An Instructor’s Guide for the fourth edition of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations is available free online. If you would like to download and print a copy of this guide, please visit:
www.wiley.com/college/bryson
“The world and our communities are changing at a rapid pace. Public and nonprofit leaders need skills, knowledge, and tools to respond effectively and swiftly to translate planning into action. This book combines both practical and useful insights with realistic examples, intellectual rigor, and clarity to help your organization successfully navigate the complexity of an ever-changing environment. This book is a ‘must-read’ for government and nonprofit leaders who wish to be successful in thinking, planning, and improving systems and organizational outcomes. John Bryson has done it again!”
—Gary L. Cunningham, vice president of programs and chief program officer, Northwest Area Foundation
“As organizational ties get more complicated and resources get ever tighter, Bryson’s approach to strategic governance has more resonance than ever. In this new edition that builds on what’s already a classic, Bryson helps us understand not only how to do strategic management, but also how to get strategic results.”
—Donald F. Kettl, dean, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, and author, The Next Government of the United States: Why Our Institutions Fail Us and How to Fix Them
“Time and again I attend conferences on strategic management and John Bryson’s books and articles are either required reading, cited in the materials, or highlighted by the presenter. John Bryson’s work on strategic management is clearly the gold standard.”
—Jocelyn Hale, executive director, The Loft Literary Center
“John Bryson’s book on strategic management has long been the touchstone in the field for practitioners and academics alike. This new edition promises to continue its preeminence and will be required reading for all with an interest in this topic.”
—Stephen P. Osborne, professor of international public management, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and editor, Public Management Review
“John Bryson is one of those rare academics who is so respected, skillful, and reflective that he is invited in to help large and important public and nonprofit organizations deal with their most sensitive and significant strategic issues. This book shows why.”
—Colin Eden, professor of strategic management and management science, University of Strathclyde, Scotland, and coauthor, Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success
Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bryson, John M.
Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: a guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement / John M. Bryson. —4th ed.
p. cm. —(Bryson on strategic planning)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-39251-5 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-118-04993-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-05051-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-05053-8 (ebk)
1. Strategic planning. 2. Nonprofit organizations—Management. 3. Public administration. I. Title.
HD30.28.B79 2011
658.4'012—dc23
2011017844
1.1 The ABCs of Strategic Planning
1.2 Rational Planning Model
1.3 Political Decision-Making Model
1.4 Purposes and Functions of Strategic Planning and Management
2.1 The Strategy Change Cycle
2.2 Strategic Planning System for Integrated Units of Management
2.3 City of Charlotte, NC, Strategy in Balanced Scorecard Form
2.4 Strategic Planning Outcomes, Actions, Design Features, and Context
3.1 Outcomes Likely to Be Needed if the Strategic Planning Process Is to Succeed
4.1 A Stakeholder Map for a Government
6.1 Sorting Out the Issues and Their Implications
6.2 Strategic Issues Facing a Roman Catholic Religious Order
10.1 Miami-Dade County Strategic Management System
10.2 Strategic Issues Management Model
10.3 Purchaser-Provider Contract Model
10.4 Road Map for Virginia’s Future
A.1 Strategic Management Purposes and Functions and Stakeholder Analysis Techniques to Assist in Fulfilling Them
A.2 Power Versus Interest Grid
A.3 Bases of Power–Directions of Interest Diagram, with Examples of Power Bases and Interests
A.4 Stakeholder-Issue Interrelationship Diagram
A.5 Problem-Frame Stakeholder Map
A.6 Policy Attractiveness Versus Stakeholder Capability Grid
B.1 Basic DebateGraph Structure
B.2 DebateGraph Map of the Ideascale Transparency Project
C.1 BMC Competencies, Distinctive Competencies, and Distinctive Assets
C.2 BMC Goal and Broader Purposes
C.3 BMC Goal, Broader Purposes, and Critical Success Factors (CSFs)/Distinctive Competency Outcomes (DCOs)
C.4 BMC Livelihood Scheme
D.1 Small College Strategic Issue: Generate More Income
D.2 Small College’s Issues and Goals
D.3 General Shape and Logic of an Oval Map Intended for Use as an Action-Oriented Strategic Map
