6 Levers Ep. 9 - Strategic Planning)
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Josh: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Six Levers podcast, where we talk about simple tools for healthy teams. I'm your host, Josh Aranda. Let's go.
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Josh: Should we talk about Mother's Day, since it was so recent? What's the highlight from Mother's Day yesterday?
[00:00:23] Shaun: yeah, ours was our, we have a, I guess, three-year running tradition where, there's this great restaurant here in Austin called Freas, where they have like whole chickens that you can just, that they roast over fire and like a woodfired deal and you just share 'em across the table.
And so it's a lot of fun and they have great margaritas too. So it's [00:00:45] always DeeDee's annual request is, Let's go there. And my wife works at our church, so it's kind of a, she has to work unfortunately on Mother's Day, but like right after that, we go over there and – did that this year and it was awesome.
And it was, it was really cool too, cuz it rained most of the morning and the kind of the clouds just broke just long enough for us to go over there and celebrate her and it's great and then she got to take a nap when she got back home. So that was her other request.
[00:01:11] Josh: Awesome. How about you, Joe?
Joe: Nice. Yeah, a lot of highlights. I gotta see my own mom and wish her well and hang out there. I think the highlight for our family was – my wife has been talking about taking Henry to swimming lessons for, since before the pandemic. The [00:01:30] pandemic slowed it down quite a bit, but yesterday on Mother's Day she decided to kick that off, so they went to their first swimming class and that was a lot of fun, so. All-in-all a great day.
[00:01:44] Josh: That's funny. So we took Jack and Noah to swimming lessons yesterday as well. We did it like last year and then started 'em up again yesterday, which is funny. and then two other highlights. We – I love making cinnamon rolls and my wife loves cinnamon rolls and so we tried to do that on birthdays and special occasions.
So I made cinnamon rolls yesterday that were pretty good. I think she enjoyed 'em. And then, our five, well she's pretty much six months, but she had her first avocado yesterday. Her first bit of food, so that [00:02:15] was a highlight I think.
Shaun: Oh, that's awesome.
Josh: Made my wife super happy.
[00:02:20] Shaun: Some people are allergic to avocados, so that's good too, that not only was it successful whole foods, but it was – she can eat avocados.
[00:02:27] Josh: Yeah. We're gonna try like one thing for the next few days and then move on to something else, but yeah, she was, it was great. It was super cute.
[00:02:36] Joe: Quick avocado story.
Yesterday, my contribution to Mother's Day dinner. My dad, you know, he led it but he asked for my special guac. so I got to make some guacamole, but the best part about it was it happened to be at our local grocery store. avocados are free if you're members. And, [00:03:00] so they asked me, you know, as I was checking out, I didn't know this until I was checking out, Hey, do you want to use your points today for your avocados?
And I was like, Sure. I had bought an eight, I bought eight avocados and I thought that'd be great. Save 14 bucks on avocados. It was great. Wow. Usually it's like a 70-cent pepper, you know? Yeah.
[00:03:22] Shaun: Free avocado day, that's a premium. Big savings.
Joe: Yeah, it was great.
[00:03:27] Josh: As my high school soccer coach used to say, that's the right price. Thanks for that though.
[00:03:28] Shaun: Good dadism there.
[00:03:37] Josh: All right. I'm gonna move us along to a very important topic, a topic that we find near and dear, to our hearts. It's something that we see, [00:03:45] executed, not necessarily poorly, but just doesn't grab – have the legs that we all hope it does, and that's really around strategic planning.
And so the kickoff question, the launch point for today is why do strategic plans sit on a shelf?
We've been doing this for 12 years. It's one of the most common questions that we ask, Hey, do you have a strategic plan? And more often than not, it's a "yes", but it's very quickly followed with, Yeah, I need to pull that back out. I haven't looked at it in a while, or, You know what? That was from a different board and I'm not really sure what's on it.
We hear these – they're not excuses, they're just realities about this plan that is sitting somewhere collecting dust. So Joe, Shaun, that is the kickoff point. Why do strategic plans sit on a shelf?[00:04:30]
[00:04:30] Shaun: Yeah, this is one, I feel like we could just sit on this question for the whole podcast if we wanted to. so I'll get us started on a few things. the first one is that, I think most teams don't stop before they start the process of asking the question like, What are we we doing this for? Like, what do we hope to do with it, right?
Is it for, – do we owe it to some external stakeholders? Do we, is it something that the board has asked us to do? So we're just doing it for the board. do we genuinely want to do it so that it can, can guide our direction for the next three years and we plan to, to use it in today, and use like that right?
and it's because that they often enter into – teams often enter into a [00:05:15] process where the, because the end is not known, they end up delivering and creating something that doesn't have much use, right? Because they didn't start off by saying like, What do we actually want to do with this? and some of those outputs could, it could also include the definition of, or just alignment on like what does the actual end output of this process need to look like? Is it a traditional longer plan, right?
And then again, if you can answer that first question, you might be able to then answer the output question. Like, if it's something that we owe to the entire community, because maybe we're like a collective impact organization, or we're doing community work, maybe that makes sense, right?
We owe that level of insight and transparency, to the greater community. however, if you're an organization that's, you know, not in [00:06:00] that role where you're not in this kind of community backbone, collective impact organizing, which most organizations are not by the way, then you probably don't owe that extensive longer.
Report to somebody, you probably just need something that's going to, align everyone on where you want to be in three-to-five years, and then something that's actionable and you can begin to take some movement on. So, but because teams kind of lean towards, often towards these longer form reports, it makes it difficult to take action on them to know like, where do we start? who's responsible for what are the – when we look at this bigger vision, what are the shorter term goals that we can begin to make some progress on? So, I'm gonna [00:06:45] probably pause here and let Joe jump in then. We'll maybe keep talking about this one for a little bit.
