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Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits How to Create a Strategy
That Is Focused Understandable Embedded and Living
First Edition Charles Moore Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Charles Moore
ISBN(s): 9781003499619, 1003499619
File Details: PDF, 4.15 MB
Year: 2024
Language: english
Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

Most nonprofits approach strategic planning in ways that take too much time
and effort, focus on the wrong issues, and set up the plan to be something that
gathers dust on a shelf rather than being implemented. If you want a different
approach, this is the book for you.
This book shows nonprofit leaders and organizations how to conduct stra­
tegic planning processes that deliver both a great strategy and an organization
that can drive strategic change and continually refresh its strategy. It introduces
a new framework—Strategic FUEL—and shows leaders how to map their
organization’s strategic situation to a planning approach that addresses the
most important opportunities and challenges, without wasting time and effort.
It also shows the actions leaders can take during strategic planning to increase
the odds of successful strategy implementation. The core content of this book
was developed while working with nonprofit leaders on strategic planning, so it
converts the best research and ideas to practice and step-by-step guidance.
This book will be a valuable resource for nonprofit CEOs and their teams,
foundations looking to support their nonprofit grantees, and students in non­
profit management courses and programs. While the book is focused on the
nonprofit world, the lessons are also applicable to any leader trying to drive
strategy effectively.

Charles Moore is the CEO of Thrive Street Advisors and a trusted advisor and
strategy consultant to nonprofit and for-profit leaders. He is an adjunct faculty
member at the Georgetown Center for Public & Nonprofit Leadership and has
served on the boards Father’s Uplift, EdFuel, SchoolTalk, and Monument
Academy. Charles holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Harvard and
an MBA and master’s degree in Education from Stanford.
“Good strategy for uncertain environments, I’ve always suspected, should be
more “search algorithm” than ‘itinerary.’ In this book, Charles provides a
compelling plan for organizing around that principle, full of hard-won wisdom
on how to rally your team to make it happen.”
Paul Niehaus, Ph.D., Founder, Give Directly

“As much as we might want a strategy to be ‘done’ and crossed off our to-do
lists, it must constantly evolve to deliver value. This book offers an insightful
framework for elevating your organization’s approach to strategy and keeping
it relevant.”
Clarence Wardell III, Ph.D., Senior Program Officer, Gates Foundation
Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

How to Create a Strategy That Is Focused,

Understandable, Embedded, and Living

Charles Moore
Designed cover image: Getty
First published 2025
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2025 Charles Moore
The right of Charles Moore to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-032-81390-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-81273-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-49961-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003499619

Typeset in Galliard
by Taylor & Francis Books
This work is dedicated to all those who labor to create a better
world.
Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments x
About the Author xi

Introduction: Strategic Planning Doesn’t Necessarily Lead to

Strategic Impact. That’s Why You Need Strategic FUEL 1

1 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 12

Designing a Planning Process That Generates Strategic

FUEL 22

2 Determining What Strategic Planning Approach Your

Organization Needs 23

3 Creating the Conditions for Success 34

4 Getting the Right People Involved in the Strategy Process 44

STRATEGIC FUEL ELEMENT 1

Focused: How to Build a Strategy That Enables Impact 57
5 Prioritizing and Conducting Strategic Analysis 59

6 Turning Analysis into a Focused Strategy 73

viii Contents

STRATEGIC FUEL ELEMENT 2

Understandable: How to Communicate the Strategy So
People Get It 83
7 Communicating Throughout the Strategic Planning Process 85

8 A Strategic Plan Document That Communicates the Strategy Well 94

STRATEGIC FUEL ELEMENT 3

Embedded: How to Make Organizational Routines
Strategic 103
9 The Connection Between Effective Routines, Learning, and
Strategy 105

10 Designing Your Organization’s Strategy System 114

STRATEGIC FUEL ELEMENT 4

Living: How to Build a Culture That Enables Strategic
Learning and Adaptability 123
11 What a Strategic Culture Looks Like 125

