With the end of the year approaching, I’ve been thinking about strategic planning themes — What are they? How could I identify them? How might they evolve year-to-year? Understanding themes and trends offers numerous benefits to you as a leader since they can help inform decisions and strategies.
Here’s what I discovered about strategic planning themes in reviewing plans from customers over the last 3 years.
One of my favorite articles that I’ve shared with our customers over the years is Dan and Chip Heath’s piece in Fast Company called “Analysis of Paralysis.”
The two basic points of their article are:
Too many choices can paralyze you, and
Simplicity helps you take action.
For several years we’ve told our clients that there are two types of goals: process goals and results goals. For example, a process goal may be "to write one grant per month." The correlating results goal might be "to acquire $100K in new funding this year."
So, for these goals, the question is: "Which goal will help us get the result we want -- the $100K?" The correct answer is "it depends.”