1.1 Strategic Planning and Strategic Management: Definitions, Functions, and Approaches
3.1 N.E.A.R.’s Strategic Planning Process
3.2 Longer Planning Process of a Large Human Service Organization
4.1 Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board Mission Statement
4.2 The Loft Mission Statement
4.3 MetroGIS Mission Statements
4.4 The Wilder Foundation Mission Statement
4.5 Miami-Dade County Mission Statement and Guiding Principles
5.1 Minneapolis Park Board Summary of Findings from Commissioner Interviews, May
6.1 Litmus Test for Strategic Issues
7.1 The Loft’s Strategies
7.2 City of Charlotte, NC, City Strategy
7.3 The ICT Strategy for the British Government
7.4 MetroGIS Strategic Initiatives
7.5 Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board Vision Themes, Goals, and Strategies
7.6 David Osborne and Peter Plastrik’s Typology of Public-Sector Strategies
7.7 Bryan Barry’s Typology of Nonprofit Strategies
10.1 Miami-Dade County Strategic Plan Summary
10.2 State of Virginia Agency Key Objectives at a Glance
11.1 The Leadership and Management Strategy of the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust
A.1 Participation Planning Matrix
A.2 Ethical Analysis Grid
A.3 Policy Implementation Strategy Development Grid
B.1 Web Sites Where Web-Based Tools May Be Found
B.2 Matching Web-Based Tools to the Strategy Change Cycle
C.1 Identifying Distinctive Competencies, Distinctive Assets, and Aspirations and Creating a Livelihood Scheme to Support the Strategic Plan and Annual Business Plans
D.1 Template for an Oval
This book is dedicated to all of my students over the last thirty-five years, the people who have been kind enough to read and comment on this book in its several editions, and all the organizations with whom I have been privileged to work. I owe you all a sincere debt of gratitude—not least for all that I have learned from you.
How can the leaders and managers of public and nonprofit organizations cope with the challenges that confront their organizations, now and in the years ahead? How should they respond to the increasingly uncertain and interconnected environments in which their organizations operate? How should they respond to dwindling or unpredictable resources; new public expectations or formal mandates; demographic changes; deregulation or reregulation; upheavals in international, national, state, and local economies and polities; and new roles for public, nonprofit, and business organizations, including calls for them to collaborate more often? What should their organizations’ missions be? How can they create greater and more enduring public value? How can they build on organizational strengths and take advantage of opportunities while minimizing organizational weaknesses and overcoming challenges to their organizations? How can they formulate desirable strategies and implement them effectively? These are the questions this book addresses.
Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations is based on two premises. The first is that leaders and managers of public and nonprofit organizations must be effective strategists if their organizations are to fulfill their missions, meet their mandates, satisfy their constituents, and create public value in the years ahead. These leaders and managers will need to exercise as much discretion as possible in the areas under their control. They need to develop effective strategies to cope with changed and changing circumstances, and they need to develop a coherent and defensible basis for their decisions. They also need to build the capacity of their organizations to respond to significant challenges in the future.
The second premise is that leaders and managers are most likely to discern the way forward via a reasonably disciplined process of deliberation with others when the situations faced require more than technical fixes. They will need to design and construct, remodel, or repair existing processes or pathways for deliberation among speakers and audiences that include analysis, synthesis, and judgment; intellect and emotion; reasonable objectivity, but also partiality and passion; at times transparency and publicity, at other times secrecy; and at all times listening to and respecting what others say, at least until final choices are made (Garsten, 2006, 127–129, 131, 191–194). This honorable tradition of deliberation goes back at least to Aristotle and Cicero, both of whom wrote eloquently of its virtues. But to succeed, deliberative practices and processes also need institutional and organizational processes and structures in place to support them. The deliberative tradition of Aristotle and Cicero nowhere implies that there is “one best answer” to major challenges, only that there is the possibility of gaining understanding, finding common ground, and making wise choices via the deliberative process.
