Why Your Board and Staff Should Collaborate on the Strategic Planning Process is FREE courtesy of Funding for Good
1 Lesson / 3 Minutes / FREE
Why Your Board and Staff Should Collaborate on the Strategic Planning Process is important to understand. Both your board and staff should collaborate on the strategic planning process. A strategic plan written entirely by staff will not have the executive/board level buy-in it needs. Conversely, a strategic plan written entirely by the board won’t take into consideration the day-to-day needs of the staff. Strategic planning problems and implementing issues usually occur due to lack of collaboration. Portions of the board or the staff were not actively engaged in the brainstorming, in the planning, and/or the consensus building process inherent in a strategic plan. It’s one thing to present ideas in a strategic planning process. It’s another thing to have the board and staff collaborate and agree on those for consensus building. During a Funding for Good facilitated Strategic Planning process, members of the board and staff actively engaged in strategic planning process. If the staff creates a plan independently, the strategic plan is typically programmatic and goal oriented. The downside is lack of collaboration. The board may just rubber stamp this strategic plan and then step back. The board doesn’t assume ownership in many situations because the staff came up with the strategic plan and they must feel confident that they can implement it. Lack of collaboration essentially removes the board from the ownership process and we don’t want to do that. If the board creates the strategic plan, then we typically see a lot of resistance from the staff. The staff is the one rolling up their sleeves and working in the trenches every day. Perhaps they view the board written strategic plan as reasonable since they don’t understand the day-to-day operational issues faced by the staff. A strategic plan is designed to avoid this. With an appropriate collaboration between the board and the staff in the strategic planning process, the board has a vision that is understood as governing members and staff can influence what happens on the ground with measurable goals an meaningful impact.
