My Basketball Coach
I have always been tall and husky. I was my current height, 6 foot 7 inches, in my freshman year of high school, and I was a basketball player and… Read more My Basketball Coach →
Developing Collective Impact Strategies
This article contains tools and approaches designed to help with the development of Collective Impact strategies. This resource is meant to serve as a guide for you and your colleagues… Read more Developing Collective Impact Strategies →
Why Strategic Planning Goes Wrong
reprinted by request As a consultant, executive staff member, board director, and teacher, I have had the opportunity to engage in a lot of strategic planning. I think about it, research it, and look for ideas to make it work better than how it tends to work. It has always bothered me to know that more often than not strategic planning efforts go awry. In another article I wrote on this topic, I stated the biggest reason why strategic plans fail is that people don’t do them. While there is… Read more Why Strategic Planning Goes Wrong →
Let’s Take a Break from Doing Good
Let’s forget our worries and our doubts and walk together unencumbered by the need for a destination. Let’s close the big books of plans and studies and turn down the volume of all that best practice noise. Let’s prefer to have faith in something less predictable and confining. Let’s agree to never again meet in board rooms, or scrawl our logic models on white boards, or wax eloquent about the innovator’s dilemma. Let’s run outside into the blue and green grinning wildly. Let’s throw away our shoes and dig our toes into… Read more Let’s Take a Break from Doing Good →
Imagine Canada Update: A Framework for Action
Earlier this year I attended a dialogue session facilitated by Imagine Canada here in Edmonton. It was the first stop on a pan-Canadian effort by Imagine Canada to have dialogue… Read more Imagine Canada Update: A Framework for Action →
RCVO Connections
The RCVO’s spring issue is out, which features an article I wrote on why strategic planning goes wrong. Also a good piece about mergers, some learning opportunities to look at,… Read more RCVO Connections →
Looking into the future
No one has a crystal ball that can predict definitively what the future will look like but there is a fair amount of forecasting that can be done that is based on demography. We know that the birthrate can help planners understand what the demand for schools and teachers will be in the future. It’s really a matter of math plus factoring in aging infrastructure that can help determine just how many schools will need to be built or phased out in the future. Demographic projections are fairly reliable, especially with… Read more Looking into the future →
About Visioning
This is a second posting in the series about Mission, Visioning and Values. See our first posting on “Mission” here. Vision. Without it, we bump into things; we stumble and fall and ultimately can’t be certain if where we end up is where we want to be. It’s a powerful and sometimes provocative word. It has numerous meanings. Being able to see what is before you AND being able to conjure up an image of the future are among the definitions or connotations of “vision.” Picturing your future reality From… Read more About Visioning →