[00:06:50] Joe: Yeah, I think about it, as sort of two ways: what went into the planning process and then what's the team prepared to do afterwards.
I think like Shaun, you described a lot of the – in the planning process, preparing for the planning process. You know, what do we, what's this for? What stakeholders are gonna be involved in this? What do we hope the end artifact is and achieves for us? you know, is it a longer plan? Is it more goal-centered?
What's the real makeup of the plan itself and who's involved? And there can be a lot of things that go poorly or, or [00:07:30] are unclear at that part. But then, you know, what we also see is once we're done with the planning process, this sort of question now what, you know, maybe the process was actually really meaningful and exciting and clear and resulted in a heightened level of an engagement around the vision and mission of the organization.
And then they sort of asked their question like, Now what? And that's sort of part two, why they end up sitting on shelves, because oftentimes what happens is, Not sure yet. we no longer have the group to come together to figure that out, right? Our time for strategic planning is over. Maybe we had a consultant, maybe we didn't. But either way, like [00:08:15] this is sort of the end of it.
And so then literally that plan gets like, saved in a folder or set on the shelf and it doesn't get come back. We don't come back to it, right? Because we don't actually plan for how are we gonna implement it, right? What practices, rhythms, tools, technology, do we need to be able to actually adopt the plan and execute it?
So just the lack of preparedness around doing that is one of the most common reasons folks report back to us, why it's sitting there, dusty.
[00:08:50] Shaun: I think it's interesting, Joe, like that whole idea that teams can like, do a lot of planning and ramping up and resource management for [00:09:00] this big project task of developing a strategic plan.
but I love your – Yeah, I mean this point I think is so helpful to think of as like, you've got all these resources around for this season, right? And then the season's over and what do you do? Like whether it was a special committee or just people on the team that just decided over the next three-to-six months we're gonna dedicate this time, and then those, you know, they're done and it becomes, you know, We're not sure what we do, what we do now, right?
Well, I was just gonna say, I know I might be getting into some future questions that we probably wanna talk about here, but, you know, one of the things that we, this is kind of illustrating, [00:09:45] I think one of the reasons that it sits on the shelf is that, there's this mindset of strategic planning is something that just happens every three-to-five years.
And that kind of like, that big burst of activity and resources that come around and that Joe was describing, you know, that's not really sustainable, right? Like, all that additional work effort on top of all the additional, the existing things that they're doing and that's one of the reasons that, you know, the effort just quickly falls off a cliff.
And so one of the things that we like to try and get our, the teams we work with to understand is how do we make a movement towards thinking about strategic planning as being just like integrated into the way we work. So certainly we've talked about previous [00:10:30] episodes we still are at, would still encourage clarity at the three-to-five year horizon.
But in order to not have them sit on a shelf and not require this big work effort, how do we begin to make a movement to think about them? They're just, it's just incorporated into the we work into some of our rhythms.
[00:10:47] Josh: Can you break that down a little bit more? When you say make it a part of our work, are you saying on an annual basis? On a quarterly basis? Can you explain a little bit more just so our listeners can understand?
[00:10:57] Shaun: Yeah. So, you know, sometimes we tell teams, you know, the reason they're struggling or the reason any team is we, you know, we've been through our own historical struggles of this as well of not accomplishing our big goals is because they're not breaking them down into small enough pieces, right?
So if we just very simply say, you know, We've [00:11:15] aligned – we're clear on where we wanna be in three-to-five years, then it – very next step would be, do we – how do we bring focus to the first year of that plan, right? And what are the measurable goals we wanna achieve as a result of that? And then what are the – even breaking it down into quarterly or semester trimesters, how do we break that down and even more near term goals, and then overlay the rhythms, which, you know, we've talked about before. How do we overlay those rhythms to those horizons of focus, right?
And then it just becomes, if we – that becomes our new way of working an annual sync. A quarterly sync, right? And we're looking out to where we wanna be in three, five years. We're adjusting that if we need to. We're saying what progress do we wanna make towards that?
It just becomes a way of working and then in our [00:12:00] weekly and biweeklies, we're bringing those shorter term goals into focus, right? So this whole kind of, How do we make progress on our strategic plan? – It becomes even less about like, what's the plan to implement the strategic plan?
It's not even really about that. It's more about, this is just the way we now operate, right? Like we're being strategic every quarter, like at the longest term. You could even argue we're being strategic every week, right? But at – we're at least making this shift to say our strategy, our intentional strategy times at least moving into once a quarter versus this old way of thinking before, which is like every three-to-five years.
[00:12:40] Joe: Yeah, Shaun, I think what that, once you get – I love you using that phrase, “the way of working”. This just becomes sort of your [00:12:45] new normal. This is how we work and everything feels very strategic and it's because when you're operating at that quarterly level, even down to the monthly and weekly level, you know that it's connected to a greater vision for your organization.
And you know that that vision was developed in a meaningful way with key stakeholders, right? And so you're, the way you're working, you can really feel that connection to the broader vision of the organization. And now your, your posture shifts from. When are we gonna do that huge, big strategic planning process again, that takes 6-12 months to when are we gonna revisit that vision in a [00:13:30] lean more agile way and bring other stakeholders together to monitor, you know, how are we doing again, it what's changed since we've, since we've connected last?
And you can do that in, you know, a month's time or a few weeks time, right? So once you really get into that new way of working, even the way you think about the big visioning exercises is much more manageable and also becomes a part of that operating rhythm.
