The Service Game: Episode 7
Strategy is not a dirty word!
While it might seem like the monster under your NFP association’s bed, a clear and simple strategy is the key to growth and freedom. (And it’s really more of a comforting teddy-bear when you get to know it!).
Show Notes
Strategy is not a dirty word!
In episode seven of the Service Game Podcast by onsomble, host Julie Krieger delves into the critical differences between strategy and planning, emphasising the importance of clarity in mission, vision, and values for effective strategic planning. Julie discusses key elements of a strategic plan, including the establishment of high-level goals, defining strategic pillars, and setting measures of success and KPIs. The episode features a case study on the Property Council of Australia's 2022-2025 strategic plan, illustrating best practices in strategic planning. Julie also touches on common pitfalls in the strategic planning process and offers practical advice for smaller organisations to develop and implement robust strategic plans. Throughout the discussion, the importance of board engagement and consultation, as well as the role of facilitators, are highlighted to ensure successful outcomes.
00:00 Introduction to the Service Game Podcast
01:03 Understanding Strategy vs. Planning
02:18 Key Elements of a Strategic Plan
05:21 The Planning Cycle Explained
09:19 Case Study: Property Council of Australia
22:13 Creating a Strategic Plan
32:18 Common Mistakes in Strategic Planning
37:07 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Links:
Property Council of Australia Strategic Plan 2022-25
Show transcript
Welcome to the Service Game Podcast brought to you by onsomble. I'm your host, Julie Krieger. For the past 14 years, I've been helping associations to grow and thrive, establishing systems, writing policies and procedures, implementing membership and sponsorship strategies, Setting up operations, undertaking complete governance restructures, developing strategies, and advising CEOs, presidents, and boards.
I am driven to support the hardworking people who give their time, heart, and soul in the service of their members and in the pursuit of the greater good. Join me as we delve deep into this innovative, creative, values based and mission driven thing. I call the service game. Let's get going with today's episode.
Hello, hello, and welcome to episode seven of the Service Game podcast by Onsomble. where today we are talking about the monster under the bed, strategy.
I'm going to kick off by giving a brief description of what strategy is. because there is some confusion out there around the difference between strategy and planning, you'll typically see definitions of strategy along the lines of, Strategy is a general plan to achieve one or more long term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. And I think that last bit is really important because it actually is what sets it apart from general planning.
So in planning, you're typically talking about the sorts of things that you have under your control. Whereas in strategy, you're really talking about bigger picture goals. And you're not at that point drilling down into how you can achieve them and what you can control in your environment that will mean that you reach the goal or not.
So that's a really fundamental difference between your everyday kind of planning and strategic planning.
Key elements of a strategy start with your mission, vision and values. And if you've been listening along to the podcast, you will have heard me talk on a couple of previous episodes about all of those things and how to define them really clearly within your own association and to get behind them, not just yourself, but your board, your leadership team, your stakeholders of all kinds, because when you do that, and when they're defined really well, as I've said before, that's when you're Decisions become easier.
You can set about achieving your goals In a much more streamlined way, and you're much more likely overall to succeed. So a good strategic plan will have your mission, your vision and your values, or some combination of those sorts of things. Perhaps you call it your purpose or your aims or something else.
They will be priority number one cab off the rank. You will also have in a strategic plan high level goals and typically you would have no more than three to five goals. I think three or five is an optimal number because these are big picture goals. These are not just things that you can tick off a list on a Thursday afternoon.
These are somewhat more abstract goals. And they are ambitious by nature. So you don't want to set about having 20 of them because it will just simply become unachievable. So you've got your mission, vision, values, you've got your goals, and then you will define your pillars of your strategy. And the pillars are really the key channels or thematic areas in which you will take action.
We're going to come back to all of this and I've got a fantastic example of an overall strategic plan that I want to go through with you as we discuss all of these elements in a bit more detail. So we'll come back and, and talk through in a bit more specificity what we actually mean by each of these concepts.
You'll also need in there your measures of success. So we know we will have been successful when, And you might also have KPIs in there, key performance indicators. Now not every strategic plan will have those and you might just stick with your measures of success.
