Whole-Scale Change

67

Chapter 4Unleashing the Magic:Strategic Direction

Introduction

The traditional approach to strategic planning relegated the planning and deployment to a group of internal or external “experts” who produced lengthy documents that quickly gathered dust on the shelf. Often the strategic plan was a closely guarded secret held by the leaders whose decisions seemed mysterious and arbitrary because no one had seen the whole plan, much less had input to it.

In the new millennium, it is increasingly clear that rapid, responsive, and effective planning and implementing of change has become a necessary organizational survival trait. More than that, organizations and communities need to build the capacity to continuously revamp themselves in response ...