Video Transcript:

All right. Well, welcome everybody to impactful projects and planning. I'm Jami Yazdani in today's session, I'm talking with Katherine Turner about successful strategic planning in chaotic times, and we're certainly in chaotic times. So Katherine Turner is the founding president of Global Citizen LLC, an equity centered consulting, coaching and training firm focused on transformation. Katherine partners with leaders across various sectors and industries to develop high performing teams drive organizational change and achieve impactful results worldwide. So welcome Katherine. Thank you here. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your work and your business. What impact are you hoping to create for your clients?

Yeah, thanks so much, Jami for having me on your LinkedIn live. It's a pleasure to be here. So again, Katherine Turner, my pronouns are she? Ellen Aya and Global Citizen works with organizational leaders and purpose driven organizations. We develop effective, inclusive leaders and teams, and we also work to affect organizational transformation. And so we're looking to align organizations, mission, vision, values, policies, strategies and culture. We're looking to drive organizational transformation so that organizations can better achieve their mission, their vision, their values, and do the purpose driven work that they are designed to do in the world. And we also, again, are working closely with leaders to ensure that that leaders have the skills and the support that they need to be most effective, to really inclusively lead teams, to be authentic in their leadership and to really stay aligned with their purpose and their values. I also am an adjunct professor at UNC Chapel Hill, where I teach on leadership, on systems and design thinking and a variety of global health topics as well as intercultural competence. And I really love teaching and working intergenerationally with students as an adjunct professor as well.

Yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. So, you know, one of I love how you kind of talk about, you know, alignment and creating connections. Sometimes I find that people think of strategic planning as just the separate activity they do every couple of years, right? And they're not creating that alignment. So I'd love to hear from you why strategic planning is important, even when sort of things are unknown and we're in in chaotic times.

Yeah, that's a great question. Jami, thank you. So I think we can all agree that these are certainly very chaotic times, no matter the industry or the sector that people are working in and and my firm does collaborate with leaders and organizations across all sectors. Many of our client partners are nonprofits and academic institutions and government. We also work with corporate clients, with philanthropy and regardless of the sector, industry you're in, just given the rapid, successive, rapid changes that we've experienced in the US government's administration, the kinds of policies that they're rolling out, the global impact of those policies, as well as the changes that are taking place In other countries and cultures around the world, as well as a lot of those global shifts that we're seeing in terms of increasing migration and technology and then the impacts of those that we're living in a time of rapid change, and change is the only constant, and given that it can be a challenging time for leaders to know how to most effectively lead during such chaotic times. And unfortunately, what I've been hearing from some organizational leaders is that they because of uncertainty about the political situation or the economic situation, they are electing to hold off or delay or cancel their strategic plans, their plans to engage in strategic visioning and planning. And that's really unfortunate, because it's so important to engage in strategic planning in some way, shape or form, really, on an on a regular basis. And we'll talk a little bit more about why that is, but particularly when times are so chaotic, that is when we really need to be taking stock of these broader changes in the landscape that we're operating in, and we need to ensure that we are leading our teams and organizations in ways that are really the. Mindful are really strategic, or taking into account all of these changes that are taking place and being really adapt, adaptive and adept in our leadership. And so I would say that some form of strategic planning, it may not always be the full comprehensive approach to strategic planning that we can talk about, but I've also been talking with leaders about what, where we can focus, where we can prioritize our efforts so that we can make sure that we are, that I am helping them, assisting them in being as strategic and aligned as possible.

Yeah, so yes, I do think sometimes people you know, think they have to do a comprehensive planning process, and those are great, but you know, I think people need to get aligned on priorities. And I think having priorities and in chaotic times is even more important. You need that kind of North Star to go toward and kind of agree and get some consensus on what we need to be doing without that, I think things only feel more chaotic, right? So what? What do you see happen in the absence of a strategic plan? And so if folks are kind of not doing a new planning process kind of not focused on plans they already have. What? What do you see happening?

