FireFly Facilitation

In my fifteen-plus years of facilitating strategic planning and team development sessions for all types of organizations, I have refined my thinking and my process in these five key areas: 

 Change #1:  Open it Up

It is more important than ever to get as much involvement as possible from the entire organization.  Strategic planning should not be the sole province of the board of directors and a handful of senior staff.  The more you can involve—and I mean truly involve—in the creation of the plan those who will be accountable for actually executing it, the more commitment (as opposed to mere compliance) you will obtain.  People like to see their “fingerprints” on something they are being charged with carrying out. 

Change #2:  Plan for Less, Get More

Do you still use a five to ten year cycle for your planning horizon?  I now recommend that my clients look only two or three years into the future to set their vision.  Change is happening much too quickly for there to be accuracy in planning beyond that.  There isn’t “visibility,” as you might hear the pundits say.  People truly can’t envision a longer future.  Twelve months ago, could you—or anyone—have predicted the world we find ourselves in today?  Set the vision two to three years out; then couple that with a very concrete, practical action plan for the next twelve months. 

Change #3:  Hone on the Range

Instead of talking about a mountain for the vision, I should really call it a mountain range.  The vision for future success is rarely a singular point in the future.  I used to spend quite a bit of time during and after a strategic planning session working with the board or a sub-committee to refine a mission and/or vision statement that would be “suitable for lamination.”  I think it is much more important that everyone in the organization be in agreement directionally and less to be in agreement literally.  I have found that the conversation sparked is more important than the actual statement we developed (which always ended up reading as though it had been created by a committee … because, in fact, it had!).

Change #4:  Begin at the End

I was trained as a strategic planning consultant to begin with a very clear picture of where you are today.  “How can you effectively plan for the future without the hard, cold reality of your current state?” some ask.  I say that most boards and staff are acutely aware of the difficulties of their current state.  My experience has shown that they are better served to think aspirationally first.  Now, in almost every case (the exception being when there are extremely divergent views of the current state), I begin with the end in mind, creating the vision for the future.  Once this picture is clearly in each person’s mind, I assure you a more targeted, accurate assessment will follow.

Change #5:  Swat the SWOT

This may be heresy in some strategic planning circles, but I have switched from the conventional SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to the lesser-known but much more effective Force Field Analysis for assessing the current reality.  I simply facilitate the identification and discussion of those forces working for and against our success in making this vision a reality.  Too often with the SWOT (and I know you have all been there), what should have been a healthy dialog denigrated into unhealthy conflict over which box to put something in. Was it a strength or an opportunity? A weakness or a threat?  Instead, through a deeper level of conversation, we found that in fact the same factor could be both positive and negative, and thus we could focus the majority of our attention on how to address it.

By making these changes to your annual strategic planning session, you will develop a plan that gets the whole organization aiming in the same direction and catapults your results to even higher levels of success!

Vision without execution is hallucination.”   Thomas Edison 

Did you know that one of the reasons the population of fireflies appears to be diminishing is because of ambient light or “light pollution”? There are too many distractions.  All these other bright lights keep fireflies from performing at their best. How similar and true for the people on our own teams, if we don’t have a common vision of success to focus our time, attention, and resources.

Scarcity of resources—both human and financial—demands that we focus our efforts.  If you’re scheduling an annual planning meeting in the coming weeks, you’re probably aware that the value of strategic planning is not only deciding what you will do, but also deciding what you will not do.  When done well, strategic focusing can be one of the most exciting and effective team development tools available to a leader. 

There is a well-known saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”  I have found that the most effective teams are exceptionally clear on two things—where they are going and how they must work together to get there.  In taking hundreds of teams through the strategic focusing process, I have found this metaphor to resonate with people:

The road we are on is our mission.  If this organization ceased to exist, what would the world lose?   

• The mountain in the distance is our vision for success.  Three years into the future, how will we know if we have been successful in living up to our mission?

Mile markers are the key milestones.  How will we measure our progress against the vision and course-correct if needed?

• The guard rails are our guiding principles.  How will we commit to work with each other to reach that mountain?

Next post…the top 5 ways my approach to strategic planning has changed over the last 10 years.