Strategic planning at its best makes extensive use of analysis and synthesis in deliberative settings to help leaders and managers successfully address the major challenges that their organization (or other entity) faces. This book begins by defining strategic planning as a deliberative, disciplined approach to producing fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why it does it. Strategic planning has an important role to play as part—but only a part—of complex social problem solving. Specifically, it can be helpful for: (1) gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing information to consider its strategic significance and frame possible choices; (2) producing considered judgments among key decision makers about desirable, feasible, defensible, and acceptable missions, goals, strategies, and actions, along with complementary initiatives, such as new, changed, or terminated policies, programs, and projects, or even overall organizational designs; (3) addressing key organizational challenges now and in the foreseeable future; (4) enhancing continuous organizational learning; and (5) creating significant and enduring public value.
As experience with this kind of deliberative approach has grown, a substantial and expanding inventory of knowledge, concepts, guidance, procedures, tools, and techniques has also developed to assist leaders and managers. In the past forty-five years, strategic planning of this kind has become a standard part of management thinking and practice in the business world. In the past twenty-five years strategic planning has also become the standard practice of large numbers of public and nonprofit organizations. Of course, strategic planning isn’t always called for, doesn’t always work, or can work quite badly. This book is intended to help practitioners make suitable, wise, and effective use of strategic planning.
The first three editions of this book played an important role in promoting the use of strategic planning by public and nonprofit organizations. The practice of strategic planning has progressed substantially, and new areas of concern have emerged. Thus, although this fourth edition covers the same topics as the first three editions, it also focuses on additional areas requiring special attention. All of the chapters have been updated and new cases have been added. New material has been included on:
The third edition’s resource on strategic planning in collaborative settings has been dropped and—because of its importance—has been incorporated in the main text. A new resource section is devoted to developing a livelihood scheme, which links competencies and distinctive competencies directly to organizational aspirations. A livelihood scheme essentially articulates the core logic of a strategic plan (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2007; Eden & Ackermann, 2010). A second new resource section summarizes information on using the Web as part of a strategic planning process.
The fourth edition reflects a continuing major trend in the field by explicitly blending leadership, strategic planning, and ongoing management. People realize that strategic planning is no substitute for leadership and ongoing effective management. Instead, strategic planning comprises a deliberative approach and set of concepts, procedures, and tools that can help leaders, managers, and those with whom they engage to enhance the achievements of their organization (collaboration or community). People also realize that strategic thinking, acting, and learning must go together for strategic planning to serve its function as a deliberative process focused on important organizational issues. Of course, these points were all emphasized in the previous editions, but they are emphasized even more in the fourth edition. The book is therefore as much about strategic management—and indeed strategic governance—as it is about strategic planning. I have kept the original title, however, because of the recognition and following that the first three editions have achieved worldwide.
The new edition also reflects another continuing trend in the field by highlighting the importance of inclusion, analysis and synthesis, and speed as means to increasing organizational and community effectiveness (Bryson, 2003). The idea is to get more people of various kinds and skills involved, increase the sophistication and quality of analysis and synthesis used to inform action, and do it all more quickly than in the past. The challenge, of course, is that doing any two of the three is not so hard, but doing all three together is very hard. For example, there are methods that enable large numbers of stakeholders to be in the same room at the same time working on strategic planning, but informing their efforts with sophisticated analysis and synthesis is time-consuming. Alternatively, sophisticated analyses and syntheses often can be done quickly, but not when they involve a large group of people. One of the challenges the book presents, but does not really solve, is how to be inclusive, analytic, synthetic, and quick all at once. Figuring out how to address that challenge effectively is one of the continuing tasks for the field.
