80: Brooke Richie-Babbage on Strategic Planning
Brooke Richie-Babbage is a nonprofit growth strategist and social impact advisor. She is the founder and CEO of Bending Arc, a social impact strategy firm that supports the launch and sustainable growth of high-impact nonprofits, and the host of Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast. Brooke has spent the past 23 years working as a lawyer, nonprofit leader, and social entrepreneur. She has founded and led multiple successful organizations and initiatives, including the Resilience Advocacy Project (RAP), where she served as founder and Executive Director for 11 years, the Sterling Network NYC and the NetLab Initiative, both initiatives of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, where she served as Director of Network Initiatives for six years, and the Social Justice Accelerator (SJA), an initiative of the Urban Justice Center, where she has served as SJA Director since 2019.
She has been a visiting lecturer and featured speaker at numerous graduate and law schools, including Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and Fordham. She has presented papers at conferences around the country on social entrepreneurship, non-profit leadership, and community lawyering, and co-produced and hosted the City Watch radio show on WBAI. She served as Secretary and then Chair of the Social Welfare Committee of the NYC Bar Association, as well as the Co-Chair of the Policy Action Committee of the citywide Welfare Reform Network, and an appointed member of both the Governor’s statewide Child Care Policy Working Group and Mayor Bloomberg’s Adolescent Fatherhood Advisory Council. She has served as a member or officer of several non-profit boards, including as Board Chair for the Community Resource Exchange, and most recently as an officer for the boards of the Urban Justice Center and Nonprofit New York.
Brooke received both her JD and MPP from Harvard and her BA from Yale. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.
Quotes:
I think that there are two versions of your strategic plan. The internal serves as a roadmap for you and your team. It serves as a foundation for work planning, annual planning, next steps, and funding. Then there’s an external version. That goes on your website. That is your vision. That is ‘where are you taking this organization in the long term?’
There is no one way to do strategic planning. Release yourself from the tyranny of what strat planning is, and start with the question, ‘what is the organizational set of goals?’ The process can be whatever you want it to be.
Strategic planning is not a pre-structured thing. It is a set of conversations that ideally help you determine where you want to go and what you want your adventure to feel like for all the interested parties.
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Transcript:
Leaving. Well, listeners, I'm excited about this upcoming episode and conversation that you're gonna hear between me and Brooke Richi Babbage, she's an expert in the realm of nonprofit growth and also leadership impact. We talked today about strategic planning and what you might get wrong when you think about strap plans, and also what you might get right when you think about doing things differently.
I'm excited for you to hear this conversation, and as always, I would love to hear your thoughts on what you learned from this conversation by email at naomi@eighthandhome.com. Enjoy. Brooke Ritchi. Babbage is a nonprofit growth strategist and social impact advisor. She's the founder and CEO of Bending Arc, a social impact strategy firm that supports the launch and sustainable growth of high impact nonprofits.
She's also the host of nonprofit Mastermind podcast and has spent the past 23 years working as a lawyer, nonprofit leader, and social entrepreneur. She's founded and led multiple successful organizations and initiatives, including the Resilience Advocacy Project, the Sterling Network, NYC, and the Net Lab Initiative, both initiatives of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.
I. She is been a visiting lecturer and featured speaker at numerous graduate and law schools, including Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and Fordham. She's presented papers at conferences around the country on many topics and has also co-produced and hosted the City Watch radio show on WBAI. Brooke received both her JD and MPP from Harvard and her BA from Yale.
She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons. I'm so excited about this conversation because I have a feeling we're going to get real and be pretty frank and candid on the topic of strategic planning. So, Brooke, I, I'm excited to have you on because you emailed, uh, your listserv a while back and you, you said something to the effect of your strap plan.
Uh, we'll, we'll just call it strap plan, not strategic planning. Mm-hmm. Your strap plan may not be as effective as you think it is, and so I was like, Ugh. We have got to have this conversation. I'm curious if you would take us maybe back to that email or just your general thoughts around strap planning and their effectiveness to get us started.
