Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 5th Edition

PART THREEMANAGING THE PROCESS AND GETTING STARTED WITH STRATEGIC PLANNING

Strategic planning is in no way a substitute for leadership. Nor does strategic planning implement itself. It is simply an approach consisting of a set of concepts, procedures, tools, and practices designed to help an organization's (collaboration's or community's) leaders, managers, planners, staff, and other stakeholders to think, act, and learn strategically. People who want to use strategic planning must attend to a wide range of leadership concerns. This section focuses on these needs.

Chapter 11 addresses the leadership roles and tasks in making strategic planning work. These include the need to understand the context; understand the people involved; sponsor and champion the process; foster collective leadership; design and use formal and informal settings for discussion, deliberation, decision making, and conflict management; and put it all together over the course of the Strategy Change Cycle. Many different people will need to lead and follow at different times to accomplish these tasks. When strategic planning does work, it is a collective achievement.

In Chapter 12, the book's final chapter, the three major examples of strategic planning used throughout this book—the City of Minneapolis, Metropolitan Economic Development Association, and International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions—are reviewed and lessons are drawn from their experiences. Then a number of process guidelines are ...