Dear Friend,

2007 is certainly flying by. In this issue of The Learning Link we highlight key activities of the first six-months of this hectic year. Our feature article is an update on our Strategy Formation project. This four-year initiative is now in the final three-month stretch and our attention is turning to sharing our findings, a process that will continue beyond the project's formal lifespan. Previously, we've described the one-day strategy formation process; here, we share some of the tools we've developed. Close to 50 such tools will be profiled in our workbook that Fieldstone Alliance will publish in Spring 2008.

At La Piana, much of our consulting practice involves helping nonprofits build their internal capacity in order to become stronger and more sustainable. This requires organizations to change. No small matter! Below, we give a brief update on our own internal change process, which serves as a fertile learning lab for our consulting practice, deepening our understanding of organizational and culture change, and honing our skills in helping our nonprofit clients effect authentic and lasting change.

Mary Stelletello Part of our change involves a huge growth in our staff. Our most recent additions are Mary Stelletello, Senior Associate, and Alex Hildebrand, Associate, whom you may have met at our exhibit booth at the recent Alliance conference in Atlanta. Each brings a set of skills and experiences that strengthen our core consulting practice while also expanding our capacity. And, to top it off, they are terrific to work with! Alex Hildebrand

We hope to see you at one of our upcoming presentations. If you're in San Francisco for the BoardSource conference in October, please stop by our exhibit booth. I encourage you to attend the session led by Luis Vergara, Senior Associate, on Strategic Restructuring and Diversity: The Changing Faces of Organizational Leadership Luis Vergara

Speaking of leadership, for those of you in the San Francisco Bay Area, the upcoming Craigslist Foundation's Nonprofit Boot Camp promises to be an inspirational event. On Saturday, August 18, more than 2,000 emerging and established nonprofit leaders will gather at UC Berkeley for the 4th annual conference. La Piana Associates will be a sponsor. I'll present a workshop entitled So you want to be an ED? Keys to success as a nonprofit executive director. Come and share your success stories! During the conference Michaela Hayes, Senior Associate and Director of Marketing & Communications, will serve as a one-on-one coach for marketing and communications. Michaela Hayes

As always, we encourage you to share your comments with us. Please email these to our editor, Michaela Hayes: hayes@lapiana.org.

Yours in learning,

David La Piana

P.S. We are sending you this issue of our newsletter because you signed up for it on our website, were on our Strategic Solutions Initiative mailing list, or are in our contact database and receive other mailings from us.

Also, please feel free to forward this newsletter to a friend. If you know someone who would like to subscribe, please tell them to go to our website to sign-up.

Strategy Formation project is in the home stretch

by Michaela Hayes, Project Manager

Since November 2003, we've been hard at work on our R&D initiative, Strategy Formation: Beyond Strategic Planning. The project is now in its final three months. Over the years, we've provided updates on our progress through presentations, workshops, and trainings, as well as published articles. This article summarizes project milestones to date and shares three of the close to 50 practical tools we've adapted or developed in the course of the project to help nonprofits build their strategic capacity. (For a summary of key learnings to date, read an article I wrote, which was published last month by Cause Planet.org.)

The project's core work: on-the-ground research
Our project research began with an extensive literature review and interviews with experts in strategy formation and strategic planning from both the business and nonprofit sectors. However, our primary emphasis has been on ongoing learning through field research: applying and refining our developing process and tools with numerous nonprofits. These included 25 pilot groups spanning the country from Hawaii to Pittsburgh.

The pilot groups: our partners in learning
We are grateful to these groups for their willingness to participate with us in this learning process. Through their feedback about their experiences with the evolving strategy formation process and tools, they have contributed to the project beyond measure.

The project's impact
In addition, many of our clients have asked us to apply either the entire process or parts of it to our strategy work with them. Their reports of the value of this to their organizations have provided further evidence that the project has had its intended outcomes. At our June staff meeting, our consultants, all of whom have participated in the project, reported that they are using components of the strategy formation process and tools in all of their strategy consulting projects. The project has clearly had an impact on our practice, and thus on many nonprofits.