You might even just call them KPIs. There might be a sort of amalgam of all sorts of different ways in which you will understand. Whether or not you've achieved your strategy at the end of the strategy period. But whatever you call them, however you define them, it's really important that you have those measures built into your strategic plan.
Otherwise, there's a lot of activity going on with no actual circle back to see, has it been successful?
Before we jump into that example that I was talking about, a little bit about the planning cycle. And it is a cycle. Step number one, when you come to do any kind of planning, and this is strategic planning, as well as smaller scale, shorter term, more tangible, actionable plans, operational plans, for example.
Step number one is to establish the status currently. Where are we now? What have we done that's worked? What hasn't worked? What measures have we had in place? We're looking backwards at this point, and we're looking to the present. Here we are. What does it look like? Have we achieved the goals we set for ourselves in the previous strategic plan?
Have we, done enough? Have we done the right things or the wrong things? Have we wasted effort and opportunity?
So you need to establish that up front, first and foremost. The next step in a planning cycle is to set your objectives. I have a preference for a three to five year horizon and actually my preference is even for the three year horizon because so much changes so rapidly in the world of business and in the world of not for profit associations in our current environment and it depends of course on your sector and your industry you might have very slow moving changes in legislation for example.
Or in your member demographics or member needs, but conversely, you might be in a sector that's rapidly evolving. If you're in tech or it, for example, you'll be hard pressed to set a goal now that will even take into account. What will be available in three years. So set your objectives.
What do we want to achieve in our designated period of time? This is big picture stuff. This is not business as usual, tactical, operational in any way. It's not specific activity. And again, we'll come back to some real life examples when we go through case study that I've pulled out to go through with you today.
The next step in the planning cycle. is to define the method. So really to drill down into how are you going to take action, what are you going to do and in what areas, by what means are you going to set about trying to achieve your objectives. Then of course the next step is to take that action to actually.
Get moving, do some things and see if they work. Hopefully they do, but they may not. And that's okay as well. Part of strategic planning is accepting that not everything's going to work. As I said, upfront, these are aspirational goals. They should be. So it's really important not to fall into a trap of I want to get everything perfect and I want to make sure that what we've stated in our strategic plan as goals or objectives for the organisation can be achieved. It's not about that. Obviously, there needs to be a foot in reality, but it still needs to be aspirational and The main thing then is to take action and it might be that you need to take a huge amount of action, but that's okay.
Or it might be that you're significantly restricted in what action you can take because of your limited resources, for example, and that's okay too. You write your objectives and your, strategic plan with all of that in mind. And then to close the planning cycle loop, the final. Piece of that puzzle is that you achieve a result.
So we've started with establishing where we are, we've set some objectives, we've defined how we're going to set about achieving those methods, we've undertaken action, and now, we've got a result. And then you start again, the case study I want to look at with you today is the strategic plan 2022 to 2025 of the Property Council of Australia. And I'll preface this by saying that I used to work at the Property Council, so I'm familiar with their processes and their strategic planning and the strategic plans that they develop.
And I have to say they are amongst the best that I have ever seen. in terms of their structure, their digestibility, and the way in which they nail each of the aspects, in my view. So I'm using this one as our case study, and I will put a link to the document in the show notes, so that you can go and have a little look at that at your leisure if you want, to see this example of what I feel It's a really effective strategic plan.
The first element that we mentioned was your mission, vision and values, and they've got that in there. I won't go into more detail on that because we've covered it in a few previous episodes. The next thing then is the goals. Now in this example, and I'm looking at their page two of the document, it's what I call strategy on a page, and it is a great summary.
Of everything that the document contains and the document's quite long. It's 48 pages. Don't worry. We won't go through every detail but we'll just talk through the structure of it they kick off with their vision, which is great cities strong economies Sustainable communities now. I also just want to say that the issue of property development is one that can be polarizing and I'm giving no opinion here on what this organisation is doing. That's not what we're here for. All I'm saying is that their strategic plan is a fabulous example of how to do it well.
So great cities, strong economies, sustainable communities. The next thing they've done is to define five overarching goals. And when I say overarching, these are not your typical smart goals that you will have heard of where they're, specific and measurable and all of those things.
