The chicken and the egg of questioning and listening.

Strategic questions are key components of strategic planning and program evaluation because they help answer the “So what?” regarding your observations, outcomes, and future directions. 

Asking strategic questions also helps with designing roadmaps for planned shifts in your program activities. So, how do you go about crafting strategic questions? The first step is to use active listening followed by active learning to determine the specific areas where you can add, accelerate, release, or adapt your program to improve its outcomes. 

Active listening means gathering observations and feedback with the program staff and volunteers, the leadership of your organization and community partner(s), your board of directors, program participants, and relevant stakeholders within your organization’s network. The goal of active listening is to better understand how the roles, assets, and gaps—at all levels of the program design—can move your strategy forward. After you’ve completed a period of active listening, review your findings to determine: areas for improvement, gaps in program design and delivery, and any additional information needed for making decisions.

Active learning uses data, observations, experiences, and feedback to identify areas for program improvement and expansion or reduction. This learning takes place during and after the program adjustments you’ll make as a result of active listening. This means reviewing data to determine the patterns, trends, and gaps that influence program outcomes. Determine what you can feasibly do to address these items to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the program. Once you have completed the processes of active listening and active learning, you can then start developing strategic questions. 

The strategic questions should be designed to help the decision-makers determine who, how, and where to focus the program improvements. The strategic questions should align your organizational and program goals with the audiences and stakeholders who deliver and receive the program activities. As you develop the strategic questions to guide shifts in program delivery, remember to keep in mind your available resources and the feasibility of potential improvements as you begin to answer your strategic questions.

After you have implemented the resulting shifts in your program activities, the strategic questioning process starts again to make sure your activities are continuing to generate the expected outcomes over time. As staff retire, audiences grow, and the community changes, so will your program. Continuing to employ active listening and active learning at regular intervals will allow you to ask and answer the strategic questions needed to maintain program effectiveness.

Ready to engage in new kinds of questioning, listening and strategizing? We’d love to hear from you.