The current focus: spreading the word and seeding a revolution
Now, as we focus on disseminating our findings, we hope that the project's impact will extend to the sector as a whole. Just as summer began, David La Piana sent Fieldstone Alliance the first draft of his workbook, aptly titled The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution. The workbook, which serves as the project's capstone, will be published in spring 2008. It documents the theory behind strategy formation and how it responds to the inadequacy of traditional strategic planning to address the needs of nonprofits to be strategic in thinking and acting on an ongoing basis—a mandate for success in today's environment.

The two diagrams below depict the root problem of trying to use traditional strategic planning to form strategy.

Traditional planning cycle: Long, discrete, and separated from the external environment.

Reality: Need ongoing strategic thinking and acting in the context of external environment

The strategy formation process: the foundation of the revolution
A large portion of The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution workbook is dedicated to providing nonprofits step-by-step guidance in how to conduct a strategy formation process. This process, and the nonprofit's resulting Strategy Roadmap¹, form the foundation of the nonprofit's enhanced strategic capacity. We advise nonprofits to start with a trusted and experienced consultant to lead them through the process. To this end, we have designed this guide to be used by consultants, as well as nonprofits. However, over time, we encourage nonprofits to take this process in-house, revisiting it annually at a minimum.

¹The Strategy Roadmap documents the nonprofit's strategy formation process, including its current and future business model, its competitive advantage(s), its identity (a concept related to branding), its current "big questions" (or opportunities / challenges / issues in the external environment that it needs to address), its "strategy screen" (the criteria it will use to select strategies), and a work plan for next steps, including how it will build its strategic capacity on an ongoing basis.

The tools: building strategic capacity
Beyond this, the workbook is chock-full of handy, practical tools, which serve as the building blocks for strengthening strategic capacity. Some of these we've adapted from existing tools; others we've created during the course of the project.

The strategy formation process serves as a kind of diagnostic, helping the nonprofit determine what area(s) it needs to work on to build its strategic capacity. To build this capacity, we encourage nonprofits to select from among the tools the one or two that will be most useful in helping them address their most-pressing needs. Depending on the tool, it may be used one-time, periodically, on an ongoing basis, or for a period of time after which the group may no longer find it useful. Or, a group may try a tool for a period of time and decide it's not for them and try another tool instead.

The workbook provides an easy-to-follow guide to using each tool. Most of the tools have accompanying worksheets that will be available online. The tools are grouped in sections:

• Tools Used in the Strategy Formation Session
• Market Research and Communications Tools
• Tools to Promote Strategic and Creative Thinking
• Organizational Assessment Tools
• Strategy Implementation and Monitoring Tools
• Tools for Successful Strategy-focused Meetings

Here, we profile three of the tools:

• Organizational Scope / Current Business Model (a core component of the strategy formation session, this is also useful in business planning and as a "stand-alone" tool)
• Strategic Thinkers Group (a simple, but effective, tool for promoting strategic and creative thinking)
• Post-action debriefing (adapted from the business sector, this tool helps capture learning and helps assure that successes will be repeated and that mistakes will not)

I'd love to know your thoughts, comments, and/or questions about the ideas discussed in this article. Please email me.

Splitting at the seams

by David La Piana, President

This is a bit of an exaggeration, but the expansion of our consulting team and practice over the past two years recently brought us to the realization that we were outgrowing our infrastructure and it was time for measures beyond our usual tinkering alterations. As a growing organization, we are experiencing the challenges of retaining the firm's close-knit, non-hierarchical / non-bureaucratic culture, while at the same time putting needed structure and processes in place to promote efficiency and maintain our high standards for quality. We initiated this change process at our May staff retreat.

Our ultimate objectives are that these changes are seamless and provide increased value to our clients. As we predicted, even when positive and exhilarating, organizational change is hard, especially when the firm's ongoing work must go on. While we've all experienced such change throughout our professional careers, to experience this as a consulting team takes the learning to a whole new level, especially since our work focuses on helping nonprofits navigate organizational change. In short, our entire team whole-heartedly empathizes with our clients as they undertake change!

La Piana Associates, Inc. is a management consulting firm that helps nonprofit organizations and philanthropic foundations effectively address the strategic issues they face. We are dedicated to improving the capacity of the nonprofit sector, and specifically to helping nonprofits become stronger, more effective, and sustainable for the long-term. Our mission is to help transform the way nonprofits are led and managed so that they have a more powerful impact on society. For further information, please visit our website at www.lapiana.org or contact us at info@lapiana.org.

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