Subject: Charity Talk - Strategic Planning and Implementation

How important do you feel change management is towards successful and sustainable implementation of a strategy?

Fascinating talk - I'm particularly interested in the word "refresh" that was used to make sure the strategy is embedded. There are plenty of gimmicky ways of reminding staff about their place in the strategy and most are regarded with distain by the staff. Aside from the strategic reviews, what are other successful ways of making the strategy "live" for staff and volunteers?

Very interesting talk - I was wondering if anyone else felt it would be useful to know more about how you harness people's enthusiasm for their subject in NGOs within a strategic framework?  In my experience there is a lot of room for these things to conflict!

Thanks to David and Caroline for another great, topical talk. 

It strikes me that the UK political and funding landscape is demanding that charities are more entrepreneurial and businesslike, and compete for contracts with both public and private sector organisations. 

On the other hand I hear many charity leaders arguing that the voluntary sector is different: more individualised and personalised; dealing with more complex issues than the private sector, and working with far more unpredictable variables. 

I'd be fascinated to hear a discussion about how business planning and implementation models might sit differently in the voluntary sector. Caroline pointed to some really interesting factors (eg. her diagram incorporating values, suggesting that business planning might steer "how to behave" not just "what to do".) But maybe David would argue from his venture capitalist background that voluntary sector strategic planning is a lot more  predictable?

Looking forward to hearing more!

Great turn-out at Charity Talks last night! I loved the ideas of “strategy refresh” and “strategy as real-time conversation” – many organisations can be so focused on the day to day steps needed to achieve short-term objectives that the bigger strategic picture gets left behind because there is hardly any “conversation” or “refresh”. I can see there’s lots of questions in this thread already. Both Caroline Copeman and David Nussbaum have kindly agreed to answer them within the next few days so watch this space.

Robert - really interesting thoughts about change management and its role in implementing strategic change.  It's vital isn't it?  But we need to question the extent to which traditional approaches to change management fit with our new reality (real time; demand for agility; need to refresh and respond; changing needs of beneficiaries and so on). 

Most of the change approaches taught in business schools and found in books are designed for large scale top down, 'command and control' type situations.  OK if you've got a project and have to implement fast - but totally useless when you want to bring people with you, engage them to the extent of seeing the realities and suggesting solutions themselves, and so on.  Which of us likes being told to change?

Notions of leaders being 'nurturers of staff', encouraging emergent change, working with the ideas around 'freedom within a framework' that I mentioned last night all seem so much in tune with the values of our sector and the long term strategic changes we face.  How can we do this in 'real time' (ie. PDQ - rapidly!)?  I can't find much about real time change but see the pdf I've attached below as a bit of an appetite whetter.  You also might look at Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management (Lewis, Passmore and Cantore), and of course anything written by Peter Senge (maybe the Dance of Change). 

Any case studies or stories would be terrific!

Hi All

I know both David and Caroline are very tied up today, so here are a few holding ideas, some of which may strike a chord. (It can get a bit frustrating being tied to the Chair role in Charity Talks, so this is a treat!) I've tagged each of the above points as follows

ROBERT - Change management. I'm rusty on the theory of change management but the practical steps I ensure, especially if the strategy is new/different are: a)ensure all the key internal leaders talk the changes being sought eg I addressed all groups of new staff, asked established staff how they were getting on with the strategy b) report progress widely, successes and misses but particularly emphasise successes - reinforces that Strat impln is important c) ensure all regular individual staff review meetings and annual appraisals cover strategy progress with each staff person. WHAT DO OTHER PEOPLE DO?

