High engagement = high engagement
This may seem very obvious, but engagement is something so many organizations overlook in Strategic Planning in favour of tight timelines and minimal budgets, especially considering growing demands on service delivery in the non-profit arena.
Many Boards and leaders believe they know what the priorities of the organization should be. And while this may be true, the value of a highly engaged process goes beyond the output of a public Strategic Plan. With significant obstacles non-profit organizations face, such as recruiting and retaining skilled staff, board engagement, and developing highly engaged organizations, the value of high engagement in the strategic planning process is only growing.
Why does high engagement equal high engagement?
When we talk about engagement in this context, we mean talking with and involving individuals or groups with an interest, influence, or investment in the impact of a non-profit. This may include employees, clients, partners, government, or other community organizations. And when we mean high, we mean involving each of these groups to the degree appropriate to strategic planning, whether through a survey, one-on-one interview, focus group, or co-creation workshop.
Our clients report many of the following benefits from using highly engaged processes, which is precisely why we recommend it. Here is an abbreviated list of feedback we have had related specifically to highly engaged planning.
Everyone involved in our organization - donors, partners, clients, board members, and staff – is bought in and committed to the plan because they can see their voices reflected.
We addressed issues that have been repeatedly brought up with no conclusion before, and now everyone has a deeper understanding of the issues and is on board with the chosen direction.
We have opened up new communication channels in our organization, whether to and from the leadership team, amongst the leadership team or between teams.
Our team feels stronger and more aligned – we are all heading in the same direction, and everyone is on board.
It feels like our Board has a deeper understanding of our mission and is highly engaged with our success.
We feel we can be more adaptable and flexible as we have created a culture of input and feedback that will help us respond to changing circumstances, like changing government mandates or even a pandemic!
We have strengthened and more engaged partnerships as they can see the importance of their role in the impact of our organizations.
It is because we have experienced these impacts that we encourage all non-profits to adopt highly engaged strategic planning. Our approach at Mutatio is grounded in the belief that meaningful change is best achieved through a collective journey. This philosophy infuses every facet of our work across our spectrum of services to focus on engagement, co-creation, team cohesion, and capacity building.
How do we do this?
We involve people upfront - Our engagement philosophy goes beyond consultation to create environments for meaningful participation, allowing stakeholders at all levels to contribute to the shaping of strategies and the achievement of goals, and we ensure these are reflected upon at each stage to ensure people can see their voices in the pages of the strategic plan.
We co-create with our clients - Co-creation is at the heart of how we work. We are working with the experts in the area (our clients!). By collaborating closely with our clients and stakeholders, we ensure that strategies and solutions are informed by a broad range of insights, resulting in outcomes that truly resonate.
We build in intentional feedback and iteration loops – Our process is based on design thinking and innovation methodologies. We use a double-diamond approach, which offers time and space for feedback and iteration at every stage.
We focus on building capacity - We work in collaborative partnerships and seek to share our best tools and approaches with those we work with, inviting them to adapt and evolve them for your own contexts beyond the life of our work together.
Strategy is ultimately about making hard decisions – as we have said before – “Strategy is not a long planning document; it is a set of interrelated and powerful choices”, Roger Martin. Investing in high engagement will have substantial benefits in the long term, so these decisions should focus on “When we should start?”, “How we can budget for this?”, and “Who we might engage?”, rather than “Should we do engagement?”.