Absolutely. I'm thrilled to be here and this is a really important topic, particularly now, um, as we navigate, as nonprofits navigate a lot of external uncertainty. I think that there are really three. We won't call them mistakes, but myths that organizations have about strap plans. One, and this gets in the way a lot, is that they have to take a year, they have to involve 18 different focus groups and all of the stakeholders in all of the ways.
And I think that that can be a barrier to organizations even starting a, a strap plan. I think the second myth is. That your Strat plan should be all things to all people. And so you're gonna have this one magical document that as soon as you show it to a funder or a donor or a board member or your leadership team, they will take a look at the document and think, we got it.
We know what we're doing right? That there's one version of your strap plan, and then I. The last one is, uh, a bit more amorphous, but this permeates almost every Strat plan conversation I have with organizations that Strat planning is some combination of tedious. Complex, right? And either of those things alone is enough of a reason for boards in particular, not to wanna do it or to overspend, right?
Because they think it's gonna be tedious or or complex. But when you combine them, what you wind up with is a process that nobody fully engages in because they are anticipating it being tedious. Nobody really buys into the final plan because it, they think it's going to be complex and you wind up with a plan that nobody uses because the process has not been one that people have been fully engaged in.
So those, I see those, some combination of those three very often. I. I love those three myths. And I also, I would love to dig in a little bit to even just kind of the precedent of, of strap plans, because you mentioned donors and funders. We, we think that donors and funders are gonna be so excited to see the strap plan and a lot of times grant applications require a yes or a no.
Do you have a strap plan? And so I think we, it's this circle of, well, we need a strap plan, so we should go do a strap plan. I also think this is a, maybe a little sassy comment, but I think that we have created in the consulting world. A bucket of work product called the strap plan process. We overcharge for it, like you said.
And then I don't know a lot of consultants that actually care if the strap plan functions for the organization. And so we've got like this circular pattern. The other thing I'm also wondering if you have an opinion on is, uh, the idea that they should be like a three to five year strap plan. I think the minute they're finalized in quotes, it's almost irrelevant.
Like it needs to be checked in with Oh, interesting. Held and touched and I'm almost, so I a year. So I, I have pretty strong feelings about both of those things. Yeah. So the, the, I'll speak to the time horizon in a moment, but to start with this idea of, you know, the funders ask for a plan so they feel like they have to rush into a plan.
I think actually that the idea of a single strap plan is another myth, right? I don't think that there is just a document that you do all the work and you come up with a document and it's, it's your plan. Um, I think that. That image in organizational leaders' minds often boxes them into either a document that serves so many masters that it serves none, or a document that's gonna sit in some Google Drive somewhere.
I think that there are, for our purposes, let's say two versions of your Strat plan, there's an internal version which. Should serve as a roadmap for you and your team. Right? This is our North star. These are our priorities. This is the cathedral we are building together over whatever the time horizon is, which I'll get to in a moment, and that then serves as a foundation for work planning, for annual planning for notching, down to OKRs and next steps and funding and blah, blah, blah.
Okay. Then I think there's a version of your strategic plan that is an external version. That's the pretty goes on your website. That is, I think when done effectively, your vision. Where are you taking this organization in the long term? Your priorities for the next time horizon, right? To get to that vision for the next leg of our journey, we're gonna go deep in these areas because it tells stakeholders, funders, donors.
When you partner with us, when you invest in our work, this is where we are allocating resources, right? That's the purpose of the external plan. It is not for work planning. It is going to be bigger picture and regenerative, and that's okay. So right off the bat, the work goes into the strap planning, but I think you have these different versions of your plan that take the content and use in different ways.
Now speaking to the time horizon, I actually, I'm a really big advocate for a three-year plan. Um, and I'm very precise about three years, and I'll tell you why I think five years is too long. It sounds like a nice number. Everybody thinks in five and 10 years having run an organization, and I know this is something that probably resonates with you.
Five years is a lifetime, right? Like 2025. Brooke has very little insight into 2030, Brooke. Or the world. So the idea of crafting a roadmap for five years of an organization's life, I just think it sets that organization up for failure, right? They're gonna get about two or three years in and they're gonna think, oh, wait a minute.