12 Seven Approaches to Driving Strategic Change 135

13 Your Role in Leading Strategy 146

14 Final Thoughts 153

Appendix A: Strategic Analysis Ideas 158

Appendix B: Designing Your Organization’s Strategy SystemA Step­
By-Step Guide 168
Appendix C: More Resources and Taking Action 180
Index 182
Illustrations

Figures
I.1 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 2
3.1 A Traditional Planning Process 34
3.2 Planning with Priming and an Action-Orientation 35
4.1 Roles in the Strategic Planning Process 45
5.1 Steps 1 and 2 of Crafting the Strategy 59
5.2 Strategy Map for a Social Justice Organization 63
6.1 Steps 3 and 4 of Crafting the Strategy 73
14.1 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 154
A1 Net Promoter Score Responses 160
A2 Share of Promoters by Department 160
A3 Employee Reports of Psychological Safety 161
A4 Employee Engagement and Intention to Stay at the
Organization 162
A5 Employee Value Proposition Attribute Map 162
A6 Employee and Leader Ratings of Leadership Effectiveness 164
A7 Leader Ratings of Organizational Capabilities 165
B1 Analysis of Current Forums 171
Acknowledgments

Thanks to you, the reader, for taking the time to read and engage with this
book. Your interest, feedback, and support make writing a truly rewarding
experience.
This book required the contributions of many people.
Thanks to the colleagues and friends who shared their experiences and
provided feedback as I developed and refined the ideas for this book. They
include Amir Ali, Anne Marie Burgoyne, Lindsey Cooksen, Mary Kate Cun­
ningham, Abby Davidson, Rick DeJarnette, Kevin Dowdell, Suzanne Ehlers,
Erin Fiaschetti, Erin Frackleton, Adriane Gamble, Natalie Guillen, Alix
Guerrier, Tara Hofmann, Monica Hopkins, Steph Itelman, Roshni Jain,
Brooke Jones, Justina Lai, Simmons Lettre, Mark Lockwood, David Osei,
Bisi Oyedele, Mason Pan, Amit Patel, Erica Phillips, Jacqui Purcell, Guilia
Salieri, Shalini Shybut, Liz Simmons, Norm Smith, Spencer Smith, Rebecca
Taber Staehelin, Jonathan Tate, Aoife Toomey, Anika Warren Wood, David
Williamson, and Jessica Wodatch.
Thanks to those brave and generous souls who read rough—sometimes,
really rough—drafts. I appreciate their candor, encouragement, and thought
partnership in refining the core ideas. These folks include Jessica Bieligk,
Martha Blue, Noah Eisenkraft, Lauren Hult, Melissa Kessler, Kofi Kumi,
Gerard McGeary, Garrett Ulosevich, Jeremy Utley, and Clarence Wardell.
Thanks to this book’s editorial and publication team for their guidance,
artful nudges to keep going, and for helping me sound like a reasonably intel­
ligent person who paid attention to grammar lessons in grade school. The
team includes Trisha Giramma, Maura Grace Harrington Logue, Bethany
Nelson, Meredith Norwich, and Kammy Wood.
Finally, thanks to my wife, Erin, for indulging the effort and giving grace for
the evening and weekend writing sessions.
Thank you all for your invaluable contributions and for making this book
possible.
About the Author