[00:13:59] Josh: Both of you are talking about expectations and what you want out of the process on the front end. So someone might be saying, you know what, we want a five-year target or we just, you know what? We're not even there yet. We're galvanizing our team and we need to think about a one year target [00:14:15] and that's what our planning needs to be focused around. How would you help an organization kind of think through answering that question for them?
Because I think – we think strategic planning, that's what I need to do. I need a strategic plan, but there's so many nuances and so many outputs of that strategic plan that is very relative to the consultant that they might be bringing in or the person who's leading it internally.
How would you kind of recommend, or how have you seen organizations come to understand what they need outta the process so that they can filter through who should facilitate it?
[00:14:49] Joe: Well, I think it starts with asking some of those questions, right? And making sure that you're clear and they're clear about what their objectives are [00:15:00] because you know, Shaun, you mentioned this upfront, how important it is to align on what you're trying to achieve as part of the process – and this happens all the time.
We go through that process of asking questions and we might land on, you're not looking for a strategic plan, actually, you're looking for a set of meaningful annual goals, cuz you don't have that, right? So let's create that for your team or it might unearth, We've got, you know, larger culture issues and we actually need to do some different work altogether.
And in a strategic plan, just feels like the big strategic thing to do but when you start to ask those questions, I think you start to understand a little bit better what that organization needs. When we [00:15:45] land on our strategic planning process, it's typically we want to – we wanna align with our stakeholder group, our broader stakeholder group on where we wanna be in three-to-five years, right?
We wanna actually have a step back moment and answer big picture questions related to our vision when that's a big part of what they're looking for that typically signals to us something that looks a little bit more like a strategic plan.
[00:16:14] Shaun: I think this alignment in what we mean and what people mean when they say strategic planning is so important. Because I know for years I remember, you know, when I was in my MBA program, you know, years ago I'd hear it and I'd be, and I'd wonder like, What if they mean when they say [00:16:30] that? Like, I think I have an idea for it, but I'm not sure. I don't think they're saying the same thing – and this is before I'd even studied it much.
And so now I think we see this with a lot of our, a lot of clients and just people who talk about it in general. Like everyone carries these different meaning, you know, like might say someone, yeah, we got update our strap plan and someone, you know, they might mean what you're saying, Josh, maybe it's just around annual goals and and, Joe, to your point, like we've certainly gotten in and discovered and many times that people think of, well one, they carry these different meanings, so alignment on what we actually mean when we say this is critical.
But two: what are we solving for? Because sometimes there's this idea that strategic planning is sort of like this magic pill. It's like things aren't going the way they should be going right now. We [00:17:15] wish we were working better together. We need to gain some momentum. I know we need to create a strategic plan, right? And we've often said, you know what we've learned through experience is that when things aren't, like – when teams aren't as cohesive as they could be and maybe when leadership isn't as strong as it should be, the idea of then just jumping into strategic plan can actually create some problems for teams because you're adding complexity in a world where teams aren't necessarily, ready for that complexity.
Now, on the flip side of it, The development of – and the clarifying of the vision and I know we'll probably talk at some point today about identity and the role of clarifying identity that [00:18:00] can work to bring teams together. But it takes like some real understanding of like, what it is that we're about to do together.
Do we have the time, do we have the cycles? Can we journey through some tough conversations? Like are we ready for that? Have we created safety within the team and like an ability to be candid and trusting with each other so that we can really create the most meaningful output of this process?
If like the if the ground is not there for that might – maybe we should do some work there and then do some strategic planning work or maybe do 'em side by side. But understanding that the plan doesn't solve all issues that organizations face, I think is another important consideration.
[00:18:46] Josh: Good. Do you got anything to add to that?
Joe: No.
Josh: One question that I was thinking about while you're talking Shaun, is there's, right, there's a couple layers of why the planning process might be misaligned or not the right timing of it. But then Joe, you mentioned the stuff that happens afterwards, right? So there's this like, unique balance of are we sure this is exactly what we want and who's driving this?
Somebody else, like a board member or some issue that we haven't resolved now, what are we gonna do with it afterwards? What are we gonna do out with it afterwards? Might be the same dependent upon the root cause. Like what's, what's initiating the strategic planning process on the front end?
Can you talk about [00:19:30] how do we, how do organizations effectively monitor and implement those strategic plans, right? Regardless of how good the plan is, what is their responsibility and how do we help them think about executing that plan afterwards?
[00:19:46] Joe: Yeah. Well, I think – shoot, I mean it's like inside of our framework, I almost think about like the systems require the system requirements. So like, a requirement for a healthy organization is to have alignment and motivation around a broader vision for the organization.
So we think about it that as looking like at the three-year [00:20:15] level, you've got goals and narrative around where you wanna be. It's this directional part of your organization and that's typically where we sort of enter into the strategic planning process and depending on what those requirements are for the engagement, we may take it down to another level within the organization, down to the annual goals, where we say, Okay, if this is where we want to be in three years, the first thing that we need to do to be able to begin executing is break it down, right?
What are we gonna achieve in pursuit of that vision this upcoming year? And get really focused and accountable around a handful of [00:21:00] meaningful goals, as it relates to that one year lens and then to do that again, breaking it down again at the quarterly level. So a huge part of execution is continuing to break down that vision into more manageable bite-sized chunks where you're creating focus at these more near term horizons.
Because the plan, what it ultimately should do is motivate people and inspire action, right? If we're not taking action toward the broader vision of the strategic plan, then it's not really doing what it's supposed to be doing. But alongside that focus piece is adopting rhythms to execute and monitor the plan as well.