These are the aspirational high level goals. So goal one, as an example, is A better Australia for the industry and our members. It doesn't tell you anything about how that's measured at this point or the way in which they're going to achieve that. It just says this is a goal. We want a better Australia.
Number two, we want a respected industry. Three is a membership powerhouse. Four is enhanced professional lives of our members. And five is dynamic and rewarding place to work. A dynamic and rewarding place to work. So those are the goals. That's what they want to achieve in their three year strategic plan.
Talking about their values really briefly. Their members, leadership, excellence, collaboration, and integrity. not going to go into detail on that because we covered all that off. And those are what I would call typical values of an organisation of this nature. So we don't need to address that. They then start to look at their pillars, their strategic pillars. These are, as I said, the channels through which they will take action. And they have six of them identified. First being powerful advocacy.
Second, thought leadership. Then social impact, project great, our people and strong organisation. So you've got these overarching goals that are really aspirational. And then you've got these channels of activity or thematic areas. In which they then are going to flesh out the detail of their planning.
They're going to talk about their plans in regards to advocacy, thought leadership, social impact projects, their people, and their organisation as an entity. So that's what I mean by the pillars. And I think they're really great examples. You can see in their documents, some of the definitions, for example, under strong organisation, they've written an organisation, which is robust, resilient, and fit for purpose.
Under social impact, they've said a respected industry with a strong social license to operate. So you can start to see that. These are guiding principles as well as their key areas in which they're going to define the activity that will help them achieve their goals. So we've got their mission, vision, values, we've got their goals, we've got their pillars.
Now, the really interesting bit here and the bit that I think they've done particularly well is when they come to talk about their measures of success. There are multiple ways you can work this the way they've done it is just so clear. They've been able to take their five key goals and, In two pages, outline both the measures of success, which will tell them whether or not they've been successful, as well as the key performance indicators.
Now, what's the difference between those two? Let me give you examples as a way to paint that picture. So for example, under goal number one, a better Australia for the industry and our members. Measure of success number one is We are the most influential advocacy body in Australia, and we'll know we will have achieved that when we have achieved our advocacy objectives.
So the KPI is achieve our advocacy objectives. Now all of that is going to flow through from a different plan, a more granular look at what activity they're actually going to undertake. I'll give you another example.
Under a respected industry, one measure of success is government. Stakeholders and the public respect the important economic and social contribution of our industry and they've got a KPI against that of improvement in the industry's measured net favourability levels in community research from 2022 to 2025.
their measure of success is in a nutshell, then respect that there is respect at every level for the work of the industry they represent. And they're going to know that there is that respect. The KPI is that measured favourability levels within their community. Reach certain standards.
Let's do another one because it's, something of a confusing concept. The difference between these measures of success and the KPIs, So under their goal of membership powerhouse, one of their measures of success is highly engaged and productive property council committees,
and they're KPI is high satisfaction with our division councils and member committees. So they're going to know that they're a great membership organisation if their committees are really engaged and they're going to know their committees are really engaged because people are going to report high satisfaction with the work that they're doing.
It's this trickle down effect. We've spoken about that in a number of other videos. Regards as well, and it's equally important here.
They also talk in their membership goal about having highly satisfied members and strong member retention. That's one of their measures of success. They're going to know they've achieved that if, for example, and here's a KPI, measured member satisfaction at Extremely high and very high will be above 70 percent and total dissatisfaction will be less than 3%.
So the KPIs are getting really quite specific.
Under their goal of enhanced professional lives of our members, they've got a measure of success that says strong participation in our events, courses and activities. And the KPI against that is very high satisfaction levels as measured in post activity surveys and annual member surveys. Drilling down.
High level. We want to enhance their professional lives. Then we want them specifically to participate in our events. And then when we measure them and test them against that and survey people, we want very high satisfaction levels reported. That's how we're going to know
under their goal of having a dynamic and rewarding place to work. They want as a measure of success, staff engagement at Australian best practice levels. And then the KPI against that is that measured staff engagement is at 80 percent by 2025. And another. KPI that they've noted here is that they have regrettable turnover at 17 percent per annum.
So I hope that demonstrates the way that this trickles down from the really high level goals through how we're going to know that we've been successful and how we are going to measure whether we were successful or not in really specific granular terms.