Charles Moore is a trusted advisor and consultant to nonprofit, for-profit, and

government leaders.
Charles was trained in the art and science of strategy during two stints at
McKinsey & Company and continues this work as CEO of Thrive Street
Advisors. He has supported dozens of organizations in improving perfor­
mance, including strategy efforts at nearly twenty nonprofits.
As an executive coach, Charles has worked with over eighty nonprofit
Executive Directors and business executives on their challenges in leading
effectively and driving strategic change. His clients have worked for some of
the world’s leading organizations like Amazon, Google, Capital One, Hilton
Hotels, and the U.S. Senate.
Charles has served on the boards of the nonprofits Father’s Uplift and
EdFuel, and he has been the Board Chair of SchoolTalk and Monument
Academy Public Charter School. Charles has taught Change Management as
an adjunct faculty member at the Georgetown Center for Public & Nonprofit
Leadership.
Charles holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Harvard and earned an
MBA from Stanford, with a certificate in Public Management. He also holds a
master’s degree in Education from Stanford. Charles lives in Washington, D.C.
with his wife, Erin, and two kids, who are continually charged up.
Introduction
Strategic Planning Doesn’t Necessarily Lead
to Strategic Impact. That’s Why You Need
Strategic FUEL

THE PROBLEM WITH MOST STRATEGIC PLANNING

PROCESSES
Imagine you are driving a bus from New York City to Los Angeles. Everyone
in your organization is on board.
If this were 2002, you would probably enter the destination in MapQuest and
print the turn-by-turn instructions. You would probably also plot out where to
stop on the road, and where to stay overnight. With limited access to the internet,
you would probably stick with the plan until you got to the destination.
Traffic jam? Well, you’re stuck.
What’s more, only you and maybe a capable navigator in the front seat know
where the bus is headed. Everyone else is just along for the ride, and all they
know is the updates and information you provide for them during the trip.
Now imagine taking that same trip today. You still identify a specific desti­
nation but enter it into Waze or a similar app, providing ongoing, real-time
scanning of the environment and the path ahead. As soon as the app sees a
traffic jam, it looks for a way around it. And everyone on the bus can access all
the information you know—and maybe more, since they’re not driving. If they
know how to reach the destination and feel comfortable contributing ideas,
they can help make the trip faster, more enjoyable, or both.
Strategic planning is much like this road trip. Unfortunately, most nonprofits’
processes are stuck in the 2002 version—plotting every single step upfront, with
no ability to deviate from the plan and one-way communication with passengers.
An effective strategic planning process should be more like the modern road
trip. Rather than just identifying the destination, it should also be about creating
an organization able to collectively plot the journey to that destination. It should
also equip the organization to learn and adapt as external factors change.
This book was created to help you design and run a strategic planning pro­
cess that delivers not only a new plan but a new, more enduring way of
working on strategy.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003499619-1
2 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

THE ASPIRATION: CONDUCT A STRATEGIC PLANNING

PROCESS THAT BUILDS STRATEGIC FUEL
I regularly talk to leaders who are considering a strategic planning effort. In
those conversations, I usually ask questions like:

What do customers say when you ask them for feedback about what they value
most in the service? What else do they want from you?
For what specific reasons do customers choose you over competitors?
Can you show me the last few quarterly employee surveys that indicate what the
employees need from the organization?

Unfortunately, their answers to those questions often leave me wanting.

When leaders do not have good answers to those questions, it is usually a sign
their organization has accidentally stopped strategizing. Sure, there’s a stated
strategy, but it is unlikely to have been refreshed with feedback and learning.
The alternative to that state is building and sustaining Strategic FUEL,
which helps your organization keep its strategy fresh and relevant.

Figure I.1 The Elements of Strategic FUEL

 Introduction 3

In the body, metabolism is the process by which the body converts the fuel
of food and drink into energy. When we have high-quality fuel and efficient
conversion, we have the energy to achieve our goals.
In strategy, the high-quality fuel comes from consuming ideas from outside of
the organization and understanding the needs of customers and other stake­
holders. That creates a continual source of ideas for effecting strategic impact—if
you build routines to do so.
That means adopting tactics like:

� Having an always-on conversation with those you serve, employees, and

external stakeholders to understand best what they want from you
� Leaving the office to see operations and customers firsthand so that ideas
do not get overly filtered before they reach the senior team
� Developing an inclusive operating model in which those who directly talk
to customers and understand their needs are also directly involved in the
strategy conversation

