StrategySimple is a best practice facilitated strategic planning process for Not-for-Profit Organizations. We manage the process, lead stakeholder consultations, conduct a needs assessment and environmental scan and help you work better together to create a shared future and implement your strategic plan. Our StrategySimple process works whether you are conducting a one-day strategic planning workshop or developing a comprehensive strategic plan.
What differentiates ABARIS Consulting from other firms is that we understand the not-for-profit sector, how to engage stakeholders to gather relevant information and build commitment to your mission through skilled facilitation. We also know how to motivate, improve engagement and help your staff, board and volunteers work better together. We get involved and we stay involved to ensure that you have the tools and processes entrenched within your organization to get the right things done in the right order so you can effectively implement your strategic plan.
We design the processes, lead stakeholder consultations, facilitate the workshops, support your implementation, train your people and act as your trusted advisor throughout the three stages. Each stage in logical sequence answers the questions:
- Where are we now?
- Where do we want to be?
- How will we get there?
We start by conferring with you to clearly define the scope of your strategic plan and create a work plan to guide and manage the process. Stakeholder consultation is approached through a needs assessment and environmental scan that effectively identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats while simultaneously building stakeholder commitment to your mission. Through a facilitated workshop the implications from the stakeholder consultation on your future strategy are determined and supported. As a result your board and staff are engaged and committed to the need for change and understand the implications to your strategic plan.
Leveraging your board and staff’s knowledge of the organization and sector within which you operate in conjunction with the implications from the stakeholder consultation, a clearly documented strategic plan is created through a facilitated workshop. Skilled facilitation of the workshop fosters innovative thinking, proactive discussion and decision-making that create a shared future with measureable goals and key initiatives. As a result your board, staff and stakeholders understand and are committed to your strategy. With a clear direction established, the next step is communication. Your professionally documented Strategic Plan and Strategic Profile© are suitable for stakeholder review and presentation to help you communicate your strategy in a way that is easily understood.
Based on your clearly articulated and communicated strategy we work with you to establish an action plan for implementation. Using a facilitated workshop within the action planning process we help you create the success indicators, key activities, lead, timelines and resources to define role clarity and build accountability. This ensures that you measure, monitor and reward the right things. It aligns operational activities with your strategic plan and confirms the right things get done. Getting things done is the only way to achieve results. The outcome is that everyone understands what to do, in what order, how success is measured and clearly recognizes how their efforts tie to rewards and the strategic plan. They are engaged.
We leverage your board, employees and stakeholders’ knowledge of your organization and the sector within which it operates to inform your strategic plan through the delivery of:
- Needs Assessment: Identifies your internal strengths and weaknesses with specific recommendations
- Environmental Scan: Identifies your external opportunities and threats with specific recommendations.
- Board Assessment: Identifies your board’s strengths and areas for improvement with specific recommendations.
We enable your board, staff and volunteers’ to implement your strategic plan more efficiently through the delivery of:
- Action Plans: Facilitate workshop(s) to develop detailed 12-month plans with success indicators, key activities, lead, timelines and resources.
- Board and Staff Conferences: Facilitate issue-focused workshops to define and produce recommendations to complex challenges.
- Board Development Seminar: Half-day facilitated training session to improve the governance of your strategic plan.
Strategic Planning Process
Throughout our StrategySimple process we deliver…
- A work plan to guide and monitor the process.
- Proprietary assessments that provide an engaging and efficient way to understand your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
- Excellence in the design and delivery of stakeholder consultation processes that leverage their knowledge of your organization and its environment to help inform your strategic plan and build commitment to your mission.
- Skilled workshop facilitation that enables participants to engage in meaningful discussion, innovative thinking, achieve consensus and leave with a shared direction, clear roles and measures that are aligned with your strategic plan.
- Tangible actions, accountability and processes to monitor, measure and reward getting the right things done in the right order.
- Better engagement so your board, staff and volunteers are more productive and apply discretionary effort to the right things.
- Feedback and guidance throughout the process.
You are best served when…
You know your not-for-profit organization is best served by our StrategySimple process when you believe or come to believe that:
- Your people possess the knowledge of your organization and sector to solve your most significant issues and what they require is an efficient process and skilled facilitation to get there.
- A well-designed and delivered stakeholder consultation process leverages knowledge that informs the strategic plan and builds stakeholder commitment to your mission.
- Skilled facilitation fosters innovative thinking, proactive discussion and consensus-based decisions that create a shared future.
- An organized and integrated process will always achieve more than an ad-hoc approach.
- Assessments provide an effective and efficient way to focus decision making on the right things.
- Effective implementation of your strategic plan sustains commitment and gets the rights things done in the right order to achieve results.