These goals don't I. Anymore, and then they think they've done something wrong, right? They think the plan was bad. No, actually, I think a natural time horizon is about two or three years, right? About two years in, you start revisiting to your point, you go back to the plan and you say, what's changed external and internally.
The one year plan, I think, should be how you operationalize. Three year journey, right? If this is where, if this is what we're committing to over the next two to three years, three at the outset, right at the longest, what's the first set of steps, right? What does the next year look like? What is the money we're gonna need with the team we're gonna need, et cetera.
So I think there's a one year plan that is. Sort of notched down from the three year plan, but I, I have landed on three as the magic number. I love it. Well, and you, you a little while ago said OKRs, and I just wanted to name that those are objective and objectives and key results. And a lot of times folks also will use KPI, which is key performance indicators.
And I think that's a lot of what I see missing in the nonprofit sector is the operationalization of the plant, whatever it is. Um, and so thinking about. What are we trying to get to? Who's responsible to do this? How will we know if we're successful? And also something that I see not happen very often is how do we decide?
How do we know if we're off the rails or we need to check back in with our community? Like some of the things I just see oftentimes. So missing from the actual implementation of a strap plan. Well, I think you made a really good point that. You called it ssi. I happen to really agree. I think that there's been this sort of make work bucket of services and this is coming.
I will sort of, you know, put my hand in the air and say I do strategic plans. Right? Not the organizations or I, I have in that past I so much anymore. But, but one of the first things I say to an organization that reaches out to hire me for a strategic planning process is nine times out of 10. This is a process best facilitated by you.
So I don't wanna talk myself out of work, but I suspect that once we talk, you won't actually need me for the things you think you're gonna need me for, right? It's, it does not have to be a tedious process. My strategic planning processes are four months. And it doesn't have to be complex. It's actually fairly straightforward, right?
There's like five questions to ask, right? And so maybe you want an outside facilitator to hold space so the executive director can fully participate maybe. But the planning process isn't hard. It's just not hard. And so going to your point about implementation, because I think a lot of consultants have this sort of at productized offer that they are.
Responding to or that they are sort of pitching or, and I'm interested in your thoughts about this. Conversely, I think this is equally dangerous, responding to a nonprofit's RFP. Mm. So I have, I think that there is a special place in hell coming from a place of love for nonprofits that craft a strategic planning RFP and send it out to consultants because most nonprofits don't know what they're talking about when it comes to strategic planning.
In both of those boxes, you have these consultants that either feel that they have to do the thing in the RFP, even if that thing's not right, or they have this product that they offer, and it's not about actually sitting with the organization and saying, where do you wanna be in three years? How can we help you get there?
Some of that will be quote unquote strap planning. Some of that will be helping you set up K OKRs, figuring out who you need to hire implementation. If we had that richer conversation. Outside of this like structure of a strap plan, I think that we could be a lot more helpful. Yep. I Ag I so agree with you.
And I think the other question too that comes up for me, when you were just talking about what if we did it this way, is asking the nonprofit, what do you already know? What do you already know exactly about what your community needs? And Yes. Conversation about capacity, where are you already up to your gull?
Yes. And capacity. Yes. Because then the thing that I always see happen is all of a sudden this new shiny strap plan comes and the team barely knows above water as it is. That's right. That's right. And I think that which is tied to the implementation issue though, right? Like if implement if, where do you want to be and what resources do you have, what can't you do?
Like if that's all part of the planning process, then you shouldn't wind up with a plan that you cannot operationalize that needs to be baked into the questions you were asking to begin with. I think what I see too is a nonprofit, you know, on that same line of like, they'll issue the RFP, they choose their consultant, they choose their fighter, and the the consultant comes in and there's this deference to the consultant because they know what they're talking about.
And so the, the, I don't think the truth and honesty often comes out in strap planning with the consultant. Yeah. Because they're trying to impress or trying to, yes. You know, um, no one really has the space, the trust to be able to say, I don't actually think we're doing a good job with this, or, yeah, I don't capacity for this, but we need more team members.