So what [00:21:45] rhythms do we need to have stood up inside of our organization so that we're coming back to this in a real routine way? So that it does really become our way of working, where that vision that we sort of associated with strategic planning is regularly getting revisited and nurtured on a regular basis through those rhythms that we stand up.
[00:22:11] Shaun: Yeah. Two, two more things that come to mind. and it's probably crazy that we haven't mentioned the Compass yet at this point in this podcast. but this is, you know, the Compass is a tool that we developed. That's it, it's in one of our answers to helping a plan not sit on a shelf, right?
And it's this [00:22:30] basically a two-to-three page, short summary of where an organization wants to be in three years as well as their identity. So we often take times or we always take, we always work with organizations to clarify their identity before going into setting their three-year vision and the output of those two things together, the Compass, is meant to be this easy to onboard and reference tool, right?
So if you want to quickly communicate what the vision is, that showed us, mentioned kind of both in the narrative form and in the kind of the handful of bullet points that show this is what it'll look like in three years, where we're gonna be, you can easily onboard someone to it.
You can easily reference it if you're faced with a decision. it's easy for [00:23:15] teams to just, to, to get aligned in what it is because we've said this is the stuff that matters most. unlike the longer plan, or it might be hard to pick out, like, was that, was there something on page 7 that mattered most? Or was it, you know, 32?
You know, I'm not sure, but this skill that gives us the ability to do that and the other piece of it for this measurability piece and rhythms piece that we've been talking about, is a simple scorecard, right? So is – that'd be the second like, major output of the process is to say we've translated the stuff on the Compass, and even gone beyond the Compass, right?
So we've gone beyond three years where Joe was saying, we've gone to one year now and we've got these measurable goals that we can bring into our rhythms and we can monitor them. So, we found that these two tools have [00:24:00] extremely helpful in getting teams to say, you know, be teams to be equipped to make progress on what we think of as a strategic plan, right?
So in many ways when organizations say we need a strategic plan and the 6 Levers framework, this is our answer, is to say, the version of that in the framework is a Compass plus a scorecard. Now, in some cases, I mentioned at the top, you know, we will, if it makes sense, if for them answering like, What are we gonna do with this? What's the output of it gonna be if it makes sense for their stakeholders and mission? Then we will do a longer plan. But most organizations don't need that and so we settle on these two outputs.
[00:24:39] Josh: How often have you seen organizations, a two-part question. How often have you seen organizations that [00:24:45] have a really clear distilled down two-to-three page strategic plan?
That is summary in nature and very clarifying and then second part is, if they don't have that, how do we help organizations understand how long that takes to develop a two to three page strategic plan? A compass plus that scorecard? Because right, you might hear two-to-three pages and like, Oh, I could whip that up in an afternoon.
[00:25:10] Shaun: But is it that I, well, I think it's rare and I think, you know, I'd want to just wanna like address some of the, I think arguments we hear for, a shorter plan. Some people would say, well – I've even heard some people say that I didn't know these short plans for all the rage now and there's like, that's just not enough substance there.[00:25:30]
I think what we found is it's actually a lot more challenging to take a ton of input, right? To take all these ideas from people who cares so much about, you know, where the organization is headed and their core identity and distill all that down to the two-or-three pages that matter most. That is hard work.
It's good work. It's really worth the struggle and the fight for it but it's not a, it doesn't mean you are omitting important stuff, right? It means you're omitting the stuff that probably people aren't going to be, people don't need to be aligned on or memorizing, anyway. It means we're really focusing to align on the things that matter most and so that shouldn't be [00:26:15] interpreted as being like a watered-down, strategic plan.
In fact, it should say, This team fought really hard to clarify and align on what matters most and so that's the first thing. Actually, Josh, I forgot your second question. What was your second question?
[00:26:33] Josh: It was a meaningful, meaningful question. How long should an organization or or leader expect to spend time on developing a compass?
[00:26:42] Shaun: Yeah. Well, it should be about, three-to-five months probably is about the normal amount of time. But it depends on, it really depends on what state the organization's identity is. So our – and our framework identity has several [00:27:00] components and aligning on those components of identity can take time because it's, you're getting input on, you know, what's the unique way we accomplish our mission?
What are our underlying beliefs? What are our values? If some of that's in good shape, then we can work with what's there. And we would definitely encourage organizations to do that. So some of that can be sped up and you might be more in a three-month timeline. But if there's a lot of work to do there before we jump right into visioning, which we always recommend alignment and identity before going into, vision, then that can take a little bit more time and get towards the five-month time horizon.
[00:27:37] Joe: One thing just to, I think, call out about what Shaun's sharing here, now that we're getting into sort of our compass development, sort of the replacement for maybe a traditional [00:27:45] strategic planning process is the emphasis on refining, renewing your identity. This is a part of the process. A lot of times teams don't plan to do during this part of the process, but it's about as strategic a thing you can do on a – you know, it could be as frequently as an annual process to just revisit and it's probably much, it's looking much more like refining your identity.
These are things like your mission, your core beliefs, your values, your vitals, the measures you measure, on a regular basis. That part of the process is unique. And a lot of times teams say, well, we don't know if we really need that, right?
Like, we kind of have that, [00:28:30] so then we have a little bit more conversation about it. Take a look at it and what typically ends up happening, I either directly or indirectly, through the process is that their identity needs some engagement, right?
Their identity needs some love. There's elements of it that are strong. There are elements of it that are weak. There are elements of it that are missing entirely, right? And what we found is if you can align on your identity first – and one of the most important pieces of that for a strategic planning process are what we call your vitals.
