In 1988, non-profit organizations were required to have a strategic plan in order to get their funding from the province for the next year.  Wayne and I facilitated ToP strategic planning for each of 12 regional non-profit organizations that were connected by a provincial organization in 12 weekends between January and the end of March.  

We facilitated Vision, Obstacles, and Strategies, then asked people to work on an action plan for each strategy.  We started with the simple 3-page Task Force Action Planning workbook that had been developed by ICA earlier (see the overview above or https://ica-associates.ca/news/top-task-force-action-planning/ ) for each strategy.  We discovered that although the process was very grounded, simple and step-by-step, people could find all kinds of ways to escape doing concrete action planning that would get results.

So we adapted the workbook each week as we encountered new ways people were escaping.  First we discovered that people would name a vague “committed to” on the bottom of the first page.  So we changed the words to “measurable accomplishment by ‘date’”    Then we discovered that people would turn to the second page and brainstorm anything they wanted to do, whether or not the actions were related to the accomplishment they had decided on the first page.  So we added a line at the top of the second page to copy the accomplishment where it was visible next to the brainstorm space. On the third page we changed “victory complete” to “measureable accomplishment”, and the “who” to “implementing team” and added “money” and “time” to the “cost” at the bottom of the 3^rd page. 

This story explains why the Action Planning Workbook in the Transformational Strategy course is complex – it is designed so that it makes it very difficult to avoid making grounded, achievable plans with practical actions that the whole team is committed to carrying out.

There are even more complex adaptations that evolved later on with other clients with specific needs: such as adding 3-, 2- and 1-year accomplishments and 6-month milestones; and a table that names each measurable accomplishment, indicators of success for that accomplishment, and its relationship to vision and strategies.

For more on the action planning process to use with strategic planning, ICA Associates has a training course called Transformational Strategy that includes participatory strategic planning and the more detailed action planning. https://ica-associates.ca/courses/transformational-strategy/