Cate Gable’s Strategic Method

In the following series of steps and key questions, our basic planning sequence is outlined.

Step 1: Identify Challenges
(Situational Analysis)
Key questions:
Why are we planning?
or What needs changing?

Step 2: Set Preliminary Goals
(Objectives)
Key question:
What do we hope to achieve?

Step 3: Devise Strategic Action
(Strategy)
Key question:
How will we do it?

Step 4: Create Effective Monitoring
(Control)
Key questions:
What will we track?
Who will do it?
When will it be done?

Step 5 or Step 1: (final) Goal / Identify Challenges
(Result / Situational Analysis)
Key questions:
Did we make it?
and/or What needs changing?

Note that the last step could also be a first step if we ask again, “What needs changing?” This process provides for a continuous loop of planned change in that a resulting goal is never a final goal. In parentheses following the names of the steps are the terms most commonly used for these corresponding planning steps in the business world. The key questions focus what we are trying to accomplish in each particular planning step.

Remember that although these steps appear as discrete items here, this is only to simplify our understanding of the component parts of the whole process we call ‘planning.’ Breaking planning into steps helps us understand the general territory of each task and the ideal completion sequence for the steps. In the real world, these ‘steps’ overlap and blur into one another both backward and forward; each step emerges naturally from the one before it and leads into the one following. Actually, these planning steps represent a continuous cycle of change and activity.

With that general description of the four steps in mind, let’s look at a more detailed description of each one.

The Challenge

The challenge is the WHY in your planning process, in that it is the reason you are planning at all—something needs to be changed and that becomes the catalyst for your action. Another way of looking at the challenge step is to ask yourself “What difficulties or problems am I having that I want to overcome?” or “What needs changing?” Answers to these key questions are generally the beginning point for a planning process.

In an educational setting—either from the viewpoint of teachers or students—challenges might look something like the following:

• How can we best educate our children to be aware of sex- and drug-related issues?
• Our Biology Club would like to send two delegates to the International AIDS Research Convention in Barcelona. How can we raise the money to do that?
• I have to improve my grades if I want to get into college.
• We are not attracting the quality of teacher into our school district that we want.

• How can we organize our block to discuss earthquake preparedness?
• We need to find out from our library customers what services they want.
• How can we make this office more efficient?

• What are the challenges facing our product in the international marketplace?
• Is the state of our communications infrastructure robust enough to support the increased demand for customer service efficiency?
• We want to increase our sales. Do we need to develop new target markets or focus on additional means of distribution in current markets?
• Are we responding quickly/appropriately enough to our client e-commerce demands?

That’s why this step is akin to a ‘situational analysis’—which is only a fancy term for gathering information in order to understand the source of the problem. Sometimes challenges exist in bundles or systems, in that one problem may be either the cause or result of another problem. It’s important to explore everything that may be relevant even if it means pulling out a small puzzle piece and having the whole shape collapse into a pile of jumbled pieces. Once the pieces are separated from each other, they can be sorted for relevancy. You never know where you might find just that piece which will allow everything to be put together in a new and better way.

Identifying your group’s challenges—which is made up of the subtasks of analyzing, sorting and prioritizing them—is the beginning point for the planning process.

The Goal

In a sense, step two, formulating the goal from the challenge, is like turning the challenge inside out. If the challenge is the WHY, then the goal becomes the WHAT. It is the pole to jump and clear, the baton to grab for, or the tape to break.

Many planners make a distinction between goals and objectives. In our process we will treat them as the same things. You might also call them results. They are what you are shooting for, what you hope will be accomplished when you review your efforts in three months or six months or whenever your deadline for completion is.

In our planning process, we call these goals preliminary because they may need to change in the course of your planning project, depending upon real world conditions that were unanticipated. These preliminary goals become guides for your action, sign-posts that point you in the right direction for achieving your desired results. If your goals are accurately derived from your challenges, they will assist you and your team in ensuring that any action you take will directly address the top-priority difficulty that you have identified.

The most important task to accomplish in setting your goals will be to make sure they are measurable and directly derived from the challenges you and your team have outlined.