The 48 page document that I mentioned before has a number of key components. So at the very outset, they've got, as I said, this strategy on a page that's page two after the cover page, and then obviously your table of contents and so on. But in the first sections, they've got some Introductory notes, what the strategic plan is all about.
Then they've got some of the foundations of their strategic planning process. So their members, who they are, their purpose and their values. Which we've touched on already. Then they move into what they want to achieve by 2025. And they break down into quite a bit of detail and a bit more
text based content. Each of those five overarching goals, the better Australia for the industry and members, respected industry, membership powerhouse, enhanced professional lives of members, dynamic and rewarding place to work.
And then really importantly, by the time we get through to page 11, we're starting to get really detailed.
So if we look at strategy area one, the goal area one, which is powerful advocacy. They give a current situation breakdown, they give a one sentence key outcome that they're looking for, and that is in this instance strengthened ability to influence public policy outcomes in each jurisdiction. And then they break it down even further into five key initiatives that sit under this advocacy framework.
I won't go into all of the detail of them because it gets a bit muddy when you can't actually see it in front of you, but I would encourage you to take the time to download the document and have a read through it. After the initiatives, it then talks about those measures of success. It also then gives a paragraph for each one of these goals around financial implications, and then it gives a one sentence comment about the implementation and timing of the activity that's going to support achieving that particular goal.
In strategy to thought leadership, their key outcome is an enhanced ability to shape the key public policy challenges facing the industry. Again, current situation details for key initiatives in this case, financial implications, measures of success, and the implementation and timing notes. Social impact, their key outcome is a respected industry with a strong social license to operate.
Again, current situation, analysis, five key initiatives, measures of success, financial implications. Implementation and timing and so on it goes through each of the five of their goals and strategic plans for the next three year period or for the three year period of this plan, which was 2022 to 2025.
So with this document, anyone picking it up can have a look page one of the content and know within minutes. What it is actually that this strategy is trying to achieve at a high level and for a lot of your purposes. That's all you need.
And that's a really important tool to have in your toolkit, so that at a glance you can go through it with people in a really high level way that people quickly get a sense of what your organisation is about.
So that's that strategy on a page section. Now I'm not saying it's easy to produce that because to produce that you need to do a whole lot of work that goes behind it. The good news is that that summary page will come together really simply. It will lock into place once you do the rest of the work.
So how do you create a strategic plan?
First thing to note. Is that the development of a strategic plan in a not for profit association context is the responsibility of the board.
The board can and should consult widely in the development of the strategy but ultimately The shaping of that document and of that plan for the society's activity or the association's activity over the next period of time rests with the board. It's one of the key responsibilities of a board of directors.
Consultation, as I said, is really important and that consultation Can be in various formats. So it might be that you conduct a member survey, which then feeds back into your board for their strategy development purposes, it might be that.
You consult with a subsection of your membership. Ideally, in that case, you're getting as broad a cross section as possible, because you want diversity of opinion. You definitely don't want to just seek that consultation from people whose opinions are likely to align with yours or with the board's as a whole.
You want diversity and you have to not be afraid to ask people questions. Even if you think, suspect, are worried that they're not going to give you the answers that you want to hear.
Once you've done that consultation and gathered together a picture of the feedback that you've obtained, then it's time for the board to come together to sit down and to brainstorm at the highest levels. And the first thing you want to think about is those overarching goals. Once you've done your assessments of where you are now, you've taken that snapshot of who we are today, what's worked, what hasn't worked, and all of that history that goes into forming where you're going next, then you need to sit down and think about where do you want to be in X number of years time.
The risk in this part of the process Is that people get bogged down in detail, get stuck in the weeds, and that your strategic planning session ends up discussing detail, like where are we going to have our conference? Should we introduce a new membership tier?
Should we be on social media? I don't know, maybe, yeah, probably. Julie's last episode and it said we should. All of this stuff.
It's actually quite a challenge to bring your directors together and keep everyone focused for the given period of time at that highest level of blue sky thinking, brainstorming and nutting out ideas. That high level, here's what we want to achieve without everyone tripping over the weeds in front of them.
And it might mean that it's a really great idea for your board to invest in having your session facilitated by somebody whose job it is to facilitate strategy development. Thank you. or difficult discussions.
