Your To-Do List: why you don't have a strategy.

Despite all the emphasis placed on the importance of having a strategy, the reality behind this central tenet of management faith is more complex. Large numbers of nonprofits cannot be said to have anything approaching a formalized strategy.

So if it is necessary to have a strategy, then how do so many organizations seem to get along without one? And how about those organizations that say they have a strategy but really only have a To-Do List: can they possibly succeed?

To make sense of these apparent paradoxes, let's start with the difference between strategy and work planning. Try this test when evaluating a strategy: If the document is all about who will do what, by what time, and with what resources, it is not a strategy it is a work plan.

A strategy is an overlay on the future describing a desired status. An implementation plan deals with what the entity needs to do to achieve that status. Streetsmart managers know they need both. A strategy without a work plan is just a fond wish. A work plan without a strategy is a To-Do List leading nowhere.

By this measure many organizations have To-Do Lists and not much else. The document they call a strategy will tell them only what to do in the future, not how to shape it. Moreover, this false strategy can lead to unwarranted complacency because if something major changes in the future, the organization's roadmap won't help. Anyway, the To-Do List will probably be obsolete before the next payment is due on the laser printer that printed it. Good strategies can endure because they're not rooted in fast-changing details.

Many nonprofits do have a strategy, it just is not written down. Others don't really have a strategy, on paper or anywhere else. Here are some common ways this happens--and what you can do about it.

IT'S ALL RIGHT UP HERE

The CEO has paid attention to the various shifts and changes in her organization's strategic environment over the years and she knows a vast amount about how the organization works. She has clear ideas about what it should look like in the year 2018, and she has given at least a little thought to how it might arrive at that point. Few shifts in the environment raze her, and she always has a cogent response to opportunities or threats. And everyone in the organization knows that her sound choices and decisions evolve from an internal roadmap to which no one else has access.

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Everyone knows a CEO or executive director like this. In this classic situation you can see the outlines of a well-rtm organization. Does it have a strategy? Yes, if you count the ideas swimming in the CEO's head. Since they're good ideas and they're well put together, that's a positive.

The problem is simple: no one else has a clue what the strategy is. Or, to be more precise, everyone can only listen for her stray clues and watch her decisions if they want to know what the strategy is. This is a stylistic choice on the part of the CEO, and as long as her ideas about the future are sound and her choices effective it will work.

This top-down leadership style concentrates power in a single individual and forces all other executives to watch closely to avoid a strategic misstep. Most real strategists wouldn't recommend it, and it tends to work best in small-to medium-sized organizations. At a larger size organization, it is virtually impossible to avoid involving other executives in the formulation of a formal strategy, no matter how brilliant the CEO.

In the publicly-held company world, a CEO who kept her strategy in her head would be an unemployed CEO. The equivalent pressure on a large and visible nonprofit tends to come from places like funders and community leaders, but it usually leads to the creation of an official strategy at some point.

What the board and senior executives can do. Ask. In ideal strategy situations the strategy is built from the ground up. Here, the only option is to ask the CEO--in many different ways and from different people about the strategy. With enough inference, deduction, and even guessing, a more or less coherent strategy will emerge. Once that happens, document it--fast.

IT'S OBVIOUS, ISN'T IT?.

Other kinds of nonprofits don't have a strategy because the demands from the external world are so clear that they're hard to miss. One can imagine this to be the situation in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It must be painfully obvious that the overall strategy for virtually every nonprofit would be to help rebuild a shattered city in its own special way.

These are special situations. Usually the environment does not send such unambiguous signals. Instead there is ambivalence and uncertainty and hesitation. The advantage in such high-demand situations is that one does not have to worry too much about real strategy. Of course, this presumes that community leadership is reasonably united in its responses. Otherwise, virtuous activity will go nowhere.

What senior executives can do. Read the wall carefully. The handwriting there will spell out a lot of where the community wants to be. The next step is to be sure you have a clear cut mission statement, because that's how you will avoid mission drift.

STRATEGY BY LAUNDRY LIST

Yet another kind of no-strategy situation is perhaps the most insidious of all. We call it the Notes to Self strategy. This is when the CEO acts much like the all-inside-her-head CEO but isn't nearly as effective or visionary. Strategy for this executive is more like a series of yellow sticky Notes to Self.

What senior executives can do. Ask, but have no illusions about what you'll hear. Once again you'll need to infer and elicit what's on those mental yellow stickles. You will probably have limited success in doing so, which means that you'll need to supply the missing parts. That's not necessarily a bad thing because you can shape a good strategy. But do it with a deft touch.

FEDERATED ORGANIZATIONS

Federated organizations present a unique challenge in developing strategy. Many if not most chapters and affiliates of national name-brand federations are relatively small entities. Yet their most valuable asset--their brand name--exists apart from and outside of them. Most small organizations like this fall into one of the no-strategy categories above. And why not? They probably feel they have all they can do to keep up with day-today demands without focusing on some far-away future.

More important, why shouldn't the national organization develop a nationally valid overall strategy for their movement and leave the individual chapters to decide how to implement it in their own communities? This would clear up the current confusion many affiliates feel, reduce the time necessary to create a strategic direction, and allow them to concentrate on the local operations that they're best at anyway. In truth, this won't happen any time soon in most national federations ... but it should.

What local chapters/affiliates can do. Ask for a strategy from your national office.

Thomas A. McLaughlin is a national nonprofit management consultant with Grant Thornton in Boston. He is the author of the book Nonprofit 9rategic Positioning (John Wiley and Sons, 2006). His email address is thomas.mdoughlin@gt.com