The future belongs to the curious.

Nothing centers your focus on things you’ve learned in your career like writing a book about them.

Unless you launch into some stream-of-consciousness, rambling mumbo jumbo, it forces you to categorize your knowledge into specific chapters that make sense.

But within each chapter, it’s easy to succumb to the notion that future readers will hang on your every word, even if it’s Gone With the Wind, Volume II. They won’t.

So you have to be succinct enough to get to the actual heart of the matter, even if there seems to be many hearts of many matters. I had to follow my own advice: Be decisive—pick something and run with it! (Thank you, page 49).

I learned these things (and others) while writing my book, The High-Growth Nonprofit.

Boiling it down to two  

• Along with people who dominate conversations, bias exhibited toward particular groups in meetings impedes the flow of good ideas, motivation, buy-in, and productivity.  
• Inclusive strategic planning sessions that also feature effective, facilitated structure are good tools for creating a great plan.

All nonprofit executives recognize strategy is important. But it’s a safe assumption that most also find the creation of their organization’s strategic plan to be daunting, sometimes scary. When making decisions on the path ahead, you will cut off other possibilities and opportunities. Those choices become a reflection of you as a leader and what if they don’t pan out? 

Strategic planning in days (yes, days!), not months

So it’s time for strategic planning—the process that typically involves three to six months of meetings and splinter groups and task forces.

Comprehensive agendas rule the day along with copious note-taking and prolonged brainstorming that drifts off-target. The management team tries to assess the organization’s position using market data and employee feedback and a SWOT analysis.

Then comes freeform bantering about goals and objectives inspired by mission and vision statements that haven’t changed in years.

Lastly, revenue is forecast based on past performance instead of desired growth, prompting budgets and timelines for a high-level project roadmap.

And Voila—The Strategic Plan!

Whether developed annually or every three to five years, a strategic plan involves lots of time and money. Three to six months is the norm for, say, mid-sized nonprofits, while the average price tag in outside fees and inside labor can range well over $200,000.

So what’s the purpose of this costly endeavor?

Well, the standard answer may be that it’s a roadmap for organizational growth. Or, it’s a blueprint for achieving long- and short-term goals.
 
Regardless of how it’s framed, oftentimes the unfortunate truth is that the strategic plan is more of an obligatory exercise than a usable document. “We’re expected to have one, so we do.”
 
It’s likely voluminous and ambiguous and rarely referenced until its next makeover.
 
In short, it’s just not practical for daily operations.

When you surround yourself with good people, whether you hire them or hang out with them, you can’t help but want to discover the best version of yourself.

For me, I enjoy learning from people smarter than me or drawing comfort from those who walk in similar shoes or being inspired by victors over enormous odds.

Forget about brainstorming. 

The telegraph was just fine, until Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. So were covered wagons for cross-country travel, until George Stephenson’s successful train. And after that, the Wright brothers’ plane.

The point is, the status quo is only good enough until someone’s bright idea for improvement takes hold. I don’t mean Apple’s greedy fascination for making whatever iPhone I have obsolete.

You’re doing attribution wrong.

And it’s stunting your organization's growth.

In school, the power of research for a paper was pretty obvious — the better it was, the higher the grade. With truthful, well-rounded research, what we wrote was richer with objectivity and authoritative information.

When a nonprofit is planned and then founded, entrepreneurial energy carries the day.