So the handful of measures that define success year-over-year, if you can align on all of that ahead of [00:29:15] visioning, your visioning exercise is all the more strategic and it's actually, it's more what you think about when you think of strategy, right?
It's like big picture visioning. Where do we want to go? This is who we are. We know who we are now, right? We know what we measure year-over-year. Now we can get creative and strategic. So just wanna highlight that piece cuz I feel like we're, you know, it's not as common if at all, in a strategic planning process, but it's core to the work that we do with organizations who are in that strategic planning phase.
[00:29:49] Shaun: Yeah. Josh, one thing I just want to add here is we talk about this identity, clarifying identity before we go into, visioning that it [00:30:00] equips teams to have identity informed growth, right? So in a world where we didn't do that, I mean this “vitals” piece is really important and let's definitely come back to this, that specific part of identity.
But as we just think about identity as a whole, if we didn't clarify, more than our mission and our values, right? If we didn't say, Well, what's the unique way we accomplish our mission? – and we call that the theory of impact, right? – If we didn't go a little bit deeper in aligning our beliefs, ways of like overarching principles about how we work – we call those tenets – If we didn't do that, then it's sort of like everything is still kind of possible, right? It's just like anything related to our mission. Yeah, maybe we'll do it in, you know, imagine the three of us, like, we're just like, we're all visionary and we're having exciting [00:30:45] ideas. Well, what are we tethering to, right?
Ideally one of us is saying, looking at the other person and saying, well, you know, I, that sounds exciting, but I don't know, is that really linked to our unique identity? Is that, will that really move that forward, right? And so it becomes clarifying and guides the conversation, the development of the three-year vision in a way that's less about what any one person wants, and more about like, what we have agreed to as our foundational identity.
[00:31:12] Josh: That’s great. I think just to use a practical example too, I love sharing what we do at Mission Matters Group because like when I hear you talking, I'm like, ah, yeah, that's why we did what we did, right? Being able to relate to that. So, the three years prior, we had this objective within our organization that we [00:31:30] came up from strategic planning set in kind of our three-year horizon.
Our objective was “build a culture of organizational health”. Well, two years ago, we did a lot of work in kind of what Joe said, refreshing our core values that were tied to our identity. One of those refinements of our core values was intentional presence. So last year, combining those two things, we had this objective of building a culture of organizational health.
And we had this core value of intentional presence. So one of the things that we did, and it was one of the best decisions we did to achieve both of them, is we did an offsite in Arizona and we brought our whole team together and we all stayed in the same location and we played together, we worked together, we broke bread together.
And the whole goal was how do we create [00:32:15] intentional presence? Like we – everybody in our team loves their family, we prioritize family time, but we wanna work hard at the same time, right? So it was kind of a tactic, bringing everybody together in for larger planning but it was also a strategy that aligned with our objectives, that annual plan.
And so, again, some of these things, it really helps us, cuz we had the question of, should we do this? And once you start surfacing it and looking at it through the identity, it starts to get really clear whether you should or should not and so the ease – not necessarily ease, it's still hard – but your ability to make clear and more consistent decisions becomes enabled with a clear identity.
And I think, again, the team does a great job of distilling these things [00:33:00] down. But you know, as a leader of our organization, I was like, Holy smokes. This is so clarifying and enabling and freeing to make the right decisions. You still make wrong decisions. Like I'm not – this doesn't guarantee right decisions, but it gives a greater chance of success for the right decisions, for your objectives and alignment with your identity.
[00:33:19] Shaun: Josh, I love this, this consistent piece you're bringing up, but I'm also hearing the word like “empowering” because you know what's really amazing when you truly have these handful of strategic objectives and your identity is clear – and Josh, you're really good at this – Josh being that chief repeating officer. Josh is like, world-class at bringing the values in front of our team and like being, helping us to be reminded of what they are. [00:33:45]
And that's really the role of leadership, right, is to say – or one of the roles of leadership – is to say like, This is our identity. Let's make sure everyone knows that these are our strategic objectives. Let's make sure everyone knows what they are and then to your point about this, like, this tactical or strategy like around the retreat those ideas start coming from everywhere, right?
People are like, This is where we're headed and this is what we're about. Like what about this? This feels in alignment with this. Can we – I have this idea, right? And it becomes like on the other side of that, when you're, when you are like the steward of that, it feels so amazing when people share those ideas back to you and you're like, Oh my gosh, this is working.
Like, unlike the very complex, you know, long plan that people like really had a hard time figuring out where their place [00:34:30] was in it and the balance scorecard with, you know, all these measures and multiple tabs, and people didn't really know how to connect their work to it. Like now they can, now they get our identity, now they know the few strategic objectives and, and they're beginning to offer ways that we can make progress towards it.
So I don't even remember, Josh, if that particular happened for that example, but for some reason it made me think like that happens, right? And it's amazing when it does.
[00:34:57] Joe: Yeah. Josh, what I love in hearing your story is I can just like, feel the fire inside you, and that's what investing in your identity does, is it motivates people, right?
Some of my favorite memories of working with clients are during that identity [00:35:15] refinement process where, you know, you ask simple questions like, W hy do you exist? What were the beliefs that drove the reason why your organization exists? And to just see faces light up and conversations happen in just such incredible ways, right? That once you align on that identity in a real meaningful way, the fires sort of been, you know, re-lit inside you and you just see the process really take form in this meaningful way.
Identity is the leverance at our framework that really makes work meaningful, makes work driven by your, you know, the why of the organization and just, I just love [00:36:00] hearing your story there because I know that that was, you know, lit a fire inside you for us to be able to reinvest in our identity, clarify it, and then let it really drive our work.
