How a Co-Champion Can Transform Your Strategic Planning Effectiveness: From Eric Ryan's Upcoming Book

I’m thrilled to tell you that later this year I’ll publish my upcoming book, Mission Met: Proven Strategic Planning Guidance to Help You Build a Financially-Secure and Impactful Nonprofit. The book will provide you with a suite of practical strategic planning practices that will help you and your team better execute your strategic plan. 

This blog post, about the power of co-champions in the planning process, represents the second article in a five-article series where I’ll share a brief preview of some of the guidance that I provide in the book. 

The Benefit of a Fitness Partner

Imagine that it is 5:30 AM on a Friday morning. Your alarm goes off to get you up for an early morning jog. It’s cold outside, you’re tired from a long week, and you end up turning the alarm off and going back to sleep. In other words, the short-term discomfort of an early-morning rise got in the way of your ultimate desire to be physically fit. 

Now imagine a slightly different scenario. The setting is the same, but this time you’re supposed to meet your jogging partner, Wendy, at 5:45 on the corner a block away to run together. In this case, you get out of bed, put your running gear on, and fulfill your commitment to Wendy. As usual, Wendy is on time, and the two of you laugh about wanting to go back to sleep but not wanting to let each other down. 

After your run, you feel good about yourself, your friendship with Wendy, and have more energy for the day ahead. 

The difference between these two scenarios is obvious: Wendy’s accountability and partnership was what propelled you to act.

Now, let’s create a similar set of scenarios regarding strategic planning. 

The Benefit of a Strategic Planning Co-Champion

It’s 9 AM on a Friday morning, and you have an important grant application due by 5 PM. At 9:30 AM you have a one-hour block on your calendar to work on your organization’s strategic plan. It’s been a long week and you haven’t been able to focus on the grant as much as you’d like. You decide to blow off your strategic planning time and work on your grant instead. You don’t end up rescheduling your strategic planning work, and as a result, your plan doesn’t get the attention it needs. 

Now imagine a slightly different scenario. The setting is the same, but this time during your 9:30 block you’re scheduled to review the plan with your administrative assistant, Maurice. You want to set a good example, and despite the pressure you feel from the grant deadline, you maintain your commitment to meet with him. 

After the two of you meet, you feel good about your leadership and you’re reminded, yet again, about the value of regularly reviewing and measuring progress on your organization’s plan. Plus, you ended up getting Maurice to help you with the grant application and you easily beat the 5 PM deadline. 

Like the jogging scenario, having a person who serves as an accountability partner made all the difference. 

In the world of strategic planning, we call this partner a “co-champion”. 

Over the years, I have become a huge fan of the co-champion model. Having a co-champion significantly increases accountability to the process, improves results, and, frankly, just makes planning a lot more enjoyable. 

Employing this one practice significantly increases the odds that your planning process will be well-executed.

In a recent conversation with Laura Anderson, an expert in co-leadership models, she agreed, saying, “We all have unique individual strengths, but even the best leaders are still a single human. Having an effective pair—somebody who complements you and adds to or multiplies your value because your collaboration is so effective—is when you start to see so much opportunity.”

the MVP of the Planning Process

I’ve seen many people effectively serve as a co-champion with the executive director: the board chair, programs officer, development director, etc. 

That said, the most successful co-champions have often been administrative assistants. In this model, the executive director keeps an eye on the big picture, while the assistant focuses on the mechanics of measuring and tracking the plan. Further, administrative assistants often feel a strong sense of pride in being called upon for such an important organizational role. They take their responsibility seriously and the organization benefits as a result. 

In nearly all cases where I’ve seen an administrative assistant play the co-champion role, they evolved to be the MVP of the planning process. 

Sometimes I’ll observe executive directors who are hesitant to select an assistant as a co-champion out of fear of setting them up for failure. This can be a missed opportunity. Instead, use the co-champion role as a “vote of confidence” that empowers the assistant to develop their leadership. Further, this assignment serves as a great weather balloon to predict your assistant’s potential for future leadership.

The Power of Co-Leadership: A Conversation with Laura Andersen of LeadingX2

Recently, Mission Met’s co-founders, Eric Ryan and Ricky Chilcott had a conversation with Laura Andersen of LeadingX2. She and her business partner, Dan Mulhern, started LeadingX2 to promote and support the idea of shared leadership. The company provides coaching for co-leaders to cultivate success in leadership pairs. (You can watch Dan’s TED talk here.)

