Failing to Find a Strategy To Make You Live Long & Prosper

7 Strategy Mistakes, Mistake #5

As part of your strategy work, you hunt for ways to win by asking your community for advice. Over time, you gather tons of juicy ideas to make your nonprofit thrive.
How do you choose your one or two strategic options when you’ve gathered so many outstanding ideas? This is where analysis and sorting skills come into play. Before you meet with your stakeholders, collect like ideas together to develop five to seven distinct options that outline different ways your nonprofit will win.
Many strategic planning efforts fail because leaders don’t wrestle with distinct opportunities that lead to success. By giving your decision-makers multiple choices with which to grapple, you increase your odds of identifying your unique pathway to succeed. Take special care with this step. Failing to create viable and discrete options is one of the seven common errors that make organizations look unprofessional. To learn more about the challenges of creating strategic options, watch Too Few Options.

When you provide too few options to solve your critical challenge, you lose. Not only do you miss great opportunities, but you also look unprofessional.

Over time, when you appear unprofessional, major funders, donors, and peers desert you. By watching this video, find out how to avoid the common error of exploring too few options in your strategic planning work.

Many nonprofits create strategies that don’t help them and make them look unprofessional. This series, 7 Strategy Mistakes that Make Your Nonprofit Look Unprofessional, explores seven common mistakes. 

 

Chapters:

Introduction 00:00

Mistake #5 00:10

Forced Choice 00:27

Same Options 00:32

Fillers 01:30

How to Look Professional 02:00

Series Information 02:15

Many nonprofits create strategies that don’t help them and make them look unprofessional. This series, 7 Strategy Mistakes that Make Your Nonprofit Look Unprofessional, explores seven common mistakes. 

Author
Karen Eber Davis

Karen Eber Davis Consulting guides executive directors and CEOs to generate the resources, boards, and support they need to make remarkable progress on their missions. As the award-winning thought-leader, advisor, and founding principal of Karen Eber Davis Consulting, Karen helps nonprofit leaders get answers, generate revenue, and grow their mission. Davis is known for her innovation and practicality based on her work with or visits to over 1,000 nonprofit organizations and her experience leading board and team events. She is the author of 7 Nonprofit Income Streams and Let's Raise Nonprofit Millions Together.