Strategic Planning
12/01/19 04:23
In 1975, I was appointed as a student representative to the President’s Commission on the Future of the Seminary. The title sounds impressive, but the president referred to in this case was the president of our theological seminary and the commission was a group of board members, faculty and students convened to go through a strategic planning process. It was as a participant in this process that I first went through a process that has now become routine in many organizations.
Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, and focus the energy of the stakeholders around common goals and objectives. The process has been refined over the years and customized to specific organizations or applications, but the basic five steps are pretty constant:
Set goals and develop a vision.
Gather information
Formulate a strategy
implement the strategy
Evaluate
In the decades since that first experience, I’ve been through dozens of formal strategic planning sessions in dozens of organizations. I don’t know the complete history, but I was once told that the technique was developed by the Rand Corporation during the Vietnam War, and that makes some sense. If you’ll remember the Vietnam War wasn’t exactly a success and it didn’t go according to plan. That’s pretty much my experience of strategic planning. We’ve crafted some pretty lofty plans over the years and none have resulted in achieving the goals we set. Things generally don’t work out according to plan.
In the case of the seminary, the institution that exists today is vastly different from the one I attended as a student. In place of a campus with buildings that ranged from an apartment building to a gothic cathedral, the seminary now owns no real estate and is housed in a single building leased from the University of Chicago. In place of a residential educational institution that required students to live together as well as study and learn together, the institution is primarily a commuter institution with an increasing number of online students. Within a few more years it is predicted that online students will be the majority of those earring degrees. In the place of an extensive specialty theological library, students have access to an internet based resource center that is operated by other institutions and for which the seminary pays a fee to access.
We couldn’t see that coming in the days before the internet. The vision we had for the institution was nothing like the reality that exists today. I don’t even remember the goals we set or the objectives we enumerated in that process. What I do remember is that the tenure of that particular seminary president was short. He didn’t last 5 years in that position and the biggest legacy of that time is the selling of irreplaceable assets for short term gain. That individual went on to other institutions and left behind similar legacies of decline.
Strategic planning comes and goes from church life in waves. There seems to be a new wave of strategic planning among younger clergy in our church these days. I’ve seen some new mission statements and been informed of new goals set by congregations. I’m sure that these have been undertaken with the best of intentions and I’m sure that the processes that produced these documents have been meaningful for at least some of the participants. I am less confident that any organization can control enough of the variables to assure any outcomes. More is accomplished by luck than by plan in most nonprofit institutions.
One of the questions I remember from the early brainstorming sessions we had in that process so long ago was, “If we had unlimited funds, what would we do?” A lot of wild ideas came out of that session, including International travel and study for all students, a fully functional lab school for children through high school, a complete religious arts department with a full music program. None of those dreams was practical. The truth is that nonprofit organizations never exist in the environment of unlimited funds. Daydreaming might stimulate the imagination in certain cases, but it takes more than wild imagination to come up with practical solutions to real world problems.
When I look back on my career as a pastor, I have been involved in starting a lot of programs that ran their course and are no longer being pursued. I have written curriculum that was published and used and now is considered obsolete. I have developed partnerships that functioned for a while and now have faded. On the other hand, the new roofs and heating and cooling systems and remodeled bathrooms and reworked parking lots seem to all be in use. I’ve never thought of myself as a pastor focused on the physical buildings of churches, but some of the physical changes that occurred on my watch have outlasted the program changes. Things don’t always work out the way you anticipate.
So I’ll invest half a day today in a strategic planning session for one of our community’s nonprofit organizations. I will try to pay attention and contribute positively to the process. But I don’t enter it believing that we will set in motion earth shattering changes. Perhaps we can emerge with enough energy and resources to survive for a few more years. Perhaps we can exhibit enough enthusiasm to involve a few new volunteers. Perhaps one or two new ideas will take root and turn into programs for our organization. I’m not holding my breath for a clear vision that will guide the organization to unprecedented growth or complete financial stability. I’ll be happy if we can come up with a budget that is achievable in the next 12 months.