If you’re at all familiar with the world of Winnie the Pooh, then you recognize Eeyore. He’s the dull, gray donkey who drains the life out of everyone around him with his negativity. He shuffles along slowly and lethargically, usually with his head down. Eeyore is such a stubborn pessimist that nothing seems to excite him or to make him smile. Quite literally, he’s a jackass.

Unfortunately, Eeyore-like behavior isn’t uncommon in the office. Joseph Folkman and Jack Zenger list “lack energy and enthusiasm” at the top of their list of Ten Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders¹. Their list doesn’t come from speculation, either. Folkman and Zenger reached their conclusions after methodically researching the 360° feedback of thousands of underperforming leaders.

Bringing Back the Fun

Other than sleeping more and upping caffeine intake, what can be done to enliven a listless leader? I’d like to suggest that, done well, the strategic planning process has potential to infuse life into a wearied leader or team. By forcing everyone to consider what is and is not important, strategic planning focuses energy and enthusiasm on those aspects of business that make the greatest difference and drive the business results.

We move from stress to distress when we can’t connect our activity to meaning. We’re easily overwhelmed by the tasks in front of us when there’s not clear strategy to help us prioritize our work or identify success. Strategic planning cuts through the clutter, and attunes us to the reason we go to work every day. By giving us a sense of purpose, strategic planning helps us to find fulfillment (and even fun!) in the workplace.

¹Folkman, Joseph and Zenger, Jack. “Ten Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders.” Harvard Business Review. June 2009.

At some point, most of us have embarked on a road trip. We have piled into a car with friends or family and driven miles upon miles across the countryside. Singing along to the radio to pass the time, we have cruised long stretches of America’s highways and byways.

For me, there’s no joy in sitting in a vehicle for hours just for the fun of it. I live in Atlanta, and the idea of being cooped up in a car conjures up dreadful flashbacks of being stuck in traffic. However, if I know we’re driving to the Grand Canyon or the Rocky Mountains, then I can endure several hours on the road. Envisioning the endpoint of the road trip creates a shared excitement that makes the drive fun and worthwhile.

Casting an Attractive Vision

Unfortunately, too many employees feel like they’re stuck in a traffic jam rather than journeying to an exciting destination. That’s because their leaders have not given them a compelling vision. As a consequence, instead of going somewhere special, many people feel like they’re just spinning tires and wasting gas.

People want a destination; they don’t just want to be on the road. As a leader, it’s your job to rally excitement around a vision. Within the next month, pose this question to your team:

What excites you about your job?

Examine the answers closely.

Do your teammates articulate enthusiasm about a common vision?

Do they seem authentically passionate about what they do?

The answers will be revealing and will help you to measure how well you’ve been able to articulate a persuasive vision to your team. Regardless of what the responses indicate, it’s a healthy exercise to revisit your vision and to make sure it’s a powerful impetus to motivate your people.

When archers draw a bow, they’re far more accurate when they zero in on the bull’s-eye than when they broadly aim to hit the target.

 The same applies in golf. When players concentrate on landing the ball at a specific spot near the pin, their shots are more precise than when they target the green in general.

What’s true for archery and golf translates to strategic planning as well. The sharper your focus is, then the smaller your margin for error will be when you execute. Put simply, “Aim small; miss small.”

What can you do practically to shrink the scope of your goals so that you’re laser focused?

If everything is important…then nothing is. Identify the three strategic priorities for you team. Don’t get bogged down on specific verbiage, but make sure everyone agrees with and can articulate your strategic priorities.

Knowing what not to do can be just as important as knowing where you’re going. What distractions will tempt you to veer from your strategic priorities? Dialog about them, and list them. Instill in your team that these activities are taboo.

Decide upon metrics. What is unmeasured goes undone. Set your criteria for success. Don’t feel constrained by numbers—qualitative goals have every bit as much merit as quantitative ones. However, make sure your metrics are simple and concrete.

Track performance together. Evaluating results as a team provides instant accountability—no one wants to look bad in front of peers. Also, talking through results helps you to decipher problems or opportunities buried beneath the facts and figures.