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Strategy Management for Associations: From Issues to Action
The notion that strategic planning isn't what it used to be is now widely accepted. Unfortunately, there's much less agreement on what it has become. A symposium held at MIT's Sloan School of Management looked back at strategic planning's 40-year evolution from a cutting-edge concept in the early 1960s through its calcification into a fixed template that inadequately addressed the need for flexibility in rapidly changing environments. In the leading MBA programs the subject has evolved to a point where the term "strategic planning" rarely appears in either the titles of the courses or the textbooks they use. The Strategic Plan in a Three-Ring Binder Is Dead The association executive's awareness of this changing perspective on planning was documented in a series of focus groups done as a part of an ASAE research project that led to the publication of Managing Change in Associations. When asked to describe their thoughts on the subject, focus group participants made the following observations:
Since its inception, the Journal of Association Leadership has been tracking this metamorphosis in strategic thinking with articles on creative new methods associations are using to comprehend the future and explore their options. Porto and McCallen, in the fall 2004 issue, described a cafe method of dialoguing with their members in a way that reached out to everyone and involved listening with openness and discipline. Borawski and Ward, in winter 2004, portrayed Living Strategies in the context of unpredictable ecological systems that must nevertheless anticipate the direction of ephemeral things such as human aspirations and the "collective knowledge" of member communities. Albrecht, in summer 2005, asked rhetorically if associations were doomed because so many still engage in strategic planning systems that are "little more than elaborate operational planning and budgeting exercises." And in a winter 2006 piece on research concerning the "connectedness" members require in their quest for community, Wedeman gave credence to a theme that was developed in all these articles-namely, an association must maintain a conversation with and for its members. Fine. But how does a practical executive get from metaphor-rich references to cafes, ecosystems, and industry doom to an understanding of a reason to act and a useful characterization of the actions that should be taken? In other words, when and how does conversation turn into strategy? The fourth edition of ASAE's environmental scan, From Scan to Plan, addresses the connection between broad observations on how the world is changing and the development of strategy. The purpose of this article is to summarize and expand several of the techniques introduced in the environmental scan and identify the lessons learned since that work was published.
Related Sidebar: Sidebar: Managing a Radar Screen 
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More Articles From Fall 2006 Issue
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Fall 2006
