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Welcome to Leading Organizations that Matter, a podcast about leadership and how we find impact, meaning and joy in our work. I'm Ray Spadoni, and today's topic is the Strategic Plan Refresh. I've been working with a number of healthcare and other nonprofit organizations over the past several years on the development of comprehensive strategic plans. Most of them have capitalized on the opportunity by listening to those in the internal and external environments, considering what has shifted over time, and making an honest assessment about threats and opportunities. These processes have been helpful and engaging, but there has been one interesting and, I'd say, new common denominator in the discussions with boards of directors. In the past, boards would listen and contribute and question the proposed plan all the way up to its final acceptance. Then a subset of the board, or maybe sometimes the entire group, would revisit the plan three to five years later, beginning with an assessment phase, answering the question how did we do against the plan? Leaders often provided a presentation or a scorecard of performance of some type, and then the cycle would begin again. But more recently, many of the boards I'm working with are asking a couple of questions. First, how can we more actively stay involved in the process over time? That's because they have a sense that things are shifting more quickly. And then secondly, how will we know how it's going or whether we need to shift? As an organization, I believe that boards have begun to acclimate to a faster pace of change and also to the fact that something unexpected can come at you from the blind side and negatively impact you in ways that you never saw coming. Going back a few years. The Pandemic introduced that concept to all of us, and in a pretty dramatic fashion. As a result, boards are keen on making sure that they have a cleaner and clearer line of sight into the strategic issues, and at intervals shorter than every three to five years. I've been recommending to my clients three strategies. 1. Make sure that your tactics include measurable deliverables. In other words, be clear right up front what the definitions of success will be for your key goals so that there can be a more limited debate over time regarding whether you've sufficiently advanced towards the goal or not. 2. Consistently deploy simple scorecards showing green, yellow, red, status, that sort of thing for each deliverable and which you review with the full board or a subcommittee of the board at least twice a year. In many organizations, more often than that won't make sense at all as there just won't be enough that's changed over time to do it in shorter intervals. For projects that do evolve more quickly, dedicated meeting agendas should include related updates and then third, plan right up front to have a formal refresh at roughly the halfway point between plans, review the initial goals and assess progress. Then, if needed, modify the plan for the balance of the time frame. This should be done formally and in writing. Planning this up front should give the board more confidence that they'll have an opportunity to understand performance against goals, along with the changes that inevitably come and which can impact the plan itself, and then have an opportunity to provide additional input as needed. I do not recommend that the refresh be anything at all nearly as comprehensive as the plan development itself. Rather, it's something that should be done pretty quickly and according to some type of a predefined methodology that is agreed upon up front. Consider adding the strategic plan refresh to your process. If you'd love to discuss this for your organization, please feel free to reach out. Thanks thanks for listening. Leaving a positive review and letting others know about this podcast will help a great deal. My mission is to help empower organizations that matter by supporting those who lead them. I offer coaching, mentoring and consulting services. You can learn more about me and my work@race bodoni.com.