Starboard’s Blog

Over the years I’ve seen well-intentioned people cause strategic planning sessions to grind to a halt over personal definitions of “mission” and “vision.” Somehow the words and concepts have become jumbled, and the result is that way too much time is wasted on terminology rather than on moving the process forward.

I generally find agreement in any group that mission statements should say in as few words as possible what your organization does and for whom: “Our mission is to house and feed the homeless and move them down the path to self-sufficiency.”  Some would say that the mission statement tells people why you exist.  There also seems to be general agreement that when it comes to mission statements that shorter is better.  Today’s wisdom suggests that the mission should be able to comfortably fit on the back of your business card.

The vision statement seems more fraught with varying interpretations.  I tell my clients to think of the vision statement as a “word painting” of your desired future.  As such, you may need several sentences, or even 2 or 3 paragraphs to paint your picture.  While some will argue that a vision statement should be only a sentence in length, the goal here is for anyone reading it to be able to envision your future.  Unlike the brief mission statement, I’m comfortable with a longer vision statement because I see it as a great tool for speeches, fund raising letters, the orientation of new board members or for any moment where you want to talk about where you want to head and why you need people to join you in your journey.

Call them what you want, but have a short statement that tells why you exist and what you exist to do.  Have another statement that helps people appreciate where you are heading and just how exciting the future could be if they would only join you.  Together those statements can help provide some essential direction to any organization.

As part of my work with one organization to revise their mission, lots of good work was done to describe what they value. While the mission succinctly tells people who you are, value statements describe what you care about, how you treat people, and what you value most.  Strong value statements will stand-up to this test: “Would we keep doing this even if we were somehow penalized for doing so?” A value like, “We will treat all clients, our volunteers, and each other with the utmost dignity in all of our interactions” probably meets that test for most. You would likely choose to go out of business rather than knowingly treat people poorly.

A discussion about organizational values is a great thing to do with board and staff (either separately or together). You’ll learn what really matters to people and how they, themselves, want to be treated. Along the way, you’ll create a document you can come back to from time to time or even print-up to accompany your mission. We include our business values on the Starboard Leadership web site, and the Rotary Club to which I belong displays its values (The Four-Way Test) at the front of the room, and someone reads them at every meeting. How you print them up or where you display them, however, is not all that important. There is no requirement that you have a list of value statements, and it is unlikely that anyone will ever ask you for them. What is important is that you have the discussion in the first place.

Ideally, the values become interwoven with everything you do. So, if one of your values is treating everyone with dignity, take the time to review your employment practices, your customer relations, and your other procedures to see if your practices live up to your values (see “Customers or consumers?” Why the answer matters for more on this).  Making sure that your practices align with your values demonstrates your integrity and is time well spent.

There is an old saying that goes something like this: “Do the right thing and you’ll never do wrong.” Take the time to have a values discussion with your board and staff so you can make sure everyone agrees on what “right” is. Then figure out a way to keep those values alive.

This past weekend I worked with a board of directors and their leadership staff to put the final touches on their strategic direction.  All was going well until a board member questioned the word-choice of “customers” as a way to describe their clients.  It was one of those moments every facilitator fears…when the participants stop talking about the concepts and begin to wordsmith.  What followed, however, was a critically important strategic discussion for their organization. The gist of it is as follows: 

In our work, the individuals we serve have a choice of potential providers (our competition).  Whether the dollars they bring with them are state, federal, private insurance, or out-of-pocket, they still have a choice.  We need to treat them as valued “customers” and ensure that they get the kind of quality service we expect when we are customers of a business.  If we view them as “consumers,” we inappropriately elevate our own status in the relationship to that of equals and suggest that they are “consuming” resources, “taking” services from us, or “using up” something.

The key is ensuring that the values expressed here go beyond the words (it does in this organization). Ideally this focus on the customer, and what that means, is then reflected in the statement of organizational values, becomes part of all staff orientation and training, is evaluated on an ongoing basis (customer satisfaction surveys and the like), and is lived every day by the staff.