I don’t mean to be a cynic, but I am grateful that there are some who will participate in the process who are younger and a bit less jaded than I. If only they could come up with a new process that is a bit less boring than strategic planning. You’d think they could at least come up with a new name for the process.
Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, and focus the energy of the stakeholders around common goals and objectives. The process has been refined over the years and customized to specific organizations or applications, but the basic five steps are pretty constant:
Set goals and develop a vision.
Gather information
Formulate a strategy
implement the strategy
Evaluate
In the decades since that first experience, I’ve been through dozens of formal strategic planning sessions in dozens of organizations. I don’t know the complete history, but I was once told that the technique was developed by the Rand Corporation during the Vietnam War, and that makes some sense. If you’ll remember the Vietnam War wasn’t exactly a success and it didn’t go according to plan. That’s pretty much my experience of strategic planning. We’ve crafted some pretty lofty plans over the years and none have resulted in achieving the goals we set. Things generally don’t work out according to plan.
In the case of the seminary, the institution that exists today is vastly different from the one I attended as a student. In place of a campus with buildings that ranged from an apartment building to a gothic cathedral, the seminary now owns no real estate and is housed in a single building leased from the University of Chicago. In place of a residential educational institution that required students to live together as well as study and learn together, the institution is primarily a commuter institution with an increasing number of online students. Within a few more years it is predicted that online students will be the majority of those earring degrees. In the place of an extensive specialty theological library, students have access to an internet based resource center that is operated by other institutions and for which the seminary pays a fee to access.
We couldn’t see that coming in the days before the internet. The vision we had for the institution was nothing like the reality that exists today. I don’t even remember the goals we set or the objectives we enumerated in that process. What I do remember is that the tenure of that particular seminary president was short. He didn’t last 5 years in that position and the biggest legacy of that time is the selling of irreplaceable assets for short term gain. That individual went on to other institutions and left behind similar legacies of decline.
Strategic planning comes and goes from church life in waves. There seems to be a new wave of strategic planning among younger clergy in our church these days. I’ve seen some new mission statements and been informed of new goals set by congregations. I’m sure that these have been undertaken with the best of intentions and I’m sure that the processes that produced these documents have been meaningful for at least some of the participants. I am less confident that any organization can control enough of the variables to assure any outcomes. More is accomplished by luck than by plan in most nonprofit institutions.
One of the questions I remember from the early brainstorming sessions we had in that process so long ago was, “If we had unlimited funds, what would we do?” A lot of wild ideas came out of that session, including International travel and study for all students, a fully functional lab school for children through high school, a complete religious arts department with a full music program. None of those dreams was practical. The truth is that nonprofit organizations never exist in the environment of unlimited funds. Daydreaming might stimulate the imagination in certain cases, but it takes more than wild imagination to come up with practical solutions to real world problems.
When I look back on my career as a pastor, I have been involved in starting a lot of programs that ran their course and are no longer being pursued. I have written curriculum that was published and used and now is considered obsolete. I have developed partnerships that functioned for a while and now have faded. On the other hand, the new roofs and heating and cooling systems and remodeled bathrooms and reworked parking lots seem to all be in use. I’ve never thought of myself as a pastor focused on the physical buildings of churches, but some of the physical changes that occurred on my watch have outlasted the program changes. Things don’t always work out the way you anticipate.
So I’ll invest half a day today in a strategic planning session for one of our community’s nonprofit organizations. I will try to pay attention and contribute positively to the process. But I don’t enter it believing that we will set in motion earth shattering changes. Perhaps we can emerge with enough energy and resources to survive for a few more years. Perhaps we can exhibit enough enthusiasm to involve a few new volunteers. Perhaps one or two new ideas will take root and turn into programs for our organization. I’m not holding my breath for a clear vision that will guide the organization to unprecedented growth or complete financial stability. I’ll be happy if we can come up with a budget that is achievable in the next 12 months.
I don’t mean to be a cynic, but I am grateful that there are some who will participate in the process who are younger and a bit less jaded than I. If only they could come up with a new process that is a bit less boring than strategic planning. You’d think they could at least come up with a new name for the process.