The “efficient conversion” in strategy comes from all of the processes that help
the organization turn those ideas and insights into action. For the most stra­
tegic organizations, these are embedded in organizational routines. That’s
what helps those organizations be truly dynamic.
When I was a kid, my sister and I would spend several weeks each summer
with my grandparents in Selma, Alabama. Unfortunately, my grandfather—the
first Charles Moore—didn’t believe in using air conditioning, even as the
temperatures reached oppressive levels, and he’d turn on the oven and stove at
3:00 p.m. to cook dinner. His instruction to deal with the stifling environment
was to “let up the window.”
Strategic FUEL is fundamentally about helping your organization let up the
windows, enable the fresh air of ideas to come in and circulate, and keep its
strategy dynamic and relevant as a result.

BUILDING STRATEGIC FUEL REQUIRES A DIFFERENT

PLANNING PROCESS
Strategic planning does not automatically deliver impact. The impact comes
from a process in which stakeholders grapple with the opportunities and chal­
lenges the organization faces and, with that understanding, proactively choose
to move forward together.
That is why a process that aims to generate Strategic FUEL focuses on
creating productive debate and alignment, and building internal capabilities at
each step.
4 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

Here’s how your experience of planning is different with this approach:

Typical Strategic Planning Building Strategic FUEL

Consultants conduct focus groups and You and other leaders conduct authentic
write a report about what they heard dialogues with your teams, enabling
everyone to feel heard and respected

Consultants conduct “interviews” with You hold authentic, two-way conversa­

external stakeholders to get information tions with stakeholders to build stronger
and perspectives from them ongoing institutional relationships

Leaders hold special “strategic planning You build strategic thinking into ongo­
meetings” to build the strategy ing organizational routines

Planning committees focus on building You create a healthy debate that helps
consensus, which can result in watered- people wrestle with the challenges and
down or confusing strategy make clear strategic choices

Leaders develop a “rollout plan” for You create an ongoing dialogue in which
communicating the final strategy leaders share what they are learning,
share emerging strategy ideas, and ask for
feedback. By the end of the planning
process, everyone understands both the
what and the why of the strategy

The organization waits until next year (or You continue to evolve the strategy as
five years from now) to engage strategy you learn so that it is always relevant
questions again

When a team uses the planning process to practice new ways of working
together and starts to build strategy into its existing organizational routines, it
is set up for greater success. These are not mere “implementation” issues to
shoehorn at the end of the planning process. Indeed, they are central to
creating a more strategic organization.
In this approach, the consultant plays a support role like a fitness trainer—i.e.,
facilitating, coaching, and training team members where relevant—but the
organization’s leaders have to lift the weights.
If you’re doing the work well, you shouldn’t have to hire a consultant next time!

THE GOOD NEWS: WHEN YOU HAVE STRATEGIC FUEL,

LEADING YOUR ORGANIZATION IS EASIER
Strategic FUEL is about helping the entire organization be great at learning
and strategy, which lightens the load on senior leaders. In his book The Fifth
Discipline, Peter Senge writes about how vital this is. “As the world becomes
more interconnected and business becomes more complex and dynamic, work
must become more ‘learningful.’”1 He continues, “The organizations that will
 Introduction 5

truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap
people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.”2
As you implement this approach, you’ll likely find that it:

� Helps you create greater ongoing alignment in the organization (and

spend less time dealing with the consequences of misalignment)
� Helps you build a culture in which more people understand the need for
change and willingly pursue it
� Helps junior leaders develop strategic skills, which puts them in a position
to take on more senior roles
� Helps you not have to carry strategy alone