[00:36:17] Josh: Yeah. There's a couple questions that I feel like, yeah are surfacing that I'd love to ask both of you and it's going back to the monitoring of the plan. I bet you if you surveyed a thousand leaders that said, Have they ever executed a strategic plan with 100% fidelity? Like their assumptions and their hypothesis were a hundred percent right and I would assume that it's [00:36:45] maybe 5% and those 5% might be lying, but at the same time, I think, on a personal level, I can speak from a personal experience, like you want this plan to be perfect, right?
You're the leader of the organization. You want it to be accurate. You're scared of diverting cuz you're like, Oh, my planning was wrong then we made the wrong decisions. The wrong assumptions, right? So there's this like, interesting balance and I think, just to use that word that one of you said, like “empowering”, how does having a looser-defined three-to-five year vision, what could be true, broken down the annual and quarterly priorities and that monitoring, right? There's what could be true versus what is our present day.
How do you think about, [00:37:30] diverting plans, changing plans if you have the power of like, something like 6 Levers and the operating rhythms to monitor that progress? Talk about maybe the decision making to divert away from a plan that may or may not be accurate in the present day.
[00:37:47] Shaun: One of the overarching value propositions for the six success framework is how do you think about your most important, your most strategic activities in your organization and not leave them to chance, right and then Joshua, you just described is, we, I think every – almost every leader we've talked to holds a value of wanting to be able to be agile and when things change and when they're faced with things they didn't plan for to want to change course. [00:38:15] And yet often they don't have the tools to do that.
They don't know how to do it. It's an aspiration, but they don't know what to do. Or as an individually might have some ideas, but the team being all aligned. And how do we do this when we're faced with a challenge? How do we make a pivot? How do we adjust? And that's why, you know, some of the things we've been talking about that, that couple with like having clarity of identity in a plan such as some of these strong operating rhythms, are the places where you should bring up your annual goals, certainly your quarterly and even your, your compass and three=-year scorecard and say like, what adjustments do we need to make?
Like what assumptions did we have back then that are no longer true, right? That are – we thought this would be true at the end of the year this thing happens, change we're in a recession or approaching one, you know, where if something's changed in [00:39:00] our funding world or industry, AI has popped up. Like, what does that mean for us? What are we doing about it? We didn't know it back then, but how do we make space for it and save space for it?
When we design our rhythms to say, this is going to ensure that any adjustments we need to make do not get left a chance right? We're not just fighting to find time to come together to say like, Let's make an adjustment. We know we're gonna hit a time together as a team when we have space intentionally carved out to look at what adjustments we need to make. So we're not leaving that to chance at the bare minimum – you're doing that quarterly and you're doing it annually, but as you get stronger at these operating rhythms and designing them to achieve the intended objective, you'll find that you can do that in your [00:39:45] weeklies as well.
Like you can – someone can call. I think we need to make a course change here and you can even be, have the right time and space to do it there as well.
[00:39:55] Joe: I think it you know, I think of a couple tenets that are sort of laced in the six Lever framework, and it's sort of a reframe around how to think about goals where like, oftentimes we think like we set a goal, the thing to do is pursue it with as much discipline and force and effort as possible and that's what we do, right?
Because it's a goal, you gotta go achieve it, but it's like the two tenants that come to mind are to relentlessly pursue your goals, which represent your focus, and also be [00:40:30] completely willing to punt them at any given time. However, in order to do that, to really live that out, you need a clear, systematic way of operating. We call it the operating cycle, right? You need a weekly, a quarterly or trimester and an annual rhythm where you're coming and looking at those goals in a structured way, right?
And so it creates this space to strategically punt something, strategically deprioritize something strategically recommit to something, right? So you can do that. You can both relentlessly pursue goals and be completely willing to. Respond to and be [00:41:15] agile to the ever-changing things going on. But you need a systematic approach to doing it. You need and the other thing I'll say here is it's gotta be transparent. It's gotta be known, right?
People need to all see if you're ever, you know, shifting from one goal to the next or modifying what your goals are. That process needs to be just open and transparent and everyone understands sort of why we're making these changes. When you do that, you start to create this new culture around goal-setting. It's super important because it creates focus, but we don't just, you know, drive after goals just because we set 'em right. We're gonna consistently come back to 'em, revisit 'em, and, and finding that balance is, is really what it's all about.
[00:42:00] Josh: When you both are talking, I really – I love how you ask questions of the process and I heard this quote, this was probably like a, a couple years ago, and the quote was, questions guide the integrity of our thoughts. Well, what I hear from you two as consultants is questions guide the integrity of our strategies, right?
Like, that's kind of a manipulation of it, but having that clear identity, having a solid focus allows us to ask better questions of our progress and I think that's like a really powerful thing in that like, we should be asking questions.
Are we focusing on the right things? Are we making meaningful progress that's gonna move the needle against our long-term vision? [00:42:45] so anyways, I appreciate your questions. I like try to like fervently write things down as you guys are talking, I guess I could go back and listen to our own podcast, but sometimes that's weird.
[00:42:54] Shaun: Josh, you know what you're here in, you talk there just reminds me that really what we're hoping will be true for our clients is. Not that they will, like, it's a shift in thinking from we need a strategic plan to how do we become more strategic, right? So it's not – and that's what we've been really talking about, like it's new ways of working, new ways of thinking, new ways to, of doing team teamwork that allow us to be more strategic, right?
Whereas we used to, like, we're very infrequently strategic or maybe in individuals are strategic, [00:43:30] but as a team, if we create the space and the commitment to training and becoming stronger in these things, then that's what creates this environment where it's not just this infrequent like big burst of activity, but it's just integrated into the way we work.