Um, yeah. I also think that there, this relationship with the consultant, there's a deference, there's a sort of not wanting to show up in the wrong way, as you said. I also think. Well, let me pause for a minute. I think one of the things that makes the Strat plan effective on the backend, and I actually think it's probably the biggest thing, the, well, the first is the thing you mentioned.
Can you actually operationalize it? The second is buy-in, right? Do the people on your team, including your board, care about what's in this plan? Are they excited about the vision? Are they, do they believe in the priorities? Do they real? Are they like, this is our plan, like this is what we're gonna do, right?
I think about when I used to travel in my twenties and my travel partners, one of my best friends, we traveled really well together. Every time we decided where we were gonna go on a trip, we'd spend like weeks planning. We're both Virgos planning the trip, right? And we were so excited by the time we got on the airplane because we had this roadmap of an adventure we were going on.
That's how you want. Your team and your board, ideally, some of your funders and donors to feel about your Strat plan. If you don't have that buy-in, it's gonna be a little bit like pulling teeth, right? It's gonna feel tedious. I think one of the challenges that organizations have working with consultants and why I often will advise them not to do that is because they hand over all responsibility to the consultant.
They basically say, I'm overwhelmed. We are. We don't want this to be tedious or complex. Just come back to us with a strap plan, right? Ask us the questions you need us to tell you. We'll show up for a few focus groups, and then you give us our plan. That doesn't. Build buy-in, right? And you wind up with a plan that nobody's seen and the words don't make sense.
You know, all the things. Yep. Yeah. I'm curious, you touched on this, which is a good place to probably ground, um, what are the, what are the purposes or the really good examples that you've seen maybe and, and we didn't prep for this call, so we're just winging this. Uh, for those of you listening, um. What are some of the good examples that you've seen of, and, and I'm not saying when a consultant has done it, but like, when a strap plan, what, what is the person listening need to know about why strap plans are so helpful?
Yeah, and what if maybe you could give some advice around, like, to the person who's thinking about starting a strap plan, or to the person who isn't deep in the middle of one that's sitting on the shelf and they haven't done a damn thing with it. I mean, I'll start with, I, I love the grounding in like what, what works, right?
What, what is a good, uh, process And I, I'll speak to experiences that I have had where I come out on the backend as a consultant thinking that was awesome. Um, and where I have gotten feedback from folks that I've worked with where they are, like, there was our life before the strap plan and then our life after.
And I think there are a few things that are true in those processes, and I will highlight, again for those listening, they don't require, they didn't require me, right? They don't require an outside consultant. This is absolutely stuff that organizations can do. The first is that the process was really clear from the beginning.
Hmm. So in the four or five examples that I have in my mind. One of the very first things I did at the beginning was I sat down with the people who were gonna be stewarding the process, and I said, here are the five questions we're gonna answer together. There are only five. Everything else you've heard about Strat plans and all the little mini questions in the focus groups.
Put that away. For now. There are five things, right, so that it. Right from the beginning they understood, okay, we're on step one, now we're on step two. Right. It was clear. I think the second is, and I just had this conversation with some folks in my group coaching program about stakeholders. And one of the women said we're, you know, she's going through a self facilitated strategic planning process.
And she said, I keep hearing from people that I'm supposed to be like talking to everyone in my community and having all of these focus groups and I can't quite figure out what I'm supposed to be skiing them or like how to do that without it being messy. And I said, again, let's put that away. What are the things you already know?
And I love how you said this. What do you already know and what don't you know? So now with that bucket of things that you're curious about, that will help you figure out your next best direction, who are the people that can give you insight? It may not be that you need to talk to all of your stakeholders in all buckets, so that, that sense of we've sort of gathered information and, and curated and cultivated information as we need it, that has made people feel really good.
And then the third thing, they kept it short, right? So I think I mentioned I am, I do a. Four month we're in and out, like tops. And I, I can picture the faces of organizations that I worked with where I sit down, you know, with the board chair, whoever's on the playing committee, and they're a little bit weary.
