Jani’s Journal Issue 26: "Hope is not a Strategy"
7/23/2024
🥳 Welcome to the one-year anniversary issue of Jani's Journal 🥳
As we celebrate this milestone, I reflect on the incredible journey we've shared, filled with insights, growth, and a stronger community. This special edition is dedicated to one of the most critical aspects of nonprofit success: strategy and strategic planning. Inspired by Vince Lombardi's wisdom, "Hope is not a strategy," we recognize the necessity of clear, intentional planning. Too often, nonprofits fall into the trap of chasing grants and donors, full of mission-driven hope, but without a clear strategic direction. This leaves them adrift and unfocused while hope cedes to frustration.
In this issue, we'll explore how to build robust strategic plans that align with your mission, ensure sustainability, and guide your organization towards meaningful, long-term impact. Let's chart a course for success together!
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Jani’s Jackpot!
If you only have time to read one article, Jani’s Jackpot promises the ultimate payout!
🔗 Strategy Needs Creativity 🔗
Taking Prof. Adam Brandenburger’s strategy class at NYU’s Stern School of Business brought the perfect mixture of creativity and structure I needed to make sense of the amorphous concept of strategy. In this Harvard Business Review article, Prof. Brandenburger outlines four main types of strategies that organizations can adopt to foster creativity and innovation:
Contrast: challenging and contradicting conventional wisdom. For example, PayPal disproved a widely held assumption that transferring money online was feasible and safe between banking institutions but not between individuals. The de-institutionalization movement in the 1980s and 90s challenged the conventional wisdom that people with disabilities could not successfully live in communities gave rise to thousands of nonprofits committed to disproving this belief.
Combination: connecting products or services that have traditionally been separate. For example, Apple and Nike's collaboration (“Nike+”) which uses activity tracking technology built into athletic clothing and gear to sync with iPhone apps to track and record workout data like time, distance, heart rate, and calories burned. Combination strategies can yield mutually beneficial partnerships bridging nonprofit and for-profit industries as well as partnerships among mission adjacent nonprofits.
Constraint: turning limitations or liabilities into opportunities. For example, it is said the infamous mechanical shark, JAWS, worked terribly forcing Speilberg to use music and the audience’s imagination to create fear for generations. Nonprofits often experience financial constraints forcing their strategic creativity.
Context (switching): learning from far-flung industries, ideas, or disciplines. For example, the original Netflix DVD mail subscription abandoned traditional Blockbuster video store rentals and their late fees by adopting a gym membership-like model. Nonprofits that adopt project management practices to increase their initiatives’ efficiency and effectiveness apply practices that originated in major construction undertakings in early civilization.
Strategic Thinking
🔗 Porter's Five Forces--The Framework Explained 🔗
By understanding Porter’s Five Forces, nonprofits can adjust their strategies, improve their competitive positions, and enhance their long-term sustainability. While many organizations like to keep a close watch on their competitors, Porter encouraged business leaders to look beyond the actions of their competitors and examine these five forces at work in their wider business environment:
Competitive Rivalry—the number and strength of competitors impacts your ability to stand out in a crowded market. Nonprofits often overcome this force by creating collaborative partnerships with potential competitors that share the same or similar mission.
Supplier Power—the influence suppliers and other partners have over your organization. Nonprofits can mitigate this force by diversifying suppliers and creating partnerships with other nonprofits that share the same suppliers to negotiate better terms.
Buyer Power—the influence of people directly receiving or benefitting from your services, donors, and other stakeholders. This force most commonly results in nonprofits chasing grants with unrealistic program design or without mission alignment. Building strong relationships and ensuring a seat at tables in the assessment and design phase of a program can mitigate this force.
Threat of Substitution—the risk of stakeholders finding alternative or better solutions. Nonprofits should continuously innovate and improve their offerings to stay relevant to their stakeholders and balance this with knowing when to step back, partner, or re-focus efforts where a more effective alternative exists.
Threat of New Entry—how easy it is for new nonprofits to enter your sector. Beyond creating a 501(c)(3), how easy or difficult is it to secure funding, access needed talent, or create required stakeholder engagement for a new nonprofit in your sector? Whether your organization is the existing entity or the potential new entrant, long-established donor loyalty, name recognition, and demonstrated high impact can make it more difficult for a new nonprofit to gain traction.