So in many ways I'm saying it’s development work we're talking about right here, like developing our own skills, developing the skills of the team to be more strategic and I think we see that that has a much bigger impact than the emphasis on like, a plan.
[00:44:07] Josh: There's two other questions I have for you that are both about external, parties. And, and you might [00:44:15] argue about external for this one, but Right, we hear a lot of the time, Hey, what's the role of the board when we're developing a strategic plan and hey, should we engage a consultant or can we do this in-house?
And those are two really hard, really tricky questions because they take more time and they may or may not take more money. So I'd love to hear kind of from your perspective, we could break that out into two questions.
You know, what is the role of the board? How do you see organizations effectively leverage them and what is their kind of rightful role? And then also from a consultant perspective, when is the right time and what should we be looking for in terms of a consultant?
[00:44:56] Joe: Not to punt the board question, but I think like the most [00:45:00] important thing to do with the board, because every organization is different, is just to make sure that you're aligned on the board's role.
You know, you need to – CEO and board chair need to make sure that they're prioritizing what is the board's role when it comes to how we define strategic planning. and maybe as you're doing that, define what are the outcomes, the objectives of the strategic planning process that you want to achieve. Because underneath that might also elevate a little bit of detail around what role the board's gonna play in that specific process.
I think we typically find that when the board is an input and a guide in the strategic planning process [00:45:45] and then therefore – and then, afterwards serves as an accountability mechanism for the organization. That's been a pretty healthy relationship, but we know that governance structures are different from org to org, nonprofit, for-profit and so the main thing is just to get really aligned about the role the board's gonna play in the process and in developing the plan, how they're gonna be involved and if you get there in a meaningful way, and get everyone aligned, that's gonna take you, you know, 90% of the way there.
[00:46:24] Shaun: Yeah. Yeah, totally agree with that last point. I think that is the most important piece and I think one [00:46:30] other principle to keep in mind here is the, the leaders that are going to be responsible for moving the plan, the vision forward, should in large part be the ones that are driving the creation of it, right?
So they're, like Joe said, they're definitely getting inputs from others. Whether if you're a nonprofit, you're board, if you're a for-profit, it might be your owners, if the owners are not also the operators, or particularly, or investors owners, right? If they're not in the operations of the business getting their input.
But then just like clarity of what happens afterwards, I think an encouragement is the one thing that we've seen is in both these scenarios where, the team that is operating, let's think, just call them the executive team for who's responsible for like the highest level of strategy and [00:47:15] organization, where they can get into some of these operating cadences and these annual and quarterly and they can report that out or report that up to whoever that next level is.
Oftentimes we hear those boards and ownership groups say, We've never got anything like this before. We've got our CEO reporting out on quarterly learnings, like how we did on our goals and, you know, what the learnings were in pursuit of them and therefore what are the new set of priorities going to be.
And they seem to like, really just be in a committed way, growing and improving, you know, on with the, with these rhythms and kind of short term goals that they've put in place in pursuit of the longer term vision. So that can feel really, that can be a really healthy [00:48:00] way for those two groups to communicate back and forth once the plan has been created.
Josh, are we going into the second question? The consulting question?
Josh: Yeah.
Shaun: I think, you know, ideally, and obviously we're biased as a group that runs consulting projects and has a consulting practice, but, we do really believe that end result, and the process in itself is going to be stronger when there's somebody to facilitate it through and someone that's external so that those key stakeholders can fully show up as participants and, and give their full opinion from their unique view, from their experience, from their responsibilities, and not also be asked to facilitate a process while kind of wearing those dual hats, we do understand that there's, there's limit, there's constraints [00:48:45] sometimes for organizations that, financially that come around.
So we are speaking ideally, but you know, when, if the resources can be found and I think we would also argue that, because this is – this process of your initial visioning and then implementing these aspects of an operating system that we're talking about is so important and can change the trajectory of the way your organization runs, that it's worth prioritizing finding the funding for, right?
So I think sometimes we see organizations that fight really hard for other funding, and they're like, well, we just don't have the funding for this and oftentimes I'm left wondering like, gosh, what's, what's more important? Like, what would be like, why is this like priority 12 and, and these other things are higher priorities, right?
And [00:49:30] so I think just we would encourage like the – think about like how important it actually is for building the culture and organizational health that you wanna achieve and what would that, what would that be worth? Maybe one final note here and then I'd love to hear Joe's thoughts is, the, the, the consultants you bring in, at least in our framework and how we think about it, our facilitators.
So I think sometimes we get approached with like, we're gonna write the plan, like we're gonna, you know, we're gonna facilitate a process that gets everyone aligned and is clear and that includes, but we've got consultants in our network that are amazing that to bring this into their own practices.
And I think we're all viewing ourselves as we're facilitating a process that brings [00:50:15] out and aligns everyone on their identity and their vision, but we're not writing it for them and we think that's a healthy way. For leadership teams to think about it and also it just means like how you should be expected to show up, how you should be expected to contribute, right?
It means, you know, if there's a point where there's a lack of, complete clarity and through your vision, then you know, a certain leader might have to take a, take an attempt at clarifying one of those things, like with some authorship, right? And the – a good consultant's gonna say, Hey, for your voice, for your role, I'm discerning. Like it could really use this moment where you step in and bring a little bit more clarity here. So they're gonna guide through the process, but they're not gonna not, and our, at least in our framework, we're not gonna write it for the client. [00:51:00]
[00:51:01] Joe: I think, like, one thing to clarify there, Shaun, just for those listening, is that we're also not talking about like the 50-page strategic plan where we would then facilitate the client drafting that, right? Just for anybody wondering about –
[00:51:16] Shaun: We, you know, in the cases we do have those, we, we, we will do a good bit of writing, but yeah, this is more like compass work.
