Strategic Planning and Why Flying by the Seat of the Pants Won’t Cut It


“I’m glad someone around here thinks it’s OK to fly by the seat of your pants rather than planning everything out!”

fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants

…Words uttered by one of my esteemed (I use the term loosely) colleagues moments before he poked his head in my office door sporting a big, cheesy grin.

To be fair, we are in the middle of intense strategic planning within our organization. And since my role is responsible for leading the planning  process, I am privileged to endure occasional sarcasm.

Don’t get me wrong – I get where he’s coming from.

I mean, is there really ANYONE who feels genuine excitement (I’m talking – goosebumps, hair standing on end – excitement) at the mention of the word planning? Not many.

Yet, nearly all of us would agree that planning is down-right essential for organizational growth, team growth, even personal growth to occur.

Here we go

This month, we launched a strategic planning process within our organization. And over the next few months we will involve thousands of people within our organization and in the surrounding community in this planning effort.

Since terms can mean very different things depending on one’s experiences, we drafted the some guiding principles to insure that all parties involved in the planning process were heading toward the same goal.

You’ll find that many of these guiding principles can be easily customized and applied to your setting. So I am sharing them with you just as we shared them with our teams recently.

Why do strategic planning?

  1. Guard against stagnation, mission-drift and vision-drift. To keep ministry development consistent with our mission.
  2. Effectively manage resources and opportunities.
  3. Vision-oriented approach to ministry vs. task-oriented approach
  4. Give members opportunities to channel discretionary giving into ministry efforts
  5. Allow time to evaluate and improve the organization

Key Questions

  1. If we are living out our core purpose, what does our organization look like in 3 years? 10 years? 15 years?
  2. What are we passionate about doing? About becoming?
  3. What are we not interested in doing?
  4. If our church was gone tomorrow, what would our community lose? Don’t include what they can get at another church. What void would be left in our community?

Goals of Strategic Planning

  1. Better understand our ministry through the eyes of the leadership, congregation, and community.
  2. Create a 3 year ministry plan (which includes 10-15 year goals) to allow us to commit resources to ministries that are consistent with our core purpose and vision.
  3. Present a thoroughly considered strategic plan at the 2013 Vision Event.

The Final Plan

  1. We are starting fresh to see where the process takes us.
  2. It will be based on our core purpose and vision.
  3. It will consider the passion of our leaders and congregation and the needs of our local community, culture, and the world.
  4. It will address current areas of ministry that need to be strengthened.
  5. It will result in ministry initiatives for each year of the planning horizon.
  6. It will allocate human and financial resources to priority initiatives.

 What strategic planning won’t do

  1. Dictate all of the details. We’ll use terms like “Consider launching…” or “Improve the effectiveness of…”.
  2. Eliminate short-term planning
  3. Eliminate the need for staff meetings and retreats.
  4. Foresee every possibility.

 The Process

  1. Core Purpose – Who are we?
  2. Vision – What do we want to Belong to? What are we Becoming? What will we Build?
  3. Surveys – staff, leaders, church, community
  4. Analysis – look for themes within the survey data, demographics, etc.
  5. Ministry Initiatives
  6. Finalize plan
  7. Distribute plan

As we work through the process, I’ll write more about what we’re doing and provide templates and resources that you’ll be able to use with your team.

Question: Have you participated in a strategic planning process with your team? What would you clarify for your team up front? Leave your ideas in the comments – we’d love to learn from you.

January 18, 2013 in Organizational Growth, Team Growth with 9 Comments

About Michael Nichols: I am the author of Creating Your Business Vision and Executive Pastor at FBC Midlothian in the Dallas area. I have spent my career facilitating personal and organizational growth. I also write, speak, coach, and consult. I am married and have one daughter and one son.

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  • http://sparkvoice.wordpress.com/ DS

    I would clarify the length of the process, the commitment to the process, & what the desired outcome is. I believe that culture has an enormous influence on it’s success or failure so having key influencers on board is huge.

  • http://www.mondayisgood.com/ Tom Dixon

    What I’ve found in the corporate world is that leadership doesn’t seem to stick with any one strategy long enough to see the long term result. I think changes are done in good faith, but then it becomes just the “next thing” for the worker bees and can easily get ignored. How do you make sure everyone in your organization both understands and executes against the strategy – all the way down to the poor intern working in the mail-room?

    • http://www.michaelnichols.org/about Michael Nichols

      It starts with developing the strategy – everyone has to have the opportunity to be involved from the beginning. It’s a slow process – our current planning initiative will take 6-8 months. But the outcomes are worth it.

      We’re starting fresh – revisiting Core Purpose, Core Values, Vision, etc. We selected a Core Leadership team – 14 individuals from all levels of our organization. Then we selected a Planning Team – 30 people from all levels. And we’re letting them guide the process.

      Most of our team members are volunteer and all of our meetings are outside of regular work hours – that has its own challenges. But our teams have already bought in to the process. As a result, we’ll be able to go deeper and broader with the process. And we’ll have greater responsibility and accountability when it comes time to implement.

      Feel free to email me anytime – we can connect by phone too. I’d love to serve you.

      • http://www.mondayisgood.com/ Tom Dixon

        Thanks for the detailed response, appreciate the opportunity to connect with you.  I am left wondering if my organization would have the patience for such a long process?  I think you answered the core question – you get everyone’s buy in because you involve them from the start.  Great stuff – can’t imagine doing it with volunteers!

    • http://sparkvoice.wordpress.com/ DS

      They’ve become known as “flavor of the month” in various organizations.

  • doughibbard

    This is one of my challenges here: planning. Both strategic and short-term. Too much needs done, and it is difficult at times to push uphill with my volunteers about it. So, I have a plan of which issues will be dealt with which year—my hope is to get this dealt with well within the next half-decade :)

    • http://www.michaelnichols.org/about Michael Nichols

      I agree – I think it’s a challenge for all of us. I recommend setting a hard date to start strategic planning. You’ll be surprised how much margin time you find once you start the planning process with your team.
      It’s tough to take that critical step – setting a date – because we’re so busy. It doesn’t seem like there will be time to do it effectively.
      The key is to make some progress each month – no matter how small. And celebrate the progress!
      Let me know how you’re doing!

  • http://twitter.com/CarolinaRains Julie Rains

    I have been leading the strategic planning process at my church for a couple of years, as a layperson. I have had to clarify while I learned! First let me say that your headline is spot-on: there is a difference between strategic planning and flying by the seat of your pants. Those quick solutions, the ones that come to mind easily, can be good ones…but not always. Many people do not understand the difference — they arrive at meetings hoping to deal with decades-old issues without deep thought and concerted effort. Strategic planning requires a different approach, and that can be foreign to many people and difficult for most.

    A couple of other areas of clarification: 1) Planning gives you an opportunity to understand other people’s points of view, not just advocate for yours; 2) Surveys allow you to take the pulse of congregation and community, understand the content of the conversations, and as you mention, reveal themes. They don’t tell you what to do based on what people want.

    Thanks for your post today — it reminded me of a key point that I needed to include in an email in advance of a meeting in a few weeks (an email written a couple of days ago but saved in draft pending review and inspiration!)

    • http://www.michaelnichols.org/about Michael Nichols

      Very true, Julie. Many organizations attempt strategic planning in a weekend workshop – this doesn’t work long-term. Sustained missional growth requires going deeper and broader than is possible in a 2 day workshop. Thanks for connecting!