THE CORE ARGUMENTS OF THIS BOOK

1 Most nonprofits approach strategic planning in ways that take too much
time and effort, with uncertain impact
As a consultant, I regularly read nonprofits’ requests for proposal (RFPs) for
creating a three- or five-year strategic plan. Too often, my reaction is, “These
folks are about to waste a lot of time and money on a long document with
fancy words that never gets used.”
The first giveaway is that the RFP lists requirements for the project that reads like
the “Steps in the Process” section from a Wikipedia page on strategic planning. But
the most important sign of a potentially wasteful process is when there’s no clear
sense of the opportunities the organization wants to pursue or the challenges it most
needs to address. Often, our last plan was five years ago is the primary motivating
factor. A process based on that rationale is likely to create a confusing strategy.
If that’s your motivation, you can close this book now.
This book will help you design a planning process that directly addresses the
most important opportunities and challenges—with the right amount of effort.

2 The BIG PROCESS approach to strategic planning is a good way to

manage the politics of setting strategy. It will help you find an acceptable
answer, but it does not always help you find the right strategic answer
Strategic planning is inherently a political act. That’s not to say that the “right
answer” does not matter—just that the “right answer” is subjective, even if you
have the best analysis. All the strategic steps after that analysis—e.g., setting prio­
rities, generating buy-in, adjusting the organization’s budget—take political
acumen to do well.
It’s easy to respond to that challenge with a big process approach with long
timelines, unwieldy committees, and consensus-based decision-making.
Unfortunately, those costs do not come with guarantees of solving the political
challenge or identifying the right strategic answer.
6 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

This book will help you diagnose your organization’s strategic situation and
show you alternatives to the time-consuming big process approach that also
achieve better answers. If you still need the big process approach, this book will
show you how to achieve the political aims of alignment without the downside
of a confused strategy.

3 Needing to conduct a formal strategic planning process is a signal that

your organization may not be strategic enough on a day-to-day basis
This book will show you how to move from a sporadic approach to strategy to
a nimble, embedded approach. A process that aims to build FUEL focuses as
much on building strategic capabilities as it does on identifying the right
answer (which is only valid for today).
Why? If you take on planning but do not fix the organization’s ability to
drive strategic change, you’ll likely find yourself in the same place three or five
years from now—whenever you start the subsequent planning process.

4 If your planning process is “develop strategy, then create an

implementation plan,” you’re wasting valuable time when you could be
having an impact
Imagine trying to get in shape by researching the best workout clothes for
three months. I know I’ve been guilty of that! Unfortunately, many strategic
planning processes are conducted this way.
The approach you’ll read here will help you flip the process to focus on
creating the conditions for strategic change in parallel to getting the right
answer. And it will show you how to move into action as quickly as possible.
In that way, this book will help you accelerate impact, which I suspect you
most care about anyway.

5 The best strategies have a “best by” date

Setting strategy is about making informed guesses about the future. But
because they are guesses and the future is uncertain, the most rigorous pro­
cesses reflect that uncertainty. The plans do not assume the strategy will be
valid for three or five years. And they do not tell everyone in the organization,
“Just do this, and we’ll be fine.”
In this book, you will see how to set strategy in a way that helps the orga­
nization test and iterate as the future unfolds, which increases the likelihood
that the strategy will stay relevant. You will also see how to communicate the
strategy in ways that help people understand the why, make daily strategic
choices, and be more prepared for change.
 Introduction 7

HOW I DEVELOPED A LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH

STRATEGIC PLANNING
Hi, I’m Charles Moore.
Today, I run a strategy consulting and executive coaching practice called
Thrive Street Advisors. But before that, I spent my career weaving between the
nonprofit and for-profit sectors and between being a consultant and a leader.
This book is a synthesis of these experiences.
By way of introduction to me and to the concepts you’ll read throughout
this book, I want to share a few stories.