So ask yourself whether what you call your clients says something about how you regard and treat them. If what the name connotes doesn’t match with your values, maybe it is time for a change.  It might turn out to be much more than a bit of wordsmithing.

In an earlier posting “Be clear on the desired outcomes of merging,” I described the value of doing your homework and being very clear, before meeting with potential partners, as to why a merger might make sense. I also suggested that this discussion happen in the context of the strategic planning process, and that is what I would like to add to here. 

As a strategic planning process moves from “what we want to accomplish” (vision) to “how we plan to accomplish it” (goals and objectives), most organizations begin to bump into reality. Reality is that they don’t have the reliable funding, the necessary resources, or the staffing to accomplish all they would like to accomplish. Too often this means that plans are downscaled, implemented without the required staffing or resources, put on the back burner, or dropped altogether. While your clients are the ones most likely to be shortchanged when this happens, don’t discount the impact on your staff and volunteers as you build the case for “why we can’t” rather than “how we can.”

My advice is to incorporate into your planning process questions like the following:

One of the board’s most basic responsibilities is to ensure that there is a clear sense of direction for the organization, yet board members are often reluctant to engage in strategic planning. Lengthy, complicated or even painful past experiences with planning are sometimes to blame, but often they (and the executive director) are simply unclear as to their roles in the planning process.

While it is possible to approach strategic planning in many different ways, I think there are some key responsibilities for the board in the planning process:

• Make planning (and the process) happen. Keep in mind the old saying, “If you don’t know where you want to end-up, any path will do.” Don’t let your organization wander.
• Own the mission, vision, values and overarching goals. This is where the board should spend time with the executive director charting the future. This is a great time to involve the staff, clients, donors, and/or the community.
• Let the executive director and the staff own the work plan. Too often boards want to get into the work of developing strategies, and they involve themselves in the kind of work you pay the executive director to make happen. Leave the “how we’ll do it” to the staff. Resist the temptation to micromanage!
• Leaving the work plan to the staff doesn’t let you off the hook, however. The board needs to understand its role in helping to achieve the plan…like ensuring that the necessary resources are available, building important community relationships, providing budget oversight, supporting the executive director, or building a board and a governance model that can help move the plan forward.
• Decide what information you really NEED (not want) in order to appropriately monitor progress towards the goals. Help the executive director develop strategies for manageable and meaningful updates on progress, and if you don’t make this too burdensome, you’ll actually get them.

One board I was working with a couple of years ago stunned me, and their executive director, when they came to agreement that, “We leave the strategic direction to the executive director.” Ensuring that the organization is moving, in a well thought-out manner, towards an envisioned future is an essential duty of the board. Don’t shirk your responsibility or give up the opportunity to do some really meaningful and important work.

As a new executive director back in 1994, I joined with my board in the development of a 5 year strategic plan that filled a thick, 3-ring binder with detailed work plans, year by year, separated neatly by dividers. That was the norm then in the corporate and nonprofit world, and it wasn’t too surprising that after the first two years that we had raced ahead on some aspects, discarded others, and ended-up leaving the plan on the shelf.

Since then, I’ve favored plans that lay-out strategies for the next 18-24 months–anything longer just doesn’t seem reasonable when one considers the pace of change in our world. Dramatic swings in funding, public policy shifts, technological changes, and world events all require organizations to be much more nimble than ever before, and rare is the plan that can still be relevant three, four or five years down the road.

Of course, a shorter time horizon for strategic plans necessitates a speedier planning process. Few organizations can now afford to take the time that our planning process took back in 1994–12 months of ongoing work. Speeding the planning process AND getting a well considered plan is a real challenge, but the trade-off is worth it. By keeping the timeline for the plan to 18-24 months, you are more likely to end-up with a living, breathing plan that will guide your work and not sit on the shelf collecting dust.