PAUL - Strategy Refresh. While I hate the term I like the idea for 2 main reasons. First however much staff are involved in developing strategy, in 2 or 3 years as many as 30-40% may have left and new people arrived and a strategy refresh gives them a slice of the action and builds commitment. Second, however good your strategic plan is, it will be out of date because some things will not have worked out. A Refresh allows you to sort this out

ALICE - Harnessing Enthusiasm. COULD YOU AND ANY OTHERS ELABORATE THIS?  If you mean people are enthusiaic about what they want to do rather than what is in the strategy, this normally means you have a bad strategy, or less often means you have an intransigent member of staff. If I have understood correctly I can elaborate, especially the "bad strategy" point - but I'm not sure I have understood correctly

JAMES - How are our business/planning/implentation models different from business ones. Two differences strike me regularly. First, in commerce the person who buys is normally to person who consumes (eg eg you buy your TV set, then watch it) ie only one set of needs/wishes to meet. Whereas for us, the beneficiary who consumes is very often different from the person who pays/buys/funds ie 2 different sets of needs and wishes to meet - more difficult but usually possible. Second, in our planning and implementation we tend to set masses of targets (local and national government is even worse) partly because we don't trust people to get things right. I have heard many business people looking in our world express amazement at this saying they set fewer targets and leave people more flexibilty on how to reach them. IS THIS RIGHT? (and James thanks for fulfilling your promise re writng in!)

Ian (Bruce)

James and Ian - I had thought I'd got away with not referencing the 'business-like' bit of the brief at all in the Talk last night.  Obviously not!  I have a big argument with myself every time I use the phrase...just becasue you turn a profit which goes to shareholders doesn't mean that you do it in a business-like way.  I have numerous examples of for-profits who do not work in a 'business-like' way and an equal number of charities who could be said to work in a business-like way.

So what is 'business-like'?  I think it's about effectiveness (doing the right things for customers, including funders); and about efficiency (doing these things right).  Let's call it a 'charity-like' way and live with the fact that most of the literature is aimed at helping 'for profits' and that we are encouraged to look at the world through a 'for profit' lens.. 

And I think you both identify the issues really well...  I can recall when I was a manager in a 'for profit', spending way too much money on trying to motivate staff to get excited about our Mission.  We don't (usually) have that challenge in our sector.  How about engaging people who work in social care with the realities that civil society face?   We're right in there fighting...and often have the facts about the context at our disposal...so different from engaging staff in a 'for profit' enterprise in their external environment.  Why would they?  So engaging our staff and volunteers might actually be easier than if we worked in a 'for profit'.  What does that say about the challenges we face??

Good to see the comments and question, and sorry not to have contributed till now.  Here's a few responses from me:

Robert P asks about the imnportance of change management in implementation of a strategy.  My instinct is to say that good change management is essential to good implementation of a strategy, and for the most part I think it is.  However, it depends on how much change a strategy calls for: the more change, the more change management skills will be needed.  But going one stage further, I think that when the term "change management" is used, we often think that the kind of change involved entails new structures or processes; but what if the change is mainly a change in culture? or in pace?  This calls for skills in the management a different kind of change to the more classic re-structuring, or downsizing.

Making strategy 'live' for staff (and volunteers) isn't easy, and as Paul G says, it can easily degenerate into gimmicks.  We haven't found a silver bullet for this at WWF, but we have tried to incorporate reminders about the strategy into the regular talks to staff that the executive Management Team give; and have asked staff to identify how each of their key objectives for the year links to the strategy.  That is also one idea in relation to Alice B's question about linking the enthusiasm of individual staff members to the strategy.  I too would be interested to hear from others of different ways of doing this successfully!

James B asks whether, with my venture capital background, I'd argue that voluntary sector strategic planning is a lot more predictable than the private sector.  I think it's difficult to generalise: the specifics of the particular NGO versus those of a particular business are more influential on the complexity of their strategic planning than the fact that one is an NGO and the other a business.  As I mentioned in my talk, I do think that strategic planning (and especially measurement and reporting) in a narrowly focused NGO [of whatever size] is much more straightforward than in an NGO which is seeking to achieve major gloabl change.  The four NGOs I've been most involved in have had visions of:  #a world free of poverty and suffering [Oxfam];  #transforming the global trading system [Traidcraft]; #eliminating corruption [Transparency International]; and #humans living in harmony with nature [WWF].  All of these visions make it likely that strategic planning is going to be a non-trivial exercise!  Private sector companies equally vary: introducing a disruptive technology to a well-established industry is one thing; turning an already huge business - say a leading UK supermarket - into a global player is another matter; but both are tough strategic challenges.