250,000, and as far as she was concerned, her department was successful.  Raising the money is, in fact, a performance outcome for the department, but the key to measuring organizational success is understanding how those funds move the organization towards achieving its mission and creating an impact.  If the other elements are not in place to ensure the funds raised create the impact desired, then raising the funds becomes irrelevant. Consider some of the current projects in our borough and city where the funds are available, but key audiences are still working against those projects.  In hindsight, we can ask what type of “alternative futures” might have been identified during an environment scan that could have produced contingency plans to address some of the current issues.  Organizations that overlook key elements of strategic management will be faced with the consequences of asking “why” this is happening and “how” could we have avoided it – after the fact. 

4) Evaluation Strategies: Although evaluation strategies are the fourth element of strategic management, they are actually developed through the strategic planning and strategic implementation processes. As your organization’s multi-year plan is developed, you must continually ask, “How will we know we are on target with our goals and how will we measure success while ensuring we maintain alignment with our mission/vision?” Evaluation strategies must be regularly assessed, employ simple data collection that results in reporting that is easy to understand and use, be communicated to all stakeholders (to demonstrate how everyone’s contributions impact the organization’s success), and be open to feedback and change.

Most people forget that the key to any successful plan is continual evaluation to ensure you are achieving your desired outcomes.  Monthly, quarterly and even bi-annual assessments position an organization to make timely adjustments to environmental changes.  How are you measuring your organizational success? With the New Year approaching, now is the time to get on track with a strategic solution that works.

VR Small is the President & CEO of Small Industries’ Organizational Success Strategies and a board member of the Chamber.  SIOSS, celebrating its fifth anniversary in October, is a consulting firm that assists organizations in achieving their goals by developing strategic solutions that work.  Ms. Small has spent more than twelve years in senior management and development with nonprofit organizations and six years in corporate communications in the financial services industry.  This summer she participated in a program at Villanova University in Pennsylvania for the U.S. Chamber’s nationwide Institute of Organizational Management during which she presented her company’s Performance Impact Management (PIM) strategy.  For more information, contact SIOSS at 718-919-0300 or visit their Web site at http://www.smallindutriesoss.com/.