Multiplying, before adding: Grounding our strategy in our success
Our clients have an urgent desire to activate change in the world. They are ambitious! They are determined to advance financial well-being, health, food security, philanthropy, justice, and equity. We’re often by their side as they kick off strategic planning, point at the horizon, and ask big questions about how to create change. We love those moments! (Bring on the sticky notes).
At the same time, many of our clients seem busier than ever. Needs are ramping up. Complexity is growing as fast as expectations. We’re in relationships with so many leaders who are carrying “plates” that are full and heavy! In fact, sometimes when we bring ambitious leaders into a room and ask about the future, we’re met with equal parts enthusiasm and knitted brows. They’re wondering how to marry their big goals and with their big reality. For most clients, their workflows, budgets, and people won’t sustain strategic plans only focused on more-more-more, add-add-add thinking.
So, what are organizations to do? Plot an ambitious journey where we add and add and add, only to run out of gas before we reach our destination? Or do we keep baby-stepping into the future because we’re afraid of the resources required for a new journey?
Instead of thinking of adding first, we’re working with clients who are making multiplication the centerpiece of their future plans. Before we add new tactics, initiatives, and strategies, it's wiser to focus on how to multiply the influence of the strengths clients are working with today.
In fact, in our early work in strategic planning, we ask leaders to become intentional at naming what percent of their future success comes from adding/adapting/building upon today’s successes, adding new lines or work, or releasing items ready to sunset.
Making this question explicit at the beginning, helps many people to exhale and regain their excitement.
To move away from an add-add-add planning process we ask questions that help organizations explore questions that focus their existing assets to multiply our impact:
Looking at our data, what are the two or three things that make the greatest difference that should be multiplied?
Within our best programming, what can be adapted to meet bold new goals?
What messages can be accelerated and amplified to meet our metrics faster?
What might happen if we combined, integrated, and synthesized our current silos?
Before long, the future is taking shape. It’s a future grounded in our strengths and our core capacity. Starting with our strengths often leads to conversations about what we should turn our attention away from. As we identify existing strategies and activities that are ready to be streamlined and released, space starts to open up for highly strategic additions.
What, in your organization should be multiplied, to accelerate your mission?
To learn more about an approach to strategic planning that doesn’t leave you weighed down by the future, contact us for a discovery call.