Painting the Sistine Chapel

After college, I started my career as a bright-eyed analyst at the management
consulting firm McKinsey & Company. When we worked with clients, we
would spend long hours trying to bring the most rigorous analysis and
nuanced strategies to clients—or, at least, so I thought!
But after two years at McKinsey, I worked with the local Boys & Girls Clubs
chapter. I aimed to learn the other side of strategy—actually implementing it.
This is where my real education in strategy started.
I realized that developing strategy is often like painting the Sistine Chapel—
a painstakingly crafted work of art. On the other hand, successfully imple­
menting a strategy is like taking a kindergarten class picture—99 percent of the
effort is getting everyone to look in the same direction at the same time.
Everyone, look here.
Sarah, we need everyone standing.
Tommy, turn to your left.
Your other left.
Getting everyone to look in the same direction should inform the balance of
effort in the planning process. Success is generating alignment, not just getting
the strategy right.
Moreover, the work to get people aligned is not a one-time task of
announcing the strategy. Instead, it is about the constant effort to keep people
looking in the same direction.

The Analysis Doesn’t Always Matter

The other thing I learned in my stint at Boys & Girls Clubs is the limited
power of analysis.
One of our big strategic projects was understanding how we might better
allocate the Clubs around the region. The long and short of it: several neigh­
borhoods with Clubs had experienced rapid gentrification, meaning fewer
underprivileged kids lived around them. It also meant that the land beneath
the clubs became one of the organization’s most significant financial assets.
8 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

We hired a consultant to help us analyze the issue. We formed a committee

of the board of directors to study it. We wrote a lengthy report with a carefully
reasoned conclusion that we should try to redevelop the land to access the
asset value and build brand new Clubs for the kids who still lived in those
gentrifying neighborhoods. It was a rock-solid case.
But here’s the thing: No one cared. Those who understood the rationale
for the change did not need to be convinced. And those who disagreed with
the idea or who just did not want changes in their neighborhood would never
be convinced.
That experience taught me that strategic change is not a function of how rig­
orous your strategic analysis is. Unfortunately, I have re-learned that lesson many
times since then! Instead, success in strategic planning is usually a matter of
understanding the barriers to change—both logical and emotional—and addres­
sing those in a savvy way. It is intrinsically a leadership and political exercise.
That insight also means the pace and effort of planning is driven by the
problem you are trying to solve. There are techniques you can use to develop
strategic insights rapidly. There are situations in which the “planning” phase
need not last more than a few days or weeks, and the action phase can start
immediately. And there are situations where you need less time from expensive
consultants and way more time from the organization’s leaders.
You’ll read more about that in this book.

Having a Split Personality

After working at Boys & Girls Clubs, I decamped to California to attend
business school at Stanford. Given my long-standing interest in education and
the nonprofit sector, I also enrolled in the education school there.
Being in both environments simultaneously created a sometimes strange
experience. Among my business school friends, I was a touchy-feely nonprofit
guy. And while at education school, people sometimes thought of me as one of
those hard-core businesspeople who did not get the human-centered enter­
prise that is helping kids succeed.
Turns out, I’m the same person.
Most importantly, when studying the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, I saw
that we were working on the same issues—just using different language.
After graduate school, I similarly straddled the sectors when I returned to
McKinsey, later worked at Capital One, and served on several nonprofit
boards. I had the same feeling. The goals are different, but the challenges of
getting a group of humans to achieve ambitious goals are essentially the same.
When I once worked with the board and leadership team of a local charter
school, the CEO of the school remarked, “We could achieve breakthrough
outcomes if it weren’t for all of the drama on the team!” I asked, “Have you
ever experienced an environment where that wasn’t the case?”
 Introduction 9

Having conducted almost forty consulting engagements across the for-

profit, nonprofit, and government sectors, I assure you that dynamic exists in
every. single. organization.
Along the way, I got trained as an executive coach. Since then, I have done
nearly 700 hours of executive coaching, including for ten nonprofit executive
directors and over twenty-five vice president-level and C-suite executives. That
gave me even more of a window into the challenges these executives face in
driving strategic change in their organizations—the technical, the political, and
the interpersonal. The work is hard for everyone!
All of that experience is why this book focuses so much on solving the
human challenges of doing strategy well. This book will not only talk about
how to take on the process, but it will help you think about doing strategic
planning in a way that achieves impact.