In sum, this edition places a renewed emphasis on the fact that strategic planning is not the same as strategic thinking, acting, learning, or deliberation. What matters most is strategic thinking, acting, and learning in a deliberative context. Strategic planning is useful only if it improves strategic thought, action, and learning; it is not a substitute for them. Strategic planning also does not produce deliberation unless it is designed into the process. The reader also should keep clearly in mind that the formation, or realization, of strategies in practice has a variety of sources (the vision of new leaders, intuition, group learning, innovation, what already works, chance) and strategic planning is only one of them. Wise strategic thought, action, and learning take all of them into account. As Mintzberg (1994, p. 367) notes, “Strategy formation cannot be helped by people blind to the richness of its reality.”
Specifically, this book:
This book is written for two main groups. The first consists of elected and appointed policymakers, managers, and planners in governments, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations who are responsible for and who want to learn more about strategic planning and management. The book will help them understand what strategic planning and management are and how to make use of them in their own organizations and, to a lesser extent, their communities. Thus, the book speaks to city council members, mayors, city managers, administrators, and planners; sheriffs, police chiefs, fire chiefs, and their staffs; school board members, administrators, and staff; county commissioners, administrators, and planners; governors, state cabinet secretaries, administrators, and planners; legislators; chief executive officers, chief administrative officers, chief financial officers, and chief information officers; executive directors, deputy directors, and unit directors; presidents and vice presidents; elected and appointed officials of governments and public agencies; and boards of directors of nonprofit organizations.
The second major audience consists of academics and students of strategic planning and management. For-credit and professional development courses on strategic planning and management are now typically offered in schools of public affairs, public administration, planning, and public policy. This book offers participants in these courses a useful blend of theory and practice.
Others who will find the book interesting are businesspeople and citizens interested in increasing their understanding of how to improve the operations of governments, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations. To a lesser extent, the book is also intended to help these individuals understand and improve their communities.
Part One introduces the reader to the dynamics of strategic planning. Chapter One introduces the concept of strategic planning and why such planning is important for governments, public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and communities. Attention is focused on strategic planning for: (1) public agencies, departments, or major organizational divisions; (2) general purpose governments; (3) nonprofit organizations; (4) a function, such as transportation, health care, or education that bridges organizational and governmental boundaries; (5) interorganizational networks and collaborations; and (6) entire communities, urban or metropolitan areas, regions, or states seen as economic, social, and political entities.
Benefits of strategic planning are emphasized as are the conditions under which strategic planning should not be undertaken. In this chapter I also argue that the practice of public and nonprofit strategic planning will become further institutionalized and improved over time. The reason is that—at its best—strategic planning can accommodate substantive rationality; technical and administrative feasibility; legal, ethical, and moral justifiability; and, of crucial importance, political acceptability. Finally, readers will be introduced to three organizations whose experience with strategic planning will be used throughout the book to illustrate key points. All three are based in Minnesota and are nationally and internationally recognized for their good work. The first is the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, which is responsible for managing, preserving, and enhancing one of the nation’s great municipal park systems. The second is a nonprofit organization—The Loft Literary Center—famed for supporting the artistic development of writers, fostering a writing community, and building a broader audience for literature. The third is an award-winning public, private, and nonprofit collaboration responsible for developing and maintaining a geographic information system in the Twin Cities metropolitan area: MetroGIS.
In Chapter Two, I present my preferred approach to strategic planning and management, which I call the Strategy Change Cycle. This approach has been used effectively by a very large number of governments, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia, and indeed on every continent—except perhaps Antarctica! Since Peking University Press published a Chinese-language version of the third edition of the book, use of the approach is also on the rise in China. (Readers of the third edition will note that the Strategy Change Cycle in the fourth edition differs slightly from the process outlined previously; the changes reflect changes in my own thinking based on the advice of colleagues as well as general developments in the field.) Chapters Three through Ten, which make up Part Two, describe in detail how to apply the approach.