🔗 Six Ways to Apply the Creative Process to Business 🔗
This Chicago Booth Review article highlights the seemingly unlikely relationship between the arts and business. Integrating these principles can help nonprofits develop strategies that are innovative, adaptable, and purpose-driven, allowing them to navigate challenges and achieve their missions more effectively:
Leveraging the Creative Process. Creative processes foster innovative thinking and problem-solving. Nonprofits can use creative processes to ensure a balance between analyzing problems and brainstorming solutions.
Universal Job Skills. While some specialty skills will not transfer across industries, creative skills such as adaptability, empathy, rigor, and innovation are transferable across domains.
Independence and Autonomy.
“Autonomy is a growing trend, but it does not necessitate distancing yourself from others…we can sometimes be most present and collaborative with others when we license ourselves to act autonomously and entrepreneurially, to make our own decisions about how to act and react…Ultimately, we need to bring into the corporate environment the permission to tap into this kind of independence. It’s part of the role that the qualitative and artistic approach plays in the business world.”
Comfort with Discomfort. Creativity involves exploring the unknown and being open to uncertainty. Embracing uncertainty to discover innovative solutions and improve impact benefits both for-profit and nonprofit organizations.
Flexible Frameworks. Frameworks are critical for communicating ideas, but must be adaptable to different audiences while maintaining message integrity.
Purpose and Creative Thinking. Creative thinking helps find purpose and align it with organizational goals. Nonprofits can use creative processes to foster a sense of purpose among staff and stakeholders, enhancing engagement and mission alignment.
Strategic Planning
🔗 Nonprofit Strategic Planning: Ultimate Guide 🔗
This Bloomerang article is a long read and heavily focused on fundraising, but the sections on types of strategic plans and examples of strategic plans are great references.
The Real-Time Strategic Planning Model, originally described by David LaPiana, is becoming more commonly used even outside of times of crisis because there is recognition that today’s rapid pace of change and innovation requires a more nimble approach to planning than traditional strategic planning models support. The Real Time Strategic Plan focuses on articulating a clear and robust identity, criteria against which to screen any potential strategy under consideration, developing the “big questions” facing the organization, and developing potential strategies that address those big questions, followed by an agile process of testing, implementation, and evaluation.
🔗 Would You Invite Employees to Vote on Strategic Direction? 🔗
Short answer: Yes!
This MIT Sloan Management Review article explores the benefits and challenges of involving employees in strategic planning, using a case study as an example. Despite initial fears of losing control and slowing down the process, engaging employees can lead to successful strategy adoption, practical feasibility, and a sense of ownership.
Nonprofits can significantly benefit from involving their staff in strategic planning. Engaging employees fosters a sense of ownership, enhances the relevance of strategic plans to daily work, and increases the likelihood of successful implementation. This approach can help nonprofits avoid common pitfalls such as grant and donor chasing, which can leave organizations rudderless with respect to their core missions.
Four Keys to Engaging Employees in Strategy Development:
Bring the Human Touch by building trust and understanding within teams as well as communicating in a way that resonates emotionally with employees.
Engage Employees in a Genuine Way by aligning the strategic approach with the organization’s DNA. and making it relevant to employees’ personal goals and daily work.
Plan Slowly for Fast Delivery by taking time to detail implementation plans, including scope, deliverables, and roles. Robust planning mobilizes employees involved in execution with commitment and readiness.
Learn and Adapt by maintaining consistency in strategic choices while allowing for flexibility and learning that recalibrates strategies based on new insights and developments.
🔗 How to Perform a SWOT Analysis 🔗
This primer on SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) provides a great overview of this powerful tool for guiding strategic decisions, making complex problems more manageable, and ensuring comprehensive consideration of internal and external factors. However, a SWOT should be used alongside other planning techniques for a thorough analysis. Nonprofits can use SWOT analysis to guide strategic planning, identify areas for improvement, and capitalize on opportunities to enhance mission effectiveness.
Steps to Conduct a SWOT Analysis:
Determine Your Objective. Define the purpose of the SWOT analysis, such as evaluating a new program or initiative.
Gather Resources. Collect relevant data (internal to the organization and external demographics). Assemble a diverse team to provide insights (see above article on engaging employees).
Compile Ideas. Brainstorm ideas for each SWOT category using internal and external factors.
Refine Findings. Prioritize and refine the list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Develop the Strategy. Use the findings to create a strategic plan that addresses the identified factors.
Avoid These Common Mistakes:
Lacking objectivity and honesty in assessment.
Conducting the analysis in isolation (engage employees and a wide variety of internal and external stakeholders).
Failing to prioritize factors.
Treating SWOT analysis as a one-time exercise.
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