Iteration is Key to Building an Adaptive Strategic Plan

We recently heard about an organization that took three years to develop their strategic plan because they wanted to “get it right.” As appealing as this may be to some to get one’s strategy perfectly correct, as social sector leaders driving social impact every day, we must implement strategy in real time. Information we have available to us will always be imperfect, and social justice leaders are operating under extreme uncertainty. 

Nevertheless, leaders can listen deeply to the people our organizations exist to serve, and ground our work and priorities with the insights they generate. We can also take a lean startup mindset to developing strategy. As strategic planning consultants, to do this, our team collaborates with our clients to iterate constantly throughout our strategic planning process with a community organizing approach — vetting ideas along the way with community members, program participants, board members, staff, and other constituents to test the planning committee’s assumptions, make adjustments, and test again. Once a strategic plan is adopted, the community organizing, testing, measuring, learning, and adjusting cycle continues. 

We incorporate learning at every step of the way and constantly adapt. Building on the diverging and converging process we described here, this lean approach means that we are constantly iterating toward solutions that work best — learning along the way and pivoting as needed.