Chapter Three covers the initial agreement, or readiness assessment and “plan for planning,” phase of the strategic planning process. Chapter Four focuses on identification of mandates and the clarification of mission and values. Chapter Five addresses the assessment of an organization’s external and internal environments. Chapter Six discusses strategic issues—what they are, how they can be identified, and how to critique them. Chapter Seven is devoted to the development of effective strategies and plans, along with their review and adoption. Chapter Eight covers the development of the organization’s “vision of success,” that is, what the organization should look like as it fulfills its mission and achieves its full potential. Chapter Nine attends to development of an effective implementation process. Chapter Ten covers reassessment of strategies and the strategic planning process as a prelude to a new round of strategic planning. Chapters Three through Seven thus emphasize the planning aspect of the Strategy Change Cycle, and Chapters Eight through Ten highlight the management aspects. Jointly, the eight chapters together encompass the strategic management process.
Part Three includes two chapters designed to help leaders know what they will need to do to get started with strategic planning and to make it work. Chapter Eleven covers the many leadership roles and responsibilities necessary for the exercise of effective strategic leadership for public and nonprofit organizations. These roles include sponsoring, championing, and facilitating a reasonably deliberative process in such a way that an organization’s situation is clearly understood, wise decisions are made and implemented, residual conflicts are handled well, and the organization is prepared for the next round of strategy change. Chapter Twelve assesses the strategic planning experiences of the three organizations used as examples throughout the text. This chapter also provides guidance on how to begin strategic planning.
Four resource sections are included at the end of the text. Resource A presents an array of stakeholder identification and analysis methods designed to help organize participation, create strategic ideas worth implementing, organize a coalition of support in favor of the ideas, protect the ideas during implementation, and build capacity for ongoing implementation, learning, and change. Resource B presents information on how Web-based tools may be used to support a strategy change cycle. Resource C provides guidance on how to develop a livelihood scheme for an organization that links competencies and distinctive competencies to aspirations; such a scheme can serve as the core logic of a strategic plan. Finally, Resource D provides guidance on how to use action-oriented strategy mapping to identify strategic issues and formulate effective strategies. Other uses for the mapping process are covered as well.
Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations will provide most of the guidance leaders, managers, and planners need to engage in a deliberative strategic planning and management process aimed at making their organizations (collaborations and communities) more effective and responsive to their environments. This book presents a simple yet effective strategic planning and management process designed specifically for public and nonprofit organizations, detailed advice on how to apply the process, and examples of its application. The entire exposition is grounded in the relevant research and literature, so readers will know where the process fits in with prior research and practice and can gain added insight on how to apply the process.
The third edition benefited from having a companion strategic planning workbook to help groups and organizations work through both the conception and nuts and bolts of the strategic planning and management process, with a particular focus on the strategic planning aspects. I have again teamed with Farnum Alston, a highly skilled and experienced consultant, to coauthor a new edition of Creating Your Strategic Plan, Third Edition (2011).
The workbook is designed primarily to help those who are relatively new to strategic planning—along with those who are experienced old hands—to guide themselves through the Strategy Change Cycle. The workbook, however, is clearly not a substitute for the book. Effective strategic planning is an art that involves thoughtful tailoring to specific contexts. Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations provides considerable guidance on how to think about the tailoring process, including many process guidelines, caveats, and case examples. Thus, the book should be read first before the workbook is used, and should be consulted on a regular basis throughout the course of a Strategy Change Cycle.
The fourth edition is accompanied by a second workbook designed to provide more detailed attention to the implementation and management of strategies. I am pleased to team with longtime consultant, colleague, and friend Sharon Roe Anderson, along with Farnum, to coauthor Implementing and Sustaining Your Strategic Plan. Again, the book should be read before the workbook is used.
John M. Bryson
Minneapolis, Minnesota
April 2011