They're already sort of looking at me like, okay, like what's the $80,000 gonna get us? You know, and I. Oh, I should say I do not turn. That's a joke. I don't judge always. They, they're thinking that's what it's gonna happen. Listen, listen. I have talked with many organizations who have paid that and more for stress.
Me too. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So that's, you know, but that's what the board member is thinking is gonna Yep. And you know, I've, I said to them in these situations that worked, we are gonna be done in four months. Momentum matters. Engagement matters. The, the farther we go past four months, the more tedious it's gonna feel, right?
So, so in those situations that have worked, the clarity of the process, the being honest with yourselves of what you already know, what doesn't, what you don't have to do for the sake of process, um, and the tight sort of timeframe keeping people bought in really worked. I love that and it, and it makes me think about when you were talking about the buy-in and the trust that is so huge across everything that we do in life, period.
And inside the nonprofit sector, one of the things that I come across the most is this wide variety of who's engaged. And I've also been encouraged, yeah. To start using interested parties as a phrase instead of stakeholders. So I'm trying to change my own vernacular, but. The wide variety. So some will do a strap planning process without board members, some will do it with board members.
And then all, I guess my question at the end of all of that is what advice do you have for board members on how to best engage? And then what do you recommend board members do when they get handed part of the strap plan? Because, um, that happens too. And I think a lot of board members don't quite know what to do with their section of the strap plan.
So I dunno if you have any thoughts or advice. I think the, the answer to the second question about what to do when you get handed your, your part of the plan, assuming there hasn't been the sort of buy-in, you know, all along as a board member, I think it's a great opportunity to sit down with whoever's on the leadership team, if there's a leadership team, if it's a smaller organization, the executive director, the team, and get to the why for each section.
So, you know, you've handed me a plan that says, these are our 10 goals. Great. Okay. And you want me to help you find partners or, you know, build networks, raise money around these goals for each goal. Paint me a picture of how the young people we work with, the communities we serve, the neighborhood we're supporting.
Like how does the world look different because of this goal? Like, what's the why behind it? That's what board members need. They don't just need the bullet points and the talking points that they need to be able to sit with other people in their worlds or networks and say, let me tell you about what this organization's doing and why it matters.
So if you get a section of a plan and you don't, and that's not clear in your mind as a board member, schedule a meeting and just say, let's go goal by goal. Talk to me about how this got there. Remind me of your first question. I think the first question was just what do you recommend for how to best engage a board during a stretch?
Yeah. Some, some organizations have literally had everyone in the room together where others barely do, uh, any kind of interaction. Mm-hmm. Board. So I, I guess I'm just looking for you. Yeah. Your thoughts. So I think not engaging the board at all is not a great idea. Again, not because, not for process's sake, right?
So folks who work with me have heard me say a lot. I believe that form should follow function, right? You should do the set up, the process that achieves the goal you want it to achieve. The reason that you should engage board members is because they are your partners in executing the plan, right? And getting to whatever that North Star is.
And they can't be your partners if they don't understand the plan. So I. Definitely engage them in terms of how, I think that depends on two things. One, what is the role you need your board to play? Again, sort of what's the function. So if you are a larger, more established organization that has, you know, pretty well functioning governance board that is separate from the operations of the organization, you know, healthy division of labor, then really you're looking for your board to be strategic thought partners, ambassadors, network builders, and fundraisers.
Then ask yourself what information do they need to feel bought in around those roles? Usually this is not, you know, a, a strict rule, but typically that will mean engaging the board around the vision, the long term, what is the institution we're building over 10, 15 years? Like what's the long term North Star?
Because they need to understand. What these three years are in service of, and often the priorities, the large sort of buckets of focus, if they're bought in at those high level areas of focus, they don't necessarily need, nor will they often have great input into the goals, right? The how many communities, and that's just information that your team will.
Often have more access to, but the big picture, where are we going and where are we focusing over the next few years? Now they can be your strep partners, right? Your strategic thought partners around this. I think if we are smaller organization, um, that has maybe a more hands-on board that is still helping with operationalizing and maybe they do the marketing or the fundraising or the finance, then engaging them with the swot.
