Third Edition
Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Creating Your Strategic Plan, Third Edition. Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 978-0-470-40535-2 (paper)
ISBN: 978-1-118-06725-3 (ebk)
STRATEGIC PLANNING IS a way of life for the majority of public and nonprofit organizations. We are pleased to have played a role in bringing about that change through our publications and through the more than 500 major strategic planning processes we have helped facilitate since the publication of the first edition of this workbook in 1996 as a companion to the revised edition of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations (Bryson, 1995). This third edition of the workbook accompanies the fourth edition of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations (Bryson, 2011). The workbook has a new name—Creating Your Strategic Plan (rather than Creating and Implementing Your Strategic Plan)—because it is joined for the first time by a second workbook—Implementing and Sustaining Your Strategic Plan—that provides far more detailed information and worksheets about how to approach the challenge of implementing a strategic plan (see Bryson, Anderson, & Alston, 2011).
The basic approach we outlined in the first edition has proven as useful today as when we first proposed it. However, the field has changed as the world of theory and practice has evolved. This third edition embodies much of what we have learned since publication of the last edition.
Why has strategic planning become standard practice for most public and nonprofit organizations? There are a variety of reasons. First, many public organizations are now required by law to undertake strategic planning, and many nonprofit organizations are required to do so by their funders. Second, strategic planning is now seen as a mark of good professional practice, so organizations pursue it to enhance their legitimacy. And many organizations simply copy what everyone else is doing. But we believe the most important reason strategic planning is so widely used is that public and nonprofit leaders find that it can help them to think, act, and learn strategically—precisely what is required for these leaders to grasp the challenges their organizations face, figure out what to do about them, and follow through with effective implementation. In short, strategic planning at its best fosters strategic thinking, acting, and learning and is a crucial component of change management.
The challenges are all too familiar. Public and nonprofit organizations and communities are confronted with a bewildering array of difficult situations requiring an effective response, including the following:
Leaders and managers of organizations and communities must think, act, and learn strategically, now and in the future, if they are to meet their legal, ethical, professional, organizational, community, and public service obligations successfully. Taking a strategic planning approach is a must if these organizations and communities are to compete, survive, and prosper—and if real public value is to be created and the common good is to be served.
This workbook addresses key issues in the design of an overall strategic planning process, from the initial stages through plan preparation, review, and subsequent implementation and evaluation. However, it only touches on the major elements of these processes. We therefore recommend that this workbook be used in tandem with the fourth edition of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations (Bryson, 2011), which places this workbook’s and the accompanying implementation workbook’s guidance and worksheets in a broader context, provides information on other significant issues, reviews relevant details, and alerts users to important caveats.
Furthermore, this workbook is not a substitute for the internal or external professional strategic planning consultation and facilitation services often needed during a strategic planning effort. The process of strategic planning is both important enough and difficult enough that having support from someone who has “been there and done that”—and who has thought wisely and reflectively about the process—may make the difference between a successful, high-value effort and one that stalls or fails or that even though completed does not produce high-value results.
This workbook is intended mostly for leaders, managers, planners, employees, and other stakeholders of public and nonprofit organizations and communities. We have found, however, that many people in private sector organizations have used the previous editions of this workbook, too, either because their organizations have a direct business relationship with public or nonprofit organizations or because they find the approach generally applicable to organizational strategic planning. We have also discovered that a surprising number of people use this approach to do personal strategic planning, that is, for themselves as individuals. The audience for the third edition of this workbook therefore includes
The worksheets generally assume that the focus of the strategic planning effort is an organization. Please tailor and modify them appropriately if your focus is different.
The workbook makes strategic planning easier in several ways, including the following:
This workbook is divided into two sections:
The workbook ends with supportive resources, a glossary, and a bibliography.
JOHN WOULD LIKE TO THANK the people with whom he has worked over the years on various strategic planning projects. He has learned a great deal from them and appreciates their willingness to help him understand more about strategic planning and how to make it more effective. He would also like to thank all the people who have taken his classes and workshops in strategic planning. And he is especially appreciative of Farnum Alston’s contributions and willingness to bring his insights, experience, and talents to bear on this workbook project. He is a master strategic planning practitioner and theorist. Farnum has field-tested the contents of this workbook in an extraordinary number of settings. Finally, John would like to thank Barbara Crosby, for her special insights, constant encouragement, and love throughout the process of developing this third edition, and the other members of his delightfully expanding family, which now includes a grandchild. They provide more than enough inspiration to work for a better future for us all.
