Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 5th Edition

CHAPTER ELEVENLeadership Roles in Making Strategic Planning Work

BARBARA C. CROSBY and JOHN M. BRYSON

Leaders perform political, spiritual, and intellectual functions as well as managerial and group-maintenance tasks. These range from providing vision and strategies for change, to mobilizing a constituency, to facilitating group decisions or creating coalitions.

—Charlotte Bunch, Passionate Politics

The world is not changing if you don't shoulder the burden of responsibility.

—Ai Weiwei, Chinese artist and social activist

As has been pointed out before, strategic planning is not a substitute for effective leadership. There is no substitute for effective leadership (and committed followership) when it comes to planning and implementation. Instead, strategic planning is simply a set of concepts, procedures, and tools designed to help executives, managers, and others to think, act, and learn strategically on behalf of their organizations and their organizations' stakeholders. At its best, strategic planning and strategic management help leaders pursue virtuous ends in order to create significant public value and advance the common good. At its worst, strategic planning drives out strategic thought, action, and learning; makes jobs more difficult; and keeps organizations from meeting their mandates, fulfilling their missions, and creating public value. Whether strategic planning helps or hurts depends on how formal and informal leaders and followers at all organizational levels ...