🌿The Spore

Brought to you by the team at Organizational Mycology

🔨 Some things we’ve been working on

Strategic planning

Organizations of all kinds are currently facing critical uncertainties: Funding streams are under threat, new technologies are introducing new operational realities, and political changes are upending the movement of people and products across the globe. In our consulting work, we’ve been helping organizations deal with uncertainty and change, which has us thinking a lot about strategy.

Yes, that scary, nebulous term that organizational leaders sometimes throw around without defining what it means. It can be difficult to land on a singular definition, but from what we’ve learned, we can safely say that strategy includes:

• A clear statement about the organization or team’s mission and vision that sets priorities and goals
• A process or set of guidelines that helps align activities and allocate resources to those goals
• A framework for measuring progress and adapting over time
• A guideline for what is in scope and what is out of scope (i.e., when to say “yes” and when to say “no”)

By setting expectations and aligning on ways to reach goals, strategy helps to deal with uncertainty. Many organizations we work with do not always have a strategy and need help coming up with one. We believe a strategic planning process that is inclusive and responsive to stakeholders up and down the organizational hierarchy or spread across the community is an ideal way to come up with a strategy or refine existing strategies. Facilitated conversations that lead to things like SWOT analyses or Futures Thinking exercises are critical components of this strategic planning process, where facilitators can help ensure that all stakeholders are heard and their ideas are included in the resulting strategic plan.

At its best, strategy helps maintain organizational cohesiveness while enabling the organization and its workers to expand their networks, finding new opportunities that are seemingly serendipitous (but are actually a result of a strong, aligned strategy with buy-in throughout the organization). Setting a strategy also helps to reframe challenges as opportunities while maintaining focus on the core mission and vision. 

Once a strategy is defined, it is important to communicate it and be transparent about the reasoning (and process) behind it. A strong strategy is one that makes it easy to see how broad goals are converted into actions and decision-making structures that can be adopted organization-wide. That said, things change in organizations, especially during periods of intense uncertainty. It is therefore important to also be transparent and inclusive in the process for revising strategy: How often do we revisit the strategy, or what are the agreed-upon triggers that signal it’s time to get together and reassess? Who is responsible for convening stakeholders when revision is necessary? 

We’re always curious to learn how strategy is handled at different organizations, so let us know… How does your organization create and communicate strategy? Please reach out to us if you'd like to have us help you develop a strategic plan for your organization.

Short updates

• Dan is being honored by the Santa Cruz community for his volunteer efforts at the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter. Dan regularly recharges his battery by working with animals at the shelter, and was recognized for his amazing efforts there. Go Dan! 🐶
• 🌐Join the April CZI Open Science Community Call: The next call in the CZI Open Science series will be about Security in OSS. The call, and is scheduled for Thursday May 22nd from 1 to 2 pm Eastern US / 10 to 11 am Pacific US. Open source software is a critical component of a number of different kinds of work that involve various other work components, such as hardware, data, other pieces of software, and organizational IT systems. As such, ensuring security should be a priority for package developers and maintainers. In this call, we’ll be joined by Georgia Bullen, Executive Director of Superbloom (formerly Simply Secure),  to discuss common security challenges and the approaches OSS projects can use to overcome them. Sign up for the call (and future calls), and learn more about Open Science Community Calls.
• 🌿 Beth is continuing her Everyday Flourishing workshops and newsletter, where she applies principles from permaculture as a frame on work and personal life. The next workshop on Renewable Resources will be on Monday, May 12th at noon Pacific. All are invited!