Why You Ghost Your Strategic Plan

Almost every organization has a strategic and operational plan. However, most organizations ignore those plans in everyday activities, though their purpose is guiding our everyday work and decision-making. Why do we invest in planning and then ignore our plans? How do we get so earnestly enthusiastic about making these plans, only to have our enthusiasm evaporate? 

Present Self Ignores Future Self 

It’s because we are planning someone else’s work. That someone else is called “Future Self.” You, doing the planning, are “Present Self.” Present Self and Future Self are typically at odds, and it shows no more clearly than in the development and execution of strategic and operational plans.

A strategic plan is, in broad strokes, what we hope to do in the future as an organization. When we think about what we plan to do, we act as Present Self. Present Self has today’s considerations top of mind. Present Self is sitting in a conference room with a facilitator and a group of people, operating in Present Self mode. Present Self has coffee and the time to think. Present Self is enjoying the creativity and collaboration in the room; having (mostly) fun. A facilitator is encouraging, “Yes! You can!” Present Self can see the better future in their mind.

Then you go back to your desk.

You read the 837 emails that came into your inbox while you were getting hyped up as Present Self in the planning meeting.

For the next three weeks, 60% of your time will be spent in meetings. You continue to accumulate emails, texts, Slack/Teams/Discord notifications. Someone even asks for your fax number. Present Self is now decisions in the moment. There is always, always, something more pressing than looking at the strategic plan, much less modifying your activities based on it.

The strategic plan feels like a “note to self” to paint the boat’s hull when you are bailing water furiously just to stay afloat.

And THAT new Present Self situation is the reason you and your organization created a plan at all. A plan, any plan, is a way to overcome human foibles during in-the-moment decision-making. Hundreds of heuristics (mental shortcuts) and biases are always working unconsciously. They derail us and lead us to make strange choices that are unproductive. In the same way the scientific method is a plan to avoid biases in science, a strategic plan is a way to tame our unconscious selves and keep us moving in the right direction.

We in social good figured out we need a plan to tame ourselves and get us moving in the organizational right direction. But unfortunately, we have not conquered USE of the plans. 

6 Tips to Staying True to Your Strategic Plan Goals

Here are ways to keep your Present Self planner from creating a nightmare for your Future Self, and to help your (future) Present Self stay true to the goals set.

1. Build in Enough Time

Extend the strategic planning process to create an operational plan with timelines, budgets, and responsibility assignments. Include all stakeholders possible in making the operational plans. People on the frontlines bring reality into the room. Hear the nay-sayers as well as you hear the hopeful. (This seems obvious. It’s not.)

2. Create Flexibility

Break the plan into annual goals, with horizons for specific projects and flexibility to adjust to changed conditions.

Marin Goings, chief of strategy at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, said, “A key for the staying power of our long-term strategic plan is that we focused on the ‘what’ we want to achieve and our unique role. We then look at these aims each year during annual planning and adjust the ‘how’ based on current opportunities and challenges. This allows the plan to remain adaptable to changing circumstances as well as top of mind each year.”

She continued, “Enthusiasm wanes when reality hits. We launched our strategic plan in January 2020, and then the pandemic turned the world upside down. We reviewed the plan and asked, ‘Do these aims still best advance our mission?’ We mostly found the aims still resonate, but the ‘how’ would need to be completely reconsidered. For example, we still needed to ‘deliver trusted, tailored information to help people with cystic fibrosis to manage their health’ but had to change topics and channels. If we had committed to specific resources or methods, our new virtual situation would have immediately shelved these ideas and, along with it, the long-term strategic plan.”

3. Designating a Strategic Plan Reporter

Having a reporter for the plan with no specific personal responsibility for major metrics. It’s hard to say, “We’re off track.” Sometimes, that discomfort can unconsciously temper our words or delay the reporting meeting. In sophisticated and complex organizations, this person can also be the lubricant between departments to help negotiate movement forward when the plan stalls. Simple, consistent, “without favor” reporting works magic for organizations small and large. Optimally, a dedicated employee like Goings manages the strategic plan, though smaller organizations may struggle to financially support this role.

Goings leans in again, “In general, I often reference one of the early justifications for separating the top strategy role from the COO’s role — that there is often a fundamental conflict between what is easy to execute and what is right to execute, which often leads the COO away from the tougher decision.” This resource has more on this topic.

4. Be Transparent

Make the plan, both strategic and operational, transparent to everyone. Include metrics. Sunlight cures many ailments. There are now a variety of strategic plan execution platforms that can make reporting real-time and appropriately transparent by role. Examples are: Zeck, Causey, and Cascade.

Zero Prostate Cancer CEO Courtney Bugler describes her method for staying true to the strategic plan: 

“At ZERO, we found it helpful to ladder everyone's annual performance goals and objectives to team and department goals, and then those map to annual priorities and the strategic plan.  When I arrived at ZERO, I found that the team didn't see the strategic plan as something that would drive yearly goals, objectives, and most often forgotten, budgets. Even more concerning, the team couldn't answer what the annual priorities for the organization were.

“While not unusual, that didn't help in day-to-day decision-making or accountability. Starting this year, we developed organization-wide Focus Five priorities, to which each department and team linked their own priorities, which had to ladder up to the overall goals and the strategic plan,” Bugler said. “[A priority] wasn't included if it wasn't mapped to the strategic plan. We then built out team member annual goals that ladder to the team, department, and organization-wide yearly priorities.  

“These goals all have metrics and organization-wide and team-level dashboards that are being built out to give visibility to the entire organization in real-time. There is no accountability without visibility.”

Skyler Badenock, CEO of Hope For Haiti, said, “Facing the reality of a present that is different from what we had planned for it to be is either wonderful or terrible. In either case, having that change front and center by reporting against the strategic plan lets us make the necessary adjustments. Only regular and required reporting against the strategic plan makes that happen.”

5. Consistent Meetings Between CEO and Board Chair

The CEO and Board Chair must have inviolable meetings on the current strategic plan. To be thorough, these may need to be outside regular board meetings. 

6. Alignment Between Decisions and the Strategic Plan

Develop an organizational habit of comparing work and decisions to the plan: “Does this piece of work or decision align with the plan we made?

Following these six points and the words of these exceptional leaders will help keep your Present Self from sabotaging your Future Self who wants to ghost your strategic plan.

Skyler said, “Enthusiasm for the plan ebbs and flows with success or failure. It’s my job to keep it front and center, ensuring organizational alignment. In fact, some would say it’s my job in a nutshell.”

The preceding blog was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.