Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 5th Edition

CHAPTER SEVENFormulating and Adopting Strategies and Plans to Manage the Issues

If you play with the fibers, they suggest possibilities.

—Annie Albers, weaver

And when faced with a choice, remember: our business is with things that really matter.

—Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, 161–180 CE

This chapter will cover Steps 6 and 7, formulating and adopting strategies and plans. Even though the two steps are likely to be closely linked in practice, they should be kept separate in the planning team members' minds. Both concern creating ideas for strategic action and building a winning coalition (see Figure 2.4), but the dynamics that surround each step may be dramatically different, especially when strategies must be adopted by elected or appointed policy boards. Strategy formulation often involves freewheeling creativity and the give-and-take of dialogue and deliberation, whereas formal adoption of strategies and strategic plans can involve political intrigue, tough bargaining, public posturing, and high drama. Remember: Whatever else they are, strategic planning is ultimately a political process and strategic plans are political documents. Strategies should be formulated that can be adopted in a politically acceptable, technically and administratively workable, results-oriented, and legally, ethically, and morally defensible form.

Strategy may be thought of as a pattern of purposes, policies, programs, projects, actions, decisions, or resource allocations that defines what ...