FARNUM WOULD FIRST LIKE TO THANK his family—his wife, Kirsten, and his daughter, Greer, for their love and support and their giving up of family time to allow him to continue to collaborate with John on this third edition of this workbook. He would next like to thank the many colleagues, clients, and friends who, over thirty-five years and now over 400 major organizational change management and strategic planning projects, have been the real-life inspiration for his work and his contribution to this workbook. Their hands-on involvement in public, private, and nonprofit organizations and their belief in better governance, quality leadership, integrity, honesty, and the need to add real value have been invaluable to him and to his contribution to this book. The colleagues include (among many) Steve Born, Bud Jordahl, Dale Stanway, William Bechtel, and Dave Schwartz. Special thanks go again to John Bryson. After thirty-five years of friendship we have come together for the third time to write this workbook. John’s contributions to and insights about improving public and private organizations and their leadership and good governance have helped us all. On a final note, Farnum would like to extend special additional recognition to Bud (Harold) Jordahl Jr., an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin. Bud, who passed away at age eighty-three in May 2010, was a public policy legend in the environmental movement. He was also a key architect and a gentle guide in the careers of many, including Farnum’s own. He is missed.
April 2011
John M. Bryson
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Farnum K. Alston
Bozeman, Montana
John M. Bryson is McKnight Presidential Professor of Planning and Public Affairs in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He works in the areas of leadership, strategic management, and the design of organizational and community change processes. He has consulted with a wide range of government, nonprofit, and business organizations in North America and Europe. He wrote the best-selling and award-winning Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, now in its fourth edition (2011), and cowrote, with Barbara C. Crosby, the award-winning Leadership for the Common Good, second edition (2005). He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Bryson has received many awards for his work, including four best book awards, three best article awards, the General Electric Award for Outstanding Research in Strategic Planning from the Academy of Management, and the Distinguished Research Award and the Charles H. Levine Memorial Award for Excellence in Public Administration given jointly by the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration and the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). In 2011 he received the Dwight Waldo Award from ASPA. The award honors persons who have made “outstanding contributions to the professional literature of public administration over an extended scholarly career of at least 25 years.” He serves on the editorial boards of the American Review of Public Administration, International Public Management Journal, Public Management Review, International Review of Public Administration, and Journal of Public Affairs Education.
He earned his undergraduate degree, in economics, from Cornell University, and he holds MS and PhD degrees in urban and regional planning and an MA degree in public policy and administration, all from the University of Wisconsin.
Farnum K. Alston is the founder of The Crescent Company—750 Black Bear Road, Bozeman, Montana 59718; phone (406) 600-6622; e-mail: f.alston@comcast.net. He established this company in 2000 to assist public, for-profit, and nonprofit organizations and also individuals with change management and strategic planning projects. Alston has, over the last forty years, worked on over 400 major change management and strategic planning projects for public, private, and nonprofit organizations. He has been a managing director for The International Center for Economic Growth and has served on many boards and committees of public and nonprofit organizations, including the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) award committee, the Baldrige National Awards evaluation committee, the Henry’s Fork Foundation board (an environmental protection organization), the Going To The Sun Rally board (a nonprofit that raises money for good causes), and as an appointed member of several school district boards. He is also a recipient of the U.S. Department of Commerce Outstanding Service Award.
Alston has had extensive government experience at the federal, state, regional, and local levels. He served as (in chronological order) environmental adviser to Governor Patrick Lucey of Wisconsin, staff director of the federal Upper Great Lakes Regional Commission, director of the Upper Great Lakes Regional Commission (appointed by Presidents Ford and Carter), deputy chief administrative officer for the City and County of San Francisco, and deputy mayor and budget director for Dianne Feinstein when she was mayor of San Francisco.
Alston has also had extensive business experience, including being involved with over 200 major government and business consulting projects while working with Woodward Clyde Consultants; being a partner at KPMG Peat Marwick, where he led that organization’s government and higher education sector practices; and being the founder and owner of The Resources Company and The Crescent Company.
Alston did his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, in economics and his postgraduate work at Montana State University and then at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in public policy.