And getting their perspectives on strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And a, an opportunity for them to talk through the goals, not necessarily set the goals with your team. I believe pretty firmly that goal setting should be internal, right? The the staff. But if you have a board where they're gonna be helping to execute goals, not just the network building and the ambassadorship.
Doing that, going through that process of saying, look, here are the goals before they're finalized. What questions do you have? What doesn't make sense? Do you think we're missing anything? Yep. That kind of goal conversation can be really helpful with some of the smaller, more operational boards. I, I love everything you just said, and it also makes me think about the board's role to help with, I don't know the right word here, but like the sustainability of the strap plan and the Yeah.
'cause you know, you might have a, a bunch of board members who are ending their term, uh, six months after the plan's released. Yeah. Getting that buy-in from the board and being able to effectively communicate the why helps them. With whatever the onboarding and offboarding process is for the board to bring other people along as their terms end.
That could even just be an aspect of strap planning is to help make sure that there continuity. That's the word I was looking for. Yes, there's continuity because imagine trying to get new board buy-in from a bunch of folks who weren't on the board when the strap plan was finalized. Oh my gosh. Um, I do also, that's right that you said so poignantly and so potently that goal setting should be done internally because I think that's where I see a lot of, um, headache is when they try to equate board buy-in to help us set the goals.
That's not the same thing. So I'm So what said that? No, and, and I'll just sort of, to put an even finer point on it, when I sort of teach facilitated self facilitating strategic planning, the parts of a plan. That I suggest. Organizations craft are a long-term vision, which is 10, 15, 20 years out. That's aspirational, right?
The cathedral, we're ultimately building three year priorities, which are big buckets of focus, right? To get there, we are gonna focus on expansion depth of our program model and financial sustainability. Those are just examples, right? And then within those buckets. You have your goals, okay, what does success look like within this area of priority?
Those are the three sort of sections of a plan. And then the external plan we talked about is the vision and priorities, and you're able to talk about those and funders who want to be hear about the goals, but the internal plan takes those goals and then adds the KPIs or the OKRs or whatever the organization does.
So those three sections are really key. I think that the board is ideally bought in at the vision and priority level. Because it's, where are we going? Right? The, it's the why. It's the sort of generative space. Once you start getting into the, how, I would kindly remove board members from conversations about how, yeah, I think it, it muddies the water of who does what.
Um, but I, and I also, I loved your point about continuity. I think that this idea of them holding. The plan and feeling some ownership makes it easier for them to bring people along over time. And I also think you'd ask sort of what's the role of the board? I think the other way to engage board members is vision priorities.
You have your plan, and then when the team is talking about how to operationalize the plan, the board can also be. Having its own board level conversation about what does this plan mean for us, right? So the team is thinking in terms of KPIs and OKRs and budgets and financials, but the board sits with the vision, the priorities, and the goals.
And it says, okay, if this is what the team is gonna do, how can we help? What is our role as a board? And then that also is something that board members in terms of continuity can use. Either to recruit new board members to identify who should be on the board and definitely to onboard, right? Yeah. So it's not that they are helping to craft the goals, it's that they take those goals and apply them to their role as board members.
The sweet spot of what you just said. Imagine the beauty of a board who is doing what you just said, taking the vision and the priorities and onboarding and recruiting to that, and also serving as a thought partner to the ED for like a landscape analysis of like, I know that you and the team are head down into the operationalization of this, so we're here to make sure that because we know.
Priority number one is X, we see coming down the pipeline. Some stuff that's gonna shift that, and we're gonna bring that to you. Oh my gosh, yes. That was magical. It's wonderful. And I know we're not talking about boards here, but you know, sort of what boards do, one of the biggest challenges that I see nonprofit eds have is, what the heck am I supposed to do with my board?
Like, what are they supposed to be doing? And I think board members sometimes feel like I want be a good board member. What does that mean? If you use your strategic plan as a foundation for guiding the work of the board, then when you know, when I say to an executive director, part of how you can leverage your board, or when I say to a board member, part of how you can be a good board member is as a thought partner.
