Strategic Planning Processes

I’m currently organizing and running a strategic planning process. It’s a fun experience because while I’ve participated in many such sessions, it’s the first time I’ve gotten to plan and facilitate it all myself. Normally for such a thing one hires a consultant of some kind; except in this case that’s my role. So I looked around for some tools. I had been very impresses by the Personal Compass tool from The Grove which is an application of strategic planning techniques to personal life. Later I attended the Turning The Tide conference which was facilitated by Grove. I was impressed that their folks could actually produce their lovely graphics on the fly listening to the conversation. This led me to investigate them further, and I discovered a marvelous tool called the Stategic Visioning Agenda Planning Kit . This is truly a good deal. You get a set of cards which completely captures their entire planning methodology. Each card represents one step in their process, with instructions on the back. Some steps describe an agenda, some an activity, some a representation of one step. It’s great fun to look at, and it really fires up your imagination in planning a good flow for the meeting. It’s also great for collaboration because you can share the cards with others, and work together on it. In the meantime we’ve been running our meetings and so far it’s been a great experience. I highly recommend these tools to anyone doing this kind of work.