Strategic Planning Facilitation + Executive Strategy Advising
Building Strategic Direction, Organizational Alignment and Board Ownership
Darrell S. Freeman Sr. Incubation and Innovation Center
Project Overview
Greater Than Equal designed and facilitated a strategic planning engagement to help the Darrell S. Freeman Sr. Incubation and Innovation Center translate its early years of growth into a clearer long-term direction.
The engagement combined executive strategy advising, a facilitated Board of Directors strategic planning retreat, and six months of implementation advising, allowing GTE to support both development of the strategy and the organizational decisions required to put it into practice.
The Challenge
The Center had established programs, partnerships, events, community relationships and organizational momentum, but had not yet translated that work into a comprehensive strategic plan.
Leadership needed to assess what the organization had already accomplished, clarify who it was positioned to serve, identify priorities for its next stage of growth, and determine what resources, relationships and organizational capacity those priorities would require.
The executive director also wanted stronger board participation in advancing the work.
The challenge was therefore not simply developing a strategic plan. It was creating a strategy that connected the organization’s mission and vision to its actual operating environment, while building greater clarity around how leadership and the board could help move that strategy forward.
The Complexity
The planning process had to bridge several dimensions of the organization simultaneously.
The Center was stewarding the legacy of its founder while determining what future growth should look like. Board members brought different strengths, experiences, relationships, interests and levels of involvement. Leadership was balancing programming, funding, events, stakeholders, partnerships, audience development, communications and organizational capacity.
Those issues were interconnected.
A new program could require additional funding and staff. Growth could require stronger partnerships. Events could serve not only as programming but also as opportunities for revenue, relationship development and visibility. Board engagement needed to reflect individual members’ strengths rather than relying on the same expectations for everyone.
GTE brought both facilitation expertise and cross-functional executive perspective to the engagement, allowing strategic conversations to follow those interdependencies rather than treating planning as an isolated exercise.
Our Approach
GTE began with organizational diagnosis rather than a predetermined retreat agenda.
Through executive advising and review of organizational progress, accomplishments, performance information, audiences, programs, stakeholder relationships, leadership priorities and areas requiring greater clarity, GTE identified the strategic questions the planning process needed to address.
GTE advised the executive director on developing a state-of-the-organization review that gave the board a common understanding of where the organization had been, what it had accomplished and the conditions shaping its next stage of growth.
GTE then applied its Strategic Impact Facilitation Framework to design a planning process that moved the board from purpose and future direction into strategic priorities, opportunities, barriers, leverage points, resources, ownership and action.
Rather than rely on standard planning exercises, GTE translated familiar strategy concepts into questions and activities specific to the organization and the decisions in front of it.
Connecting Founder Legacy to Future Strategy
GTE moved the planning conversation beyond identifying what the organization wanted to accomplish to examining what accomplishing those priorities would require.
When participants identified potential programs, initiatives or priorities, GTE guided the discussion toward questions such as:
- What resources would this require?
- What capacity already exists?
- What is missing?
- What relationships or partnerships could be leveraged?
- What additional staffing or expertise might be required?
- Where would funding come from?
- What should leadership own?
- Where could the board contribute?
- What should happen first?
Participants examined barriers, opportunities, leverage points, existing relationships, available resources, funding considerations and organizational dependencies before prioritizing potential directions.
This produced a strategy grounded not only in what the organization wanted to accomplish, but in how the organization could realistically move from its current position toward that vision.
Continuing the Strategy Beyond the Retreat
The strategic planning process did not end when the facilitated session ended.
During six months of follow-on advising, GTE helped the executive director connect the emerging strategy to the decisions the organization was already making.
Advising addressed the interdependencies between strategy and areas including:
- funding and revenue opportunities;
- programming;
- events;
- board governance and engagement;
- stakeholder relationships;
- partnerships;
- audience development;
- communications; and
- implementation capacity.
The objective was not to create a plan that sat beside the organization’s work.
The strategy needed to become a reference point for how the organization made decisions, allocated attention and moved its mission forward.
Building Board Ownership
Board engagement was intentionally integrated into the strategic planning process.
Rather than asking every board member to contribute in the same way, GTE designed a leadership-development exercise that helped participants recognize the strengths they already brought to the organization.
Board members reflected on experiences in which they had overcome meaningful challenges. Other participants identified strengths demonstrated through those stories and reflected those capabilities back to each individual.
Participants then considered how those strengths could translate into meaningful contributions to the Center.
The exercise gave the executive director a stronger foundation for subsequent conversations with board members by connecting individual strengths, relationships and interests to actual organizational needs.
Board engagement became less about asking members to “do more” and more about identifying where each person could contribute most effectively.
The Outcome
The engagement established a stronger foundation for the Center’s ongoing strategic planning and implementation, including:
- a shared strategic reference point connecting founder legacy, mission and future direction;
- clearer organizational priority areas;
- board-generated strategies and potential initiatives;
- identification of barriers, opportunities, leverage points and resource requirements;
- greater clarity around funding and organizational capacity required for implementation;
- stronger understanding of the organization’s audiences and stakeholder environment;
- clearer pathways for individual board-member contribution;
- improved information for executive leadership and board decision-making; and
• • six months of executive strategy advising to help leadership integrate the strategy into ongoing organizational decisions.
Project Capabilities
Strategic Planning | Executive Strategy Advising | Strategic Impact Facilitation | Organizational Strategy | Leadership Development | Board Engagement
