When Life Happens to Your Strategic Plan: Adaptive Strategic Planning for the Real World
We've all been there. You spend months (maybe even the better half of a year!) crafting THE strategic plan. Your team is aligned, your funders are excited, and you're ready to change the world. Then life happens.
Maybe it's sudden staff turnover. Maybe your biggest funder shifts priorities overnight, or your community's needs evolve faster than your quarterly check-ins. Suddenly, that beautiful strategic plan feels more like expensive wallpaper than a guiding north star.
You might feel like strategic planning is just a big waste of time. Understandable. This doesn't mean strategic planning is useless. It means we need to strategically plan differently.
Why Plan at All When Everything Keeps Changing?
I get it. When we realize that things are more unpredictable than we thought, strategic planning can feel like an exercise in futility. But here's why it's actually more important than ever:
Strategic planning provides clarity and direction - Even when that direction needs to shift. A good plan gives you a North Star to navigate by, not a rigid GPS route that breaks when there's construction or an accident.
It strengthens alignment and accountability - When crisis hits, teams with strong strategic foundations can pivot together instead of scattering in different directions.
It builds adaptability and resilience - The process of thinking through scenarios and possibilities makes you better equipped to handle whatever comes next.
Planning for the Unknowns (Because They're Coming)
Your strategic plan should absolutely include your vision, mission, and values. But it should also acknowledge that stuff happens. What could come up that might require you to adapt? Name those things.
Funding changes or delays
Key staff transitions
Shifts in community needs or priorities
Economic downturns or windfalls
Technology changes
Political or social shifts
Natural disasters or public health crises
You don't need to plan for every scenario, but acknowledging that change is inevitable helps you build flexibility into your approach.
A Different Way to Plan: Using Liberatory Design
Traditional strategic planning can be one that is based in extractive methodologies - consultants come in, gather information, disappear for weeks, then present a finished plan. Liberatory design flips this by centering the people most impacted and building capacity along the way.
Here's what this looks like in practice:
Define the challenges collaboratively - don't assume you know what the real problems are
Co-create solutions with the people who will implement them
Build leadership capacity throughout the process, not just at the top
Design and test small experiments before committing to big changes
Reflect and iterate regularly - this isn't a "set it and forget it" process
Set Goals AND Plan Routine Step-Backs
Build in regular times to pause, assess, and adjust. Planning for the need to reassess and adjust isn't admitting failure. It's strategic wisdom. Monthly team check-ins, quarterly board reviews, and annual deep-dive sessions should all be baked into your plan.
Less is More (Seriously)
Set achievable and ambitious goals, but not twenty of them. Three to five strategic priorities give you focus while leaving room to respond to opportunities and challenges.
Process Matters as Much as Outcomes
Create a planning process that's sustainable for your team. (And sustainable even if with staff transitions, big projects, and/or changing bandwidth.) If your strategic planning burns everyone out, you're doing it wrong. The relationships and capacity you build during planning are as valuable as the plan itself.
Plan for Joy and Rest
Yes, really. Fun and rest aren't rewards for after the work is done. They're essential components of sustainable impact. Build celebration milestones, team retreat time, and individual time into your strategic plan.
Quality Over Quantity in Measurement
Think carefully about how you'll measure success. More data isn't always better data. Choose metrics that actually tell you whether you're making progress toward your vision, not just whether you're busy.
Building in What People Actually Need
Take a strengths-based approach. Start with what's working and what people do well, then build from there.
Keep asking what people need along the way. Communities change, staff grow, funders evolve. Regular check-ins about emerging needs keep your plan relevant.
Make feedback more than surveys. Formal evaluations have their place, but the best feedback often comes from casual conversations, team debriefs, and community listening sessions.
Celebrate progress, not just completion. Don't wait until you've achieved your five-year vision to acknowledge wins. Celebrate the small victories, the lessons learned, and the relationships built along the way.
Embracing Detours as Learning Opportunities
When your plan needs to change - and it will - approach those shifts with curiosity instead of judgment. What is this detour teaching you about your community, your capacity, or your approach? How might this "failure" or huge change actually be pointing toward something more effective or more necessary?
The goal isn't to create a plan so detailed that it never needs adjusting. The goal is to build the muscle of thoughtful, values-driven adaptation so you can respond to whatever comes next while staying true to your mission.
Strategic planning in an uncertain world isn't about predicting the future. It's about building the relationships, processes, and resilience to navigate whatever future emerges. And sometimes, the most strategic thing you can do is admit the plan needs to change.
Are you trying to plan in this uncertain world? I help organizations build adaptive strategies that center community wisdom and prepare for whatever comes next. Let's talk about what strategic planning could look like for your team.