Resolving the Love/Hate Relationship

If I have a love/hate relationship with strategic planning, why do I continue to
do it? Why write this book?
I hate spending time on analysis that does not matter, which led me to
develop tools to identify what analyses do matter.
I hate doing external stakeholder interviews and employee surveys and
thinking, “This organization is spending a lot of money to have me do some­
thing they should do for themselves on a regular basis.” So, I wrote this book
to help you build internal capabilities and robust ongoing routines.
I hate developing a strategic plan for an organization and knowing that they’ll
be stuck in three or five years because they don’t have the team capacity to keep
the strategy fresh. That’s why this book is built around Strategic FUEL and urges
you to focus on building strategic capabilities from the start of the process.
When an organization is so in tune with clients, employees, and external
stakeholders that it continually meets their needs, I love it.
When an organization has the ability to continually reflect on and adjust its
strategy such that they don’t need my help, I love that.
When their strategy is so embedded in their day-to-day work that they don’t
even need a process called “strategic planning,” that’s when I absolutely love
strategic planning.
This book is my strategic planning love letter to you.

BEFORE WE GET STARTED, A NOTE ON LANGUAGE

This book is written for nonprofit leaders, but when reading an early draft of it,
a nonprofit leader said, “I notice that you include a lot of business examples. Is
it your argument that nonprofit strategy is the same as for-profit strategy?”
After thinking about it briefly, I said, “Basically, yes.”
10 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

It is worth stipulating that every sector and industry has unique strategy
dynamics. How technology companies compete to win in cloud computing
vastly differs from how nonprofits “compete” for their clients, employees, and
donors. Similarly, a nonprofit running a soup kitchen will have different stra­
tegic concerns than a nonprofit running schools, as their funding and opera­
tional models differ substantially.
But despite those technical differences, my experience is that the core ideas of
strategy and the human experience of setting strategy are similar across sectors.
First, every organization should have a clear purpose and a crisp definition of
success. Still, many organizations and teams, regardless of sector, struggle to
keep their purpose and strategic vision front of mind. It is easy for everyone to
get caught up in their day-to-day to-do lists, what their colleagues want from
them, and organizational politics—everything happening today and everything
inside the organization. This is a phenomenon of humans and groups, not
specifically a function of the sector.
Moreover, nearly every organization struggles with keeping its “customers”
at the center of its work. When I talk to nonprofit leaders, the language of
“customers” does not always resonate. That’s partly because it has a commer­
cial ring to it and partly because nonprofits have multiple stakeholders—the
people they serve, the people who fund them, and the larger community they
are trying to improve with their services.
But it’s worth thinking with a customer lens for this simple reason: If the
people you need to join the effort have a choice, then it’s worth understanding
what matters to them and how they will make that choice.
This applies equally to those you serve, donors, and critical suppliers.
For all those reasons, throughout this book, you will see examples and lan­
guage from the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. The terms “CEO,” “executive
director,” and “top leader” are interchangeable. “Customers” and “clients” are
both used for the people who consume your organization’s product or service.

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits is written for senior leaders who want to plot a
different course for their organizations.
In the next chapter, you’ll see the four elements of Strategic FUEL. The rest
of the book is organized around those elements—the first two help you navi­
gate a strategic planning process, and the latter two help you build effective
strategy routines and culture. You can read all of it at once, but the book is
designed to be consumed in small chunks. I know you’re busy!
Let’s go!
 Introduction 11

Notes
1 Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
(New York: Crown Business, 2006), 14, e-book.
2 Ibid.

