Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 5th Edition

CHAPTER FIVEAssessing the Environment to Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Challenges

You wouldn't think that something as complexly busy as life would be so easy to overlook.

—Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

So it is said that if you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others, but do know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

To respond effectively to changes in their environments, public and nonprofit organizations (collaborations and communities) must understand the external and internal contexts within which they find themselves so that they can develop strategies to link the two in such a way that significant and long-lasting public value is created. The word context comes from the Latin for weave together, and that is exactly what well-done external and internal environmental assessments help organizations do: weave together their understandings and actions in a sensible way so that organizational performance is enhanced. In his classic book on sensemaking, Karl Weick (1995, p. 104) observes, “Sensemaking is about context. Wholes and cues, documents and meanings, figures and ground, periphery and center, all define one another. Sensibleness derives from relationships, not parts.” Sensemaking is needed to weave hindsight, foresight, and insight into sensible ...