Raybin — A Marts & Lundy Company

Now is the ideal time for your organization to engage in strategic planning. It is an opportunity for your community to focus on the vision for your future and define the plan for getting there – recognizing that the economic environment is likely to be in flux for a while.

For our clients, strategic planning is an inclusive process. Your Board, staff, donors, and recipients of service all have a voice in identifying your key challenges, determining your future direction, and implementing your action plan. Our model is flexible, taking from 6 to 9 months to complete. Here’s how we work with you:

With a small group of Board members, administrators, and other leaders, we assess your current situation by gathering facts about your history and present situation, identifying major issues, and appraising competition. Often, at this stage, we work with the small leadership group to identify some hypotheses about your future that will be tested with a wider audience.

• Then, in a series of interviews, we engage your larger community in discussing your preferred future. Invariably, many more interesting ideas surface in these conversations.
• We summarize and synthesize our findings, identifying the critical strategic challenges and opportunities and options for addressing them.
• We bring Board and staff together in a retreat, sometimes with outside experts who can illuminate one or more of the major issues or options being considered. The group focuses in on a strategy, sets priorities, and begins to draft a blueprint for change.
• We then help guide groups of staff and Board members as they create detailed workplans to implement each priority strategy. These workplans identify the detailed steps your organization will take to move from where you are toward your preferred future.

As action plans are developed, you begin implementation. And, as you assess the results of your activities, you adjust your plan accordingly. Your leadership continually monitors and evaluates progress, measuring and analyzing results. You revise the plan if key assumptions change or you need to set new priorities or adjust your focus, based on any number of factors, internal and external. Through ongoing assessment, your organization’s strategic planning effort remains dynamic – not a bound document gathering dust on the CEO’s shelf.

This strategic planning process is change you have intentionally chosen. It is an inclusive and transparent process every step of the way.