Orgforward Opines

I sit on the board of an organization called Creating the Future . The tagline is ‘Change the questions, Change the world.’ The underlying principle is that we can create more equitable and healthy strategies to create and sustain a thriving world by basing our decisions and actions on a different set of questions than we often are conditioned to asking. In my own practice as a coach, consultant, and educator, I spend most of my time trying to figure out the question, not the answer. (I think that is actually what I earn a living doing…)  So here is the one question we absolutely need to change. Stop asking about whom you serve Start asking about whom will you affect In my experience working with organizations around strategy, design, and programming, people with decision-making power spend a lot of time thinking about whom the organization serves - whom the client or customer is and what their needs are. This is not an inherently bad question. Who doesn’t want to help i...

I will be honest. I am a bit of a Strategic Planning skeptic – so best to get that bias out first. My overall experience is that the cliché of the report that sits on the shelf (or a cloud server, to be more 21 st century) or a planning process that falls short of expectations is far too common.  I won’t start the diatribe here about why that may be happening – that’s for another post – but let’s just leave it at strategic plans are often a square approach (peg) to a round set of desired outcomes (hole). Instead, I want to offer up the questions that successfully guide any planning or design process in a way that ensures that the process actually gets you where you want to be. Not surprisingly, it starts from what you hope to accomplish as opposed to presumption of what we ‘should’ do . Those familiar with Catalytic Decision Making ™ will recognize this pattern of questioning. So…before jumping to the decision to move forward with a strategic planning process and sending...