It's grounded in something, right? Because it's not just this wonky, okay, I'll pick up the phone. You know, when the executive director calls it's, oh, let me sit down with these priorities and think, who do I know? What does my perspective from my sector bring to the table? How can I sort of be a few steps away from the executive director looking in a different direction and bring information?
It gives board members a role. Yeah. And a healthy role. Yeah. In carrying the work forward. I love that. I love that. And it also made me think of, I say river banks all the time around like the water inside will do what it will do, but as long as you have the strong river banks, it helps contain. Mm-hmm. And I also think a lot about when you're talking about that, um, the idea of.
When we start to feel like things are getting messy or muddy, having the strap plan and your vision and your parties be the thing we check in with of like, how are we, are we staying too far away? That's right. It also makes a budget a lot more fun if it's connected plan like. Oh my goodness. I have so many thoughts about the budget and the, and the start plan.
So I talk about this idea of aligned anchors and the sort of anchors of your organization being your strategic vision, your financials, and your fundraising. And they have to tell the same story. And I always use the, the metaphor of a book, right? You know, when I'm reading to my kids, one side of the, of a book are the pictures.
The other side are the words, and they're the same. They're just different ways of depicting the exact same story. Your budget is just your Strat plan in numbers. It's just the straight, like everything from the line items in your budget to how it's organized. And so many organizations, their mi, you know, their heads explode when they think about budgets and it's so again, tedious and complex, but.
If you start with your strap plan, and this is the process that I always recommend folks go through. You start with your strap plan. You ask yourselves for each of these goals, what does it look like to operationalize this? What is the team we'd need right in year one, year two, year three? Um, what infrastructure will we need?
What systems would tech new curricula? Like all the things, like what does it look like? Again, the Virgo in me is like, just write it down in a spreadsheet, and then next to each of those items, what do they cost, right? What would it look like to hire the team? You need to build out the curriculum and the Train the trainer program, and that becomes the basis for your budget, right?
So you don't have to sort of pick numbers out of thin air and figure things out. You sit down and you look at the vision you've just crafted. Then when you're talking to funders, when you're talking to donors, when you're talking to partners and you are talking about money, right? This is the fundraising piece.
It's not just these big floaty big numbers that you need for payroll. It's lemme tell you about where we are excited to be three years from now and that costs $1.3 million and over the next year, this is the part we're committed to building and that costs. $600,000. And here's why. Because this is a team that gets us there.
And this is a space that our young kids need. And this is the garden that our community is building. And these all have costs. And I can show you the vision and we can talk about what it costs. What role do you wanna play investor, right? So it's a, it becomes this seamless, I think, fun, exciting conversation when it's all telling the same story.
The other thing about that that makes, what, that makes me think of Brooke, because that's genius around the how we tell a story. I love the example of the book and the photos and the, the text. It makes me think that if you're listening and you're a consultant that offers strap plan, maybe dig a little deeper to understand what do you really need to leave that client with that?
Is it a communication plan? Is it the Yes. The budget that really is actualized through what their vision is. Yeah. I, I think that so often I see people, I'll get phone calls from someone that says, we just finished a strap plan and now we need help to actually do something with it. And I'm like, oh, I mean, oh my gosh.
Like I know now you're gonna have to start a new trusted relationship with a new consultant. The team's already exhausted. So I guess maybe, maybe we could wrap this time with maybe a couple of challenges both for the, the board of director. The team slash ed and the consultants like mm-hmm. Because we can do better.
We can do better when it comes drop plan process. I would love to just encourage the consultant listening, think about what you're really leaving that client with when your work product is finished, and how can you make that better for them. Yeah. Actually with what outcome they're looking for. What would you say in terms of like to the listener, how do you make strap planning better?
I think the crux and, and I'll say this is both an invitation and a challenge. Forget what you think, you know, right. It's, there is no one way to do Strat planning, and I think if, if you, whether you're an executive director or a board chair or a team who's about to embark on a plan, if you release yourself.
From the tyranny of the, this is what draft planning is, and actually start with the question, what is the organizational set of goals? Like, where do we want to be three years from now? What don't we know? What are we good at? Right. Start with a, the process can be whatever you want it to be, you know? So I think the invitation and the challenge is, don't go into this thinking.