And that's particularly true if your board experiences
personality clashes, for example, power struggles, or any other forms of dispute, aggravation, et cetera. Then I would highly recommend bringing in a professional facilitator to make sure that everyone gets the most out of that day, but most importantly, that your association ends up with a really powerful. Strategic plan at the end of the process.
Once you've then identified those goals, you can go forward to really get clarity on. The channels of activity or your pillars under which you're going to group aspects of specific plans in order to achieve your strategy.
So again, looking back at the property councils pillars, they had powerful advocacy, thought leadership, social impact, project great, our people and strong organisation.
When I've facilitated. Strategic planning sessions with boards. We also spend a lot of time at the very start of that process. Making sure that the mission, vision and values are nailed and also the elevator pitch. You've probably heard people talk about an elevator pitch and thought, well, that's just corporate BS. But actually, it's no more corporate BS than your mission, vision and values are. And you all know how I feel about them. They're really, really important. The elevator pitch is important because if you can't identify or What your organisation does in the space of a 30 second ride from ground level to floor 5 of a building in an elevator with a total stranger, then you've got a problem.
So the elevator pitch is never designed to actually be used. It's designed as a test. And it's a test to see if you and your board and your people actually know what you exist for in a really succinct, clear, no mess, no fuss, easy to explain way that people understand in a really short period of time. So we do spend time doing that as well. And that arms you with a really important tool.
Defining those things up front also stands you in really good stead when you come to develop those high level goals and in that brainstorming process where it is easy to get sidetracked. It is easy to be taken off path, not just in the conversation and in the level of detail that you get absorbed in, but in really understanding What serves your purpose and what doesn't?
There are always so many ideas for what an organisation could set as a goal and what activity it could take on But not all of it's going to be right and all of it that you decide to take on represents an opportunity cost of things that you cannot take on.
The decision about the stuff that you decide not to take on is as important as the decision about the goals that you do want to tackle. Having your mission really clear gives you a lens through which you can assess all the ideas that the brainstorming session throws up. So I always recommend having whiteboards, which is paper, any of these sorts of means by which you can capture everybody's ideas in a mind map, throw the ideas up on the wall kind of way, so that you can then start to group them into thematic areas. You can start to really pull out the ideas that have come up that might be more action based, tactical ideas that might, get onto the plan, but they're not in your strategic plan necessarily. They might be in the operational plan for year one or year three.
So it's good to capture all of that stuff. But you also need to be able to look at it all in one place and stand back and get some good perspective on it to say, well, this is actually going to help us set our goals. This is important and we want to keep that idea, but it's actually not to do with our strategy.
If in your strategic planning session you walk away feeling really clear about your mission, your vision, your values, you've got a great elevator pitch that everyone can get behind. You've got a small number of high level goals, three to five is plenty. And you've identified the pillars within your organisation, the key thematic areas under which you will develop individual plans of action.
You have had a successful day, my friends, and you should all take a big bow, pat yourselves on the back, have a celebration at the end of the day, because you will have deserved it. You will definitely have earned it.
Now, if you do have a facilitator to help you in that process, it's often their job, and I would encourage you to ask for this in your brief, that they go away and write this all up, take all of those notes, and do a lot of that.
Discernment of what you've written down on the day so they can then group them into themes and so on and come back to you with a document that is that, one page strategy on a page and also some of the detail that sits behind it. What it's not going to give you at that point in time is individual operational plans or individual goals.
Necessarily that sit underneath each one of your key goal areas. You might, gosh, if you can achieve that all in one strategy session, you are doing amazing things.
But I would also suggest that to be able to develop the goals that sit within each of those specific goal areas. You'll want to be including people outside of the board. If you're in a position where you have a marketing team, for example, and one of your key goals is that you become known as the go to place for professional development for people in your sector, then you're going to need the input of your marketing team to determine.
What the specific goals might be that sit under that overarching goal.
Your board won't be in a position to flesh out each of those individual plans that sit under each of the key goals. But that is the next step,
and that will be very much informed by the overarching plan that the board develops. And the subsequent plans, will want to be signed off by your board.
If yours is a larger organisation, perhaps that's the role of your leadership team rather than the board. But the strategic plan that's overarching for the whole organisation is absolutely the responsibility of the board.