[00:51:23] Joe: Yeah. No, I agree with, I think, Shaun, you raised the main points and I think, you know, just thinking about it as an investment, if you think about the objectives you want to achieve inside of the strategic planning process, and then ask yourself what are all the things that we would need to do to be able to achieve that?
You know, what framework are we gonna [00:51:45] use? What str – you know, we're gonna have to strategically facilitate a lot of conversations and dialogue, input, gathering, synthesis and data analysis, developing a plan, you know, project management. Once you start to really ask yourself the question of all that, then you have to ask, do we have the internal capacity and resourcing to do that?
And if we don't, it becomes a pretty obvious, who can we partner with to help steer this process for us? And, you know, I think the only other thing I would add is be really thoughtful and rigorous with who you select because, finding that right match somebody that you can trust, have very open and transparent conversations with, get really [00:52:30] aligned about what the outcomes of the process will be so powerful and, you know, we love this process because when we find the right match to of folks to work with, we know it's, you know, gonna be a lot of fun and most likely gonna be a relationship that lasts for quite some time.
[00:52:49]c Yeah, I have a friend who she leads maybe a, you know, 10 to 14 million organization and she's thinking about taking her organization through a strategic planning process, and she's very visionary and, you know, she wants to help her team think a little bit more like what she's seen in the future and so one kind of warning that I gave her is that like sometimes [00:53:15] we see leaders who need to have that information extracted from them as opposed to them sharing that information and getting everybody on their page.
It's not that those might not be the right strategies or the longer term objective, but when we think about, right, this is partly change management. So when we think about getting the right ideas to the table and helping hear and look through different filters having that third party to pull that information out as opposed to putting something out there and then everybody agreeing to it can just dismantle some of the interpersonal stuff that's there.
Now, if there's underlying interpersonal stuff to begin with, you might need to do the work there. The plan isn't necessarily gonna help that, like Shaun mentioned earlier on. But there's some of these things that take into [00:54:00] consideration relative to your organization that you want to process to see if it's right to bring in a third party or not.
[00:54:05] Shaun: Josh one. I know we're not talking much about process here, but I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't share this one. This one process point, and you're just reminding me of this, is that, we see a lot of times teams kind of, when they do think about strategic planning they've aligned a lot of resource and expectation around like the one big day and that's hard. It's hard on everybody.
Like it's usually what happens is people are like blocking off a Saturday or an all day on a Friday. So in their mind there's like, They're not doing all these other things so already there's like amped up expectation of what should happen in a session like that where we've said [00:54:45] no to so many other things.
Often personally like, I'm not gonna show up to my son's soccer game or my daughter's day, whatever. Like, I'm not spending this time with my family and then on the consultant side, it's like, that's felt, right? It's like, Wow. Like there's all this expectation for this group coming together for like this one big day to nail in where they want to be in three, five years.
It's like you're almost just guaranteeing expectations are not going to be met right on both sides, right? Versus saying, how do we design these processes differently so that we can get some of that input in a more iterative way and move it forward over the course of the timeline that we've talked about, like these three-to-five months.
So just wanna share like that one process thing. Cuz I feel like it's one that we [00:55:30] often face. I think I feel like I'm gonna call once-a-week where someone's like, Hey, can you come facilitate this one big thing? And don't get me wrong, like if that for the right reasons, if it works that it can work sometimes if the expectation is appropriate. But, I think it's, it's a one process point worth mentioning.
[00:55:49] Josh: That’s good. All right, well to wrap us up, normally we end with a momentum moment. How do we make progress? So last dismount, what's one bit of advice – an organization doesn't have a strategic plan they don't know what their annual focus is. They don't know how to get their team involved. Just a, a little bit of – they don't know where they're at right now – What's a question or a recommendation that you would give them, to start making progress against developing a plan, [00:56:15] that they can align their team around?
[00:56:15] Joe: I’d have to direct 'em to the Compass playbook. That's definitely, definitely step one. No, but I think it's a question around why, like, why are we feeling this sense of needing a strategic plan? What's underneath that, you know, and sort of hash that out with a group. Why are we feeling the need to have a strategic plan? You know, supplementary questions might be what do we hope having one would achieve for us? What do we think it would bring to the organization and the team?
And as you answer that question, that can then tee up, a conversation with an external [00:57:00] party about how they could support you with that or an internal conversation around. What do we think we need to do to be able to facilitate a process that will help us drive, drive those results?
[00:57:10] Shaun: Yeah, Joe, that's great. I totally agree. I think that's exactly the answer I would say is just, and maybe one other tool as a place to start if you're thinking about this and is that we do have an org health assessment and you could reach out to us, and I think what you might find in, in taking that assessment as a team and, and reviewing the results together, is, you know, maybe it confirms that there's a lack of clarity on the.
The, you know, where you wanna be in three-to-five years. But it might also [00:57:45] reveal some like, team cohesion issues or, or some key rhythm issues that might help you as a team to align, to say, Hey, maybe it's more than just clarity and we wanna be in three-to-five years. Maybe there's some – the ways of working and operating system, strengthening that we need to work on as a team as well.
So even just clarity on, you know, in what you hope to get outta the process beyond clarity, three to five year vision, the work health assessment can help you align quite a bit on that as well.
[00:58:13] Josh: Yes. Very good. Well, thanks for tuning in today on a very important topic. We hope your org is healthier tomorrow. All right. Have a good one.