The Strategic Action

Here’s where the miracle happens and the fun starts in a planning process. The strategy that follows the goals you outline is the HOW of the project planning. The strategy specifies the action needed to accomplish the goal you wish to reach.

Just a few words about the term ‘strategic action. ‘Strategy’ has been borrowed from the military: in fact, the etymological root of strategy is the Greek word‘strategos’ that means general, or someone who commands a ‘stratos’ , or army.

When you think of strategy, some of the following words or ideas might come to mind:

• surprise
• insightfulness
• efficiency
• imagination
• preparation

But strategy exists in the world of ether, in ephemeral grey matter. A strategy is a thought, a plan for action, but a plan only. It has no effect in the world until it is implemented. That’s where action comes in.

Action is of this physical world—it involves the direct manipulation of the world and its objects. Thus, the skillful implementation of a strategy is the natural and only useful partner to strategic insight. So, in our planning process, action is the embodiment of strategy: it is the doing, the movement, the physical energy that one lets loose in, and that operates on, the world. That’s why in the steps of our planning process we don’t separate strategy from action—we have combined them into one powerful dynamic: action with insight.

And just as a boxer’s punch needs to be timed right, aimed right, with the right amount of force—your actions will have many variables that can be tinkered with in order to keep them ‘on target.’

Devising strategic action is a way to optimize cooperative efforts to produce selected results.

The Monitoring

Devising monitoring tools, also called ‘control’ in some processes, will be essential to the successful completion of your team’s planning project; monitoring provides the transition from the intellectual nature of planning to the real world where your plan will be executed. Without clear measurements you will have no way of knowing whether you are meeting or have met your goals.

The monitoring process is about finding out if your plans are on target. Monitoring and measurement devices generally ask questions about WHO, WHAT and WHEN:

• What will success look like?
• What kind of measurements will be tracked?
• When will the measurements be taken? How often?
• When will the measurements be reported? How often? To Whom?
• Who will do the tracking computation, analysis, and reporting?
• Who will be responsible for what tasks?
• Who is accountable if tasks aren’t completed?

This process of setting the measurements for your goals, and, at the same time, monitoring your trajectory for getting to your target, is the final step in our planning process, though it’s not the end of your project. There may still be post-planning implementation tasks that will need to take place. Often the last task in the monitoring step is to decide, “Are we finished with our project?” or “Are there other things which we need to accomplish now?”

This evaluation can be the end of a successful project or the beginning of a new cycle of challenge identification.

Summary: The Process

Each of these four steps consists of subtasks and exercises that are outlined in broad terms and followed by detailed meeting agendas. My book includes discussion of planning concepts, exercises, a glossary and index, as well as resources for further study. Depending upon the complexity and the duration of your project, your team can modify this process as needed. The entire planning process and its correlation with book chapters is captured in Figure 1.2.

We outline here a methodology that delineates the basic tasks for successful completion of a planning project, but keep in mind that you and your team have the latitude to do what is needed to make things work for you: planning is a living process. We will talk more about this in the pre-planning phase when you are establishing the parameters and working agreements for your project and your project team.

Another thing to keep in mind is that nothing is forever. Things change. The world is a place that is constantly reinventing itself. And because each of these four steps is intricately linked to every other step, if one changes, all of them will need to be adjusted.

You may find that some goals were set too low, or that there’s no chance to reach others because circumstances have drastically changed: a key member of your team becomes ill and must leave the project; some political event requires the readjustment of budget resources; or some crisis suddenly intervenes and the challenge you identified as the foundation of your strategic action disappears completely.

Remember, too, that your planning process won’t progress in neat steps labeled “challenges,” “goals,” “strategic actions,” and “monitoring.” Human endeavors simply don’t work like that. Human beings are more than multi-tasking machines—we are infinitely complex organisms with feelings, moods, facts, images, memories and associative processes constantly at our disposal. And when we come together to communicate with one another, another layer of complex dynamics takes place.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, we build with wood because a brick wall cracks when the earth shakes. Bottom-line?. . . be ready for an adventure when you begin your planning project. Be flexible.