Dick Boysen, executive director of the Guilds' School and Neuromuscular Center in Spokane, Washington, called me on the phone one day.
"We're just finishing up our strategic planning, and you know how I try to stay away from 'stinkin' thinking,'" he tells me. "But I've got to admit it: the staff is feeling beaten up. All they can see are the gaps between where we are and where we want to be--the places where they're falling short."
I could easily imagine what Dick was going through: An organization decides to project what might be on its horizon. It's practically an article of faith that this is accomplished through something called "strategic planning," one of many practices the social sector has borrowed from the business world in recent years. So the organization hires a consultant and does a strategic plan, assuming that's the best way to get to their next level of success (or at least stave off failure).
Why does the outcome so often disappoint?
Well, to begin with, strategic planning has had mixed results even in the business sector. A global study of 1,854 large corporations found that over the span of a decade, seven out of eight fell short of achieving profitable growth (that is, returning more than the cost of capital). Robert Kaplan and David Norton reported in Harvard Business Review that 90% of the companies studied had gone through the exercise of creating detailed strategic plans.
Even more to the point: Standard strategic planning practices, rooted in business models of human behavior, simply are not designed to tap into the contributory spirit and high ideals that are especially visible in the social sector. Martin Luther King Jr. did not say, "I have a strategic plan." He shouted, "I have a dream!" and created a crusade.
If our work is born of passion, conviction, and taking a stand for what we believe in, then why overlook that energy in favor of the more superficial and mundane?
To my mind, what happened at the Guilds' School is an example of the common struggle to squeeze high ideals into the confines of flow charts and spreadsheets. The school's staff are among the most talented, creative people I've ever met. They're passionately dedicated to the kids they serve, so they take great pride in doing their best. In fact, they bring to their jobs a devotion--a sense of mission--that businesspeople often only wish they could develop in employees.
So how could a seemingly routine strategic plan have shattered their confidence in themselves?
We've seen that focusing on strengths gives people the confidence to notch up both their ambitions and the belief that they can deliver on those aspirations. Instead of such a life-affirming approach, typical strategic planning gives equal time to internal weaknesses and external threats. Given our collective and individual tendency to overvalue the negative, people can quickly become overwhelmed and demoralized by wallowing in what they lack.
For the school's staff, people who find deep personal significance in their work and hold high aspirations for all, the experience was devastating. They saw the plan as proof of how badly they'd fallen short of their most cherished ideals. They saw only the weaknesses that had been identified, the gap between what was and what could be. Believing they'd been portrayed as inadequate, they felt shame in front of their CEO and their board.
I've seen this happen time and again, especially in organizations with the highest hopes and most capable staffs.
And more than a decade ago, it dawned on me that we may have had it backwards: Instead of feeling embarrassed and deficient, or compelled to play catch-up to the business world, the social sector actually has a lot to teach businesses about what makes people tick. After all, how many businesses get people to show up as volunteers and work for free (and even pay for the privilege by contributing money) or to work as staff for much less money than they might be paid elsewhere?
Today this insight is beginning to spread. Jim Collins, author of the best-selling business book Good to Great, wrote in a recent monograph on the social sector: "Social sector organizations increasingly look to business for leadership models and talent, yet I suspect we will find more true leadership in the social sectors than the business sector."
The leadership role of the social sector is also evidenced by the spread of idealism in the business world. A growing number of businesspeople are taking up the banner of social responsibility and seek to imbue their work with more meaning and significance. They are putting into practice one of the great lessons of the social sector: the power that comes from standing for what we believe in and acting on our ideals.