That a start planning process is a thing. It isn't. It's not a pre-structured thing. It is a set of conversations that ideally help you determine, you know, going back to my friend in our trip, where you want to go and what you want your adventure to feel like for all of the interested parties. Yeah. Yeah.
I love that. I love that. I also think I would add to not only is strap planning a fixed thing, it also doesn't fix anything exactly. Yes. I So many, so many are sold on the idea. Yeah. And not just by consultants, like by the sector. Yeah. That start plans, fix everything. And I often find that they're more troublesome than they should be.
Um, well and this goes back to your, you know, your point about hiring the consultant and then sort of handing deferring. I think a lot of times I have been invited. Into do what the organization is calling a start planning process. But actually as I am talking to them, there are real issues on the team or real issues with the board, and they don't know how to solve those issues.
So that what they really need me to do is guide is like, make them healthier. Just fix us. That's what they're calling it, you know? Um. And I, my heart goes out into them. I underst I have led an organization, I know how messy the problems are and you don't always know what the root of the problem is. But you know that in, you know, or you think, you know that in a start planning process everyone has to talk, right?
You gotta come to some decision. So maybe, maybe that'll get us through, but I think you're right it to the consultants out there, the invitation and the challenge is both what you said. What do we wanna leave them with, but. What actually is the thing that you are being, being invited to do with them? Is it a start plan?
Is it change management? Is, you know, what's the, what's the invitation? Not what they are saying, but really, you know, from your own set. Place of expertise. Yeah. I love that. We, we talked before we started recording and we could talk for a long time on multiple topics as we close out. The last question just for you is, is, is there anything that you know about this topic or that you have seen, um, that I haven't asked you or that you wanna share?
I would say just a word keeps coming to my mind, actually two. Um, and I think they're related. I. A little bit sparked by our pre-recording conversation. The two words are trust and bravery, and I think if you trust that the people in your orbit, you're all going in the same direction. It's okay if it's messy sometimes.
And it's okay if you sit down at the beginning of a session with your board and you haven't gamed out in your head exactly where you're gonna end, and you're just gonna talk and listen. That trust will get you to the right answer. So I think that's the first thing. And then bravery, there's something I, I love Strat planning.
I, I love almost everything about it. I like the messiness of this sort of open field and, and I recognize that that is both unique. Not everybody feels that way and a bit of a privilege, right? I have some mental space and spaciousness in the work that I do to sit with the messiness of other people's problems, and I know that, and so what I often find myself saying to the folks, I do some coaching around supporting people in doing their own processes.
I often talk about. This is a space to be brave. Right. Not everybody loves it. That's okay. It can feel overwhelming. Dive in. Yeah. Right. And trust that you'll get to some other Sure. And sometimes just that first step as a board member, right, as an executive director is pick up the phone, call your counterpart and say, okay.
What's our first step? I, I'm a little bit nervous. I don't quite know where this is going or how it's gonna wind up, but let's get started. So those are the two. Trust and braver are the two things I'd like to leave folks with. I love that. And I think there's so much power in naming what we're feeling with each other, which goes along with both of those words.
Just pick up. It's so good, Brooke. Just pick up the phone and say, I'm worried about this. I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah. I'm nervous. This is messy. That goes so far. So far. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for this conversation. I'm hopeful that as you're listening, you took something away from it. If you didn't rewind, listen to it again.
Share it with your friends. Share it with your people. And I think that the takeaway here is that strap planning can be joyous and it can be beautiful, and it needs to be thoughtful. Um, and so I, you took away something from this conversation, Brooke, thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me.
This was really wonderful. It was. Thank you. If you are an organizational leader, board member, or a curious staff member, take the Leaving Well assessment to discover your organization's transition readiness archetype. It's quick and easy, and you can find it at naomi hadaway.com/assessment. It's Naomi NA Om i.
Hattaway, H-A-T-T-A-W-A y.com/assessment to learn more about leaving well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace. You can also see that information on my website. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system.
We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hadaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Wealth, a Navigation Guide for Workplace Transitions.