Yeah, exactly. And those are often the scenarios that we see. Either people have not yet conducted a strategic plan, or they may have conducted one, but it's out of date and they haven't refreshed it. They haven't updated it based on what the current circumstances are, and or they have created a strategic plan, but they're not using it. I'm often called in by clients, by organizational leaders, who will reference a strategic plan, and then when I ask them, what's the status of that, and how are you doing on achieving your goals, on your planned activities, your deliverables, your metrics, and they haven't really checked in on their plan, so they don't really know and and that then makes me wonder, why are we going through all of that effort and expense to do it, if we're not going to really actively engage with our strategic plan? And that's really important. So I would say, within the absence of a strategic plan, what often happens is that there's just this kind of these, these different efforts, activities, that are not in there. They're not aligned, they're not coherent, they're not all working together for a strategic shared understanding of the vision that they're moving towards, of the kind of goals and impact that they're intending to have. They're not cohesive in the sense of how they all work together. Organizations are systems, and we need to take a systems level, a systems thinking approach to understanding our organizations and how they're operating, and all those parts are interconnected, and if we're not pulling them all together in a coherent way, then they're just kind of these random elements that are all operating independently. And those elements might be departments or units in your organization. They may be the people in your organizations are pursuing different goals and activities without a shared understanding of the vision, that North Star that you referenced, what we're all moving towards, and having a shared vision, a shared set of goals, and a shared understanding of the why, the purpose? Why are we doing what we're doing to what end, what, what are the desired outcomes, and how will we measure those? And so we just see a lot more chaos, a lot more uncertainty, which is also it's not only bad for organizations because they're not moving towards their well articulated goals, but also the people in the organizations are often suffering because they're going about their work without really Understanding what direction they're heading in and and doing that in alignment with each other and with their organizational priorities?

Yeah, I think that's a great point that it it isn't just about the organization. It also kind of trickles down to the people. And I do think if organizations are not going to set a direction people either retreat, or you are going to have some middle managers who are going to set their own direction. And you may have different departments, kind of doing, doing some, some different things. And so I do see a comment. Love what Katherine is saying, without a plan, you're reacting to the chaos, which makes it hard to stay mission and value aligned. So thanks for that. Sarah, so on the other side, we talked about kind of what can go wrong if you don't have a good plan. But what can you expect if you have a successful strategic planning process.

Yeah, so I'd love to talk through the approach, the comprehensive approach that Global Citizen LLC takes, and then also how, again, just stress that we are always really adaptive. All of our work is highly customized to each client, to their priorities as well as their budget, because organizations have different budgets to work with, and so we'll work with organizations to really create the most value for for the budget that they have available. So a good strategic planning process is always going to begin with a strategic assessment. We need to know where we are first, where what our starting place is, before we can then articulate where we're going. And so we conduct a strategic assessment that is designed to assess the organizations and the broader environments current state. So we'll conduct this strategic assessment by one first of all, we're going to need to form a Strategic Planning Committee, which is a representative group of all of the stakeholders, the key stakeholders in an organization. And it does need to be representative, so that we're bringing in those diverse stakeholder perspectives, the different roles they play in the organization, their own diverse identities and lived experiences and perspectives and cognitive diversity that they're bringing to the process, as well as their tenure with the organization, age differences, role differences, etc. So we have a small but representative group that's going to work closely with my firm to really plan out and CO create collaborate on this process together. So we conduct the strategic assessment, which usually involves interviews with key stakeholders. Could be focus groups. We might conduct a survey. We always, my firm always creates a survey or form that's available to all stakeholders throughout the process. So there's always that opportunity to really engage anyone who wants to provide confidential or anonymous comments throughout the process, so we can hear honestly and and authentically from people about their perspectives on where the organization is and where they want to see it going. And then we also conduct an analysis of all the organizational documents, data and artifacts. We pull all that together into a strategic assessment report, and that report will include our findings and recommendations that we then present back to the strategic planning group that will then form the foundation and inform our strategic visioning and planning process. So then we engage in strategic visioning based on where the organization is Now, depending on the budget. We may have also conducted a landscape analysis to also interview peer organizations or possibly competitor organizations, which in the nonprofit and other sectors, competitors can be organizations. Can be competitors one day and collaborators the next day. So peer organizations. It could be thought leaders in the field. It could be funders or other people who have an important perspective about the broader landscape and forecasting what's ahead, so that the organization can think about we can conduct a SWOT analysis looking at what are the strengths, what are the opportunities, what are the weaknesses, what are the threats, and take all those into account when the group is conducting their strategic visioning and planning. And so then we're going to chart out the vision. Where do you want to see your organization and your impact in the longer term, the vision should be aspirational. We may not even ever fully achieve the vision, but like you said, it's like a North Star. We need to know, what are we moving towards? What's driving us, what's our our ideal vision of where we're heading. And then we'll conduct, then we'll conduct the process of creating that strategic plan, which will will customize the strategic plan to whatever contents and format the client the organization is looking to have, depending on who their audience is for the strategic plan and how they want to present that plan to the audience. And then they will be able to, then will articulate that vision, the set of goals, the major activities under each goal, the time frames, the people or departments responsible and success metrics, and pull all that together into a really cohesive plan. The time frame for the plan can can be customized. Also, some organizations are preferring to focus on a one year plan right now, just given the amount of rapid change and unpredictability we're experiencing, others may want to go ahead and forecast three years ahead. I usually recommend not forecasting and planning too too far ahead. I know traditionally, strategic plans have tended. To be three to five years, but just again, given the amount of rapid changes we're experiencing, I'm tending more towards a more robust strategic plan for a one year period, and then we can still go ahead and create some broader placeholders and plans for the next two to three years, so that, again, we know what we're working towards, but we're probably not going to elaborate those in great detail, because what we find is that when people are implementing their plans during the first year, there are a lot of changes, and they're going to make some revisions and adaptations, and they should, because, again, these are active documents that you are using to guide your process and that they easily translate into annual work plans that organizations can use to implement, to track their progress, to take note of any changes or adaptations that are needed, and then that can inform the subsequent planning for that second and third year, if they've done, for example, a Three year strategic plan. So to answer your that's kind of a summary of the process. Again, the more comprehensive process. But we can also work with organizational leaders who want to say, you know, we know that development and fundraising are key areas for our organization to focus on, or we know that operations that we're needing to look at our structure and operations. So whatever the priority area is, we can hone in and conduct an assessment and do some strategic thinking and planning around those specific areas that they're wanting to prioritize. And so the outcomes that people can expect from a strategic plan, a successful strategic planning process, is that their stakeholders, their employees, their leaders, their volunteers, if they work with volunteers, their customers or consumers or clients or other stakeholders are more engaged. It should be a really revitalizing, engaging process that we're we're finding ways to engage all stakeholders to solicit input and to incorporate all of those ideas into the strategic planning process so people are more engaged. They feel included. They're excited about having contributed to charting the way forward for the organization and how they will contribute to that way forward, and they everyone has a shared understanding of the vision, of the goals, of how all the parts are working together to achieve that vision and goals, and what their role is, and then how to measure success, what those metrics would look like when, when those outcomes are successful, so they know to what purpose, and Again, what the outcome should look like. And there's just greater alignment among all the members of the organization as well.

Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. I think you know, I really love that you didn't say we just get the board in a room and write something you know that could. Because I do think the more engaged you have people from the beginning, the more bought in they are to the plan and and I, of course, from a project manager's perspective, love that you also focus on implementation and an action plan, excuse me, and what people are going to do, you know, to actually make the plan happen. So we are, I know, a little bit gone, a little bit longer than maybe plans. But is there at least one thing that you see go wrong in strategic planning processes, and sort of what you know, what can folks do about that, or what is the impact?

Yeah, I would say one that you just referenced, is a non inclusive process, so a process where I can't even imagine, but asking a consultant to come in and create a strategic plan for them, or having the board, or a very small select group, and non representative group of leaders, create a plan and then kind of implement it, try to implement it top down, through the organization. As you noted, people are just not going to be bought in. They're not going to bring their full talent and energy and enthusiasm into a plan if they weren't part of creating it. And I recognize that, again, with limited budgets, we can't always include all stakeholders in a fully comprehensive way, in the ways that people might want, but through the different mechanisms that my firm puts in place, we do create a way for everyone who is a stakeholder to contribute their ideas and thoughts and suggestions throughout the process, so that they know that they have a voice. And I didn't mention kind of the launch session, where we really kick off the strategic planning process and engage all the stakeholders so they know what we're doing, what the timeline is, how they will how they are going to be engaged, how we want them to participate. The absence of that kind of engagement and inclusion can really create. Problems for organizations where they've created a plan that people have not participated in. It's not representative of all of the diverse and important voices and perspectives that need to be included. It's not equitable. It's not advancing equity, because, again, people were not a representative group was not included in the process and and it's, it's not going to be successful, for sure.

Yeah, definitely. So how can folks want to continue this conversation with you? What's the best way for for folks to reach out to you?

I'd love to hear from you. If you're an organizational leader and you're thinking about contemplating a strategic planning process, or you're looking for a more abridged, you know, strategic thought partnership. I'd love to thought partner with you and help you think through a design and a plan to hone in on some specific priority areas, to to be an ongoing thought partner, to help you. Because it can be lonely at the top, I hear from executive directors and executives and board members all the time because they have the confidential nature of their work, they can't always talk openly with others in their organizations or outside of their organizations. So having a strategic thought partner and advisor can be really helpful. So I'd love for you to reach out and and have a complimentary consultation. You can email us at info at Global Citizen llc.com you can reach out, reach out on LinkedIn or other social media, or email us again, email us at info at Global Citizen llc.com We'll be glad to to respond to you and set up a complimentary consultation on Zoom, and we'll talk through, I'll I'll help you discern, based on where you're at and what your needs and priorities are, how we can come up with a budget conscious design that will really meet your organizational priorities.

Wonderful. Thanks so much. Katherine, this has been great. I appreciate your time. So thanks everybody. Thank you. Jami, yeah, thanks for attending our impactful projects and Planning series. Take care.

Thanks. Bye, bye.