The following is an excerpt from the conversation, where Laura discusses the importance of co-leadership, how that applies to Mission Met’s experience, and how that is relevant to the nonprofit sector. Check out the video above to listen to the whole conversation. 

Q: Could you share with us a little bit about your role at LeadingX2 and what you specialize in?

A: I joined with Dan Mulhern about two years ago to be LeadingX2, and the impetus for it was that I've always really enjoyed working with people who view me as an equal partner, no matter where we are on the org chart. When I spoke with Dan about my philosophy of leadership, it became very apparent very quickly that we were aligned. I found someone who has three decades of work experience on me who's going to treat me as an equal partner, and I thought, “Wow, that is special and rare, and I cannot say no to this.” 

Key pairs don’t necessarily need to be any particular position on the org chart, it just needs to be two people who work together closely. Half of what we do around our coaching is self-awareness. We figure out where folks are in their own understanding of themselves and their strengths, and also their strengths as a pair. After they’re aware of their dynamic and they’ve had some conversations to clarify or improve their partnership, there's also this newfound awareness of the way that you present to your organization and to outsiders in order to bring your vision and mission to life. 

Q: You talk about how it doesn’t necessarily have to be co-leaders; instead, you use the word “pairs.” Did you always approach it this way, or was that something that you found through your work?

A: I would say it includes, but isn't limited to, people who are leaders by their title. The key is that they have things that they’ve articulated that are common goals and aspirations between them.

Q: At Mission Met, we work specifically with nonprofits. Do you think the concept of co-leadership is different for the nonprofit space than for other sectors?

A: It depends. Similar power dynamics can appear in any organization no matter what the business model is. At the end of the day, this is about communication, clarity of personal values, and self-awareness. That inherently improves work in any sector. 

As for nonprofits, we often see lofty, amazing visions and missions. Some people are out there trying to do everything needed to bring that vision to life. What can be helpful with a key pair is recognizing that you’re just a piece of that vision and it’s not all on your shoulders. Learning how to leverage someone with complementary strengths can be a microcosm. It teaches the courage to contribute everything you can and the humility to recognize when you really need someone else's contributions. 

Q: In our strategic planning model, we use the term “co-champion,” and we find that really successful co-champions are the executive director and an administrative assistant — or something like that. Do you see a trend in a dynamic like that being successful?

A: Absolutely. Titles aside, what you're describing are two really complementary skill sets. There’s one person — the CEO or ED — who is a verbal communicator, and they tend to be more public-facing and inspirational. Then there’s someone who understands the operational side and wants to execute on their vision. 

The executive director has positional power in order to make sure that something gets done. The executive assistant can bring the lens of details, execution, breaking things down, and how to accomplish the work. 

We all have unique individual strengths, but even the best leaders are still a single human. Having an effective pair—somebody who complements you and adds to or multiplies your value because your collaboration is so effective—that's when you start to see so much opportunity.

I love that you've already seen that taking place in so many organizations, and I'm particularly encouraged to hear of people who do have a lot of positional power, who fully acknowledge and embrace that someone who may not have the positional power on the organization chart is indispensable. It puts a necessary presence and can be a key ingredient to the success of the organization. 

Q: Once a pair recognizes that they are a key to the organization, what is a good next step so that these individuals can have a conversation and bring their individual assets to life? 

A: My piece of advice is: where you think you know, decide not to know for a minute, and ask a question instead. 

Instead of assuming that you know that you and your partner have similar visions, that you know their strengths and weaknesses, that you know what you do that annoys them, ask! 

Even if you think you know, it’s worth asking again – an open-ended question about a topic that you may have talked about previously is always worth revisiting, and that's because we are not static beings. Our perspectives aren't static, either. Circling back can add value in a lot of different ways to your relationship. 

Q: Where can people find more about the work that you and Dan are doing?

A: We are online at www.leadingx2.com. Or, feel free to shoot us an email. We're very relational people, hence the work that we're in. Even better than looking at our website, we'd love to just talk to folks. So, you can either find me on LinkedIn as Laura Andersen, or you can shoot me an email at laura@leadingx2.com.