If your nonprofit has a strategic plan, it’s at least ten pages long, it’s collecting dust, and it’s taunting you from underneath a newer stack of seemingly more important paperwork on your desk.

Sound about right?

I’m here to tell you that this doesn’t have to be how a strategic plan’s life ends! And when its life begins, there’s no need to wrap it in layers of research, overanalysis, or too many proverbial cooks–all these will yield is a watered-down strategic plan.

After many years in my career of getting teams to think more effectively about strategy for organizations, programs, and special projects, I’ve boiled down successful strategic planning work to three traits: it’s adaptive, flexible, and iterative.

Trait #1 - It’s Adaptive

Organizations often spend lots of time and money on strategic planning. Plans stretch far into the future–often 5 years–and too much time is spent diving into the highest priority initiatives, almost certainly bound to change due to market, competition, or community needs over that period.

Instead, adapt. Stop the deep dive. Plan 2 years, maybe 3. Spend more time on high-level strategic filters that can guide you and less on specific initiatives that can ground you. A strategic filter is decision criteria that can be used to evaluate whether a product, program, or initiative meets the requirements to be advanced. Spend the time you save talking to your consumers, communities, and donors. Build a plan that can adapt to their needs over time with your strategic filters as a guide.

Trait #2 - It’s Flexible

While an adaptive strategy can change, a flexible strategy can change easily. Flexibility is the ability to move quickly, make rapid decisions, and maintain strategic focus. Organizations often establish strategies that handcuff. They may think it’s flexible, but when they try to change course slightly, the org’s culture doesn’t allow for it; too much money was invested in creating the current plan to toss it aside, or the scope is so large that you can’t tell if the strategy is even working.

OK, listen. This is key. Once you have your adaptive strategy set, test the flexibility with a few “what if” scenarios. Read that sentence again. Think 6 months and 1 year out. What challenges do you foresee, and what can you do now to ensure that strategy, team, and organization can be flexible and accept change?

To get to such a flexible space, it’s critical to spend time supporting your team: Both the team developing the strategic priorities and the greater team that will need to be flexible when the time comes. Organizational health is a key to strategic success. A team that trusts each other, listens to each other, and is capable of changing each other, and holding each other accountable. No flexibility comes from inside an organization where trust is not at its core.

Trait #3 - It’s Iterative

My early professional experiences in the for-profit space taught me the importance of iterative strategy and product development. When I started in technology, teams built deliverables based on a long set of features with a delivery date way out into the future. Departments were working in silos and handing off completed work to one another as if their job was done and it was time for the next department to do their piece. The result was chaos and confusion–and a product no customer wanted by the time it was released.

The best way to describe the iterative strategy is “minimal work in progress.” You take a small chunk of a greater idea and complete it in full. The entire cross-departmental team works on it. You get feedback from your customers, community, and donors, and then move on to the next chunk.

Taking this approach costs you nothing. You don’t need to implement an agile process, certify anyone in anything, or introduce expensive tools to guide you. You need to change the way you think. Stop thinking about what you want it to be when it’s done. Stop thinking about how you have no resources to accomplish what you want to do. Get out of the “scarcity mindset” and into the “capacity mindset.”

What can you do that’s attainable with your existing resources and aligns with your strategic priorities? If you do this, you will make progress quickly, be able to adapt readily, and be ready to flex quickly. You’ll talk much more frequently to those who benefit directly from these iterations. Value to consumers and donors will increase. And your ultimate impact will soar.

If you’d like expert guidance in strategic planning, SJC is here to help. Connect with us, and start building your organization a successful strategy.