I was interviewed by the Expert Author Community about Inclusive Strategic Planning for Nonprofits
The Expert Author Community interviewed me about Inclusive Strategic Planning for Nonprofits: A Five-Step Process to Expand Energy, Alignment and Opportunity, and about what changed between leading this work in rooms with boards and leadership teams and writing it down.
I said yes to participating in the interview because the questions are the ones I think about a lot. Why so many strategic plans end up on a shelf. What it cost me to admit that the steps I run on autopilot were the ones readers most wanted spelled out. Why the equity language stays in the book at a moment when that language is under real pressure.
If you lead a nonprofit, sit on a board, fund this sector, or you are a consultant wondering whether your method is a book, there is something in it for you.
Three key ideas from the interview:
The information we run on autopilot is often the information readers most need, which is why about 100 beta readers asked me for the "basic" material I had originally not thought to include.
A strategic plan gets used when the conversations that built it are treated as seriously as the document, because investing time in the process is what creates ownership.
Plans get shelved when the work is performative or when leaders have not made room for the behavioral change a real plan asks for, including pruning work that is no longer on mission.
“That is a ‘curse of knowledge’ problem, and there were others like that throughout the writing process.”
The full interview is on the Expert Author Community website, and it covers Step 0, the shift in tone from "work with The Ross Collective" to "here are the steps you can take", and what I would tell a consultant sitting on twenty years of method.