Why Your Strategic Plan Needs Data
Would you plan a vacation without figuring out who is going? What everyone wants to do? How long you will be gone? Your budget?
Of course not. You could not plan a very successful vacation without those relatively simple and obvious data points, yet I have seen many organizations who try to develop a strategic plan without collecting a lick of data or reviewing the data they have. Instead, they rely on the instinct of their board and staff members. However, board and staff members come with their own biases and perspectives that often do not match that of other constituents. They also tend to report “top of mind” information or what they have recently encountered.
Years ago, I facilitated a strategic planning process in which a staff member – with a prominent position that should have enabled her to know the data better – insisted that a certain gap in their services existed. When we looked at the objective data collected from constituents, this “problem” actually ranked as an organizational strength. She had relied on one person’s recent complaint and assumed that everyone had the same issues. They did not.
So, how should you collect these data? I have three preferred methods, used collectively or individually.
Focus groups. Focus groups gather a small group of constituents – usually 10-15 people – to answer a series of open-ended questions about your organization. Questions usually revolve around themes of what the organization does well, how it can improve, and what needs they have that your organization could help them meet. If you have a specific project in mind, you can also ask them their perceptions of it. Otherwise, the questions should stay neutral to gather as much objective insight from your constituents as possible.
Survey. Focus groups do a great job of gathering open-ended data and perspectives from a relatively small number of people. However, they do not let you understand how many people share those perspectives. Does only one person have these beliefs or do most people? To quantify or validate the findings from the focus groups, I like to create a survey to send to a larger cross-section of constituents. Good surveys have a mix of closed-ended and open-ended questions so that you can quantify the extent of any given perception or ask people to rank or rate the quality of different aspects of the organization.
Organizational data. Your organization has great data that can augment data collected from constituents. Depending on the issues facing your organization, trend data for finances, donations, client usage, and staff characteristics can help inform your plan as well.
If you go into a strategic planning process armed with data that tells you what your constituents like and do not like about your services, what services get used and which do not, and what future needs your constituents perceive, you can develop a more realistic plan that can help your organization move forward to its next level of excellence.