A little bit on some common mistakes that I see being made in the development of strategic plans. First one, that people don't do it.
It's incredibly common, particularly in the smaller scale associations where resources are generally very limited. That,
The business of running the business just keeps trundling along day in and day out,
and people don't quite get around to sitting down and doing the deep thinking work that it takes to put together a strategic plan.
Now those organisations in most instances will continue to operate and they'll continue to do fine, or continue at least, to perform as they have performed. Thank you very much. In a lot of cases, but is that enough? You're responsible. Remember to the members, because they're the ones that fund your organisation and without them, you've got no organisation and you've certainly got no purpose.
If you don't have members that you're serving, so it is incumbent on you as a board to make sure that you understand what it is they're looking for from your organisation and that you set about setting a strategic plan that aims to serve it to them. So, I would encourage every association, big or small, to set the time aside.
You don't even need to invest a lot of money in coming together face to face. I've seen this done really successfully online via Zoom and with specific consultation processes ahead of the online session where you maybe survey board members. or interview them one on one to get some deeply honest input ahead of coming together.
So it can be done and it can be done without a lot of investment. If you can't afford to have somebody facilitate, that's okay, but then you will need To be really clear on your agenda
and have a really strong chair running that meeting to make sure that you don't get off track and you don't get stuck in the weeds.
Another common mistake is not having that strong facilitation or at least chair process. That enables good discussion at the right level not linking to your mission and vision clearly enough. So coming up with a strategic plan that just doesn't actually address.
How it's going to help you achieve those things. The big one, having a strategic plan, which is actually an operational plan. And that means you're stuck in the weeds. You're too action focused and task focused. It's not high level enough and it's not aspirational enough.
I've seen people also focus. Too much on what they're already doing. There is just no value in a strategic plan that outlines your current activity. By all means, capture that detail and capture it in a great deal of detail so that your processes are standardized and documented and replicable, but it does not make a strategic plan.
On the flip side, another common mistake I see is. That people put together a series of motherhood statements that actually aren't measurable in any way. So they're almost too aspirational or they're too fluffy.
Your strategic plan should be specific to your organisation. And if it's not, if it could be transferred to any other organisation with the change of a couple of words, then you probably need to revisit.
And the final common mistake that I want to highlight is following on from the development of your plan Not reporting and analyzing how you're going in the achievement of your plan along the way. When I think back to the time that I spent at the property council, and that's a big organisation and they're not short on staff and resources of all kinds, but they had invested in a Strategic plan management platform, something like a project management system, but it was actually about their strategy and they spent a lot of time as well working with the teams around the country on making sure that the reporting structures that were put in place for every Important meeting at every level tied back to the strategic plan.
So people weren't just saying, yeah, we've done this and we've done that. And, you know, we've got 10 new members. They were actually saying, we've undertaken this activity and we've achieved this outcome, and that helps us achieving the goals. Strategy three, for example,
and keeping that focus on reporting along the way keeps everybody accountable. I hope that's given you some insight into the strategic planning process. it can be convoluted and it can be somewhat confusing. I definitely would recommend Engaging somebody who can work with you to ensure that you get the most out of the time that you're investing in it, if not actual money in terms of travel and room hire, etc.
It does make a big difference if you get the right person on board to help you with that and to help you make sense of it and to tease out of all the people in the room. The important thoughts that they have, the plans and ideas that they have mulling around in their heads and to ensure that the discussion around that is respectful of everybody's views and differences and time that they're giving to the process, but is just really importantly focused on the outcome.
And the outcome is to develop a high level strategic plan that identifies up to five key goal areas. and your pillars by which the areas of activity or thematic areas through which you're going to achieve those goals. I wish you all the best. And don't forget, if you do need help, you can contact me via thrive at onsomblee.
com. au and I would be more than happy to tell you all about our strategic planning services. If you think that you could use them in your organisation, we'd be delighted to have a chat. Thanks for listening in. Until next time.
Thanks for listening to the Service Game Podcast by Onsomble. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe and write us a quick review. It helps us to reach more people and we really appreciate your support. To access our downloadable resources and tailored support options designed for NFPs, head to onsomble.
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