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The Two Sides of Strategic Planning

I've been talking to a lot of ministry leaders this past year about strategic planning, and I'm troubled by what I hear. Everybody agrees that strategic planning is important—even an absolute necessity—for nonprofit organizations. But not many are doing it. Sure, they might hold a retreat and talk about problems the organization is facing or set some goals. But they tend to quickly revert to operational planning or budgeting for the next fiscal year. Essentially, their strategic planning time doesn't produce any new strategy.

This condition isn't caused by a lack of passion for the future of their ministry. It isn't because leaders dislike planning or don't want to be strategic in their use of resources or don't care about accomplishing their mission. In many cases, it's simply caused by lack of time. We want to plan, but life is moving so fast and becoming so chaotic that it's becoming harder and harder to find the time to plan. So planning ends up being driven by the budget. ...

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