References
Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
(New York: Crown Business, 2006), 14, e-book.
Chapter 1

The Elements of Strategic FUEL

If I’m going to argue that you should take a different approach to strategy
than you are probably using now, I figured it would be helpful to outline the
reasons why.
In this chapter, you will see the four elements of Strategic FUEL, why
each is important, questions to help you assess how your organization is
doing, and how you can start to build them during your strategic planning
process.

ELEMENT 1: THE STRATEGY IS FOCUSED

I own exactly one pair of jeans.
About 90 percent of my clothes are from just two stores—I never see a need
to complicate the search process.
And my kids live under a household rule that if they don’t put their
toys away at the end of the night, there’s a good chance they’ll be in the
trash or Goodwill bin by the morning. It’s a harsh rule, but it keeps the
house tidy!

DOI: 10.4324/9781003499619-2
 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 13

Long story short: I like to keep things simple. When there are fewer things
cluttering my space, mind, and to-do list, it is much easier to make progress on
the things that matter most.
Beyond my personal affinity for simplicity and focus, it is one of the most
important parts of effective strategy. For example, in the book In Search of
Excellence, strategy consultants Tom Peters and Robert Waterman write, “One
of the key attributes of the excellent companies is that they have realized the
importance of keeping things simple despite overwhelming genuine pressures
to complicate things.”1
In a completely different context, the former head of the U.S. Special
Operations Command, Admiral William McRaven, wrote a master’s thesis on
what allows a smaller military force to defeat a larger one. One of the six
components was having a plan that limits “the number of tactical objectives to
only those that are vital.”2
Why is focus so important for strategy?
In the book Unleashed, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei and
scholar Anne Morriss write that a major lesson of their research “is that orga­
nizations that resist and try to be great at everything usually end up in a state
of ‘exhausted mediocrity.’”3
Nonprofit work is already hard enough—there’s no need to set yourself up
for exhaustion and mediocrity.
In the case of special operations, there are two benefits of focus that are
relevant for any team. The military reason to limit the number of objectives is
to achieve “relative superiority” where it matters most. You squander this
advantage by spreading resources thin.4 Moreover, McRaven’s research shows
that limiting objectives focuses the training and “decreases the number of
‘moving parts.’”5
Those benefits are relevant to teams in all contexts because they are related
to the fact that it is humans who are coordinating the moving parts. If your
organization has humans, you need a focused strategy!

Does Your Organization Currently Have a Focused Strategy?

The prompts below contain the elements of a focused strategy. As you read
through the prompts, answer Yes, No, or I Don’t Know.

1 The organization has a clear mission statement.

2 The organization has a clear vision of the impact it seeks to make (e.g.,
offering what, to whom, for what purpose).
3 The organization has defined the critical steps to reach that vision or stra­
tegic destination.
4 The organization has identified programs or services, customer segments,
and activities that fall outside of the vision and is willing to sacrifice them to
focus on the most critical areas.
14 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

5 The organization has defined the most important capabilities required to

reach the strategic destination.
6 The organization has identified capabilities where it is willing to be med­
iocre or even weak in order to concentrate attention and resources on the
most important capabilities.
7 The current strategy directly addresses the most critical challenges or
impediments to success.
8 The organization has an economic model that enables it to achieve its
vision and be reasonably sustainable going forward.

If you answered Yes to almost all the questions above, your organization
likely has a focused strategy. Of course, having a focused strategy does not
necessarily mean the current strategy is optimal for the future. However,
having clarity on the strategy helps you better identify where it needs to be
altered or evolved to be more effective.
If there are elements for which you answered No or I Don’t Know, a
helpful first step would be for you and each member of the leadership team
to write down the current strategy. The conversation will likely surface
insights on where the challenges are and where the team is aligned or
misaligned.

Creating a Focused Strategy Requires a Planning Process Designed to Achieve It

Several years ago, I helped a small nonprofit law firm develop its strategy. We
conducted a survey of its board and staff that included this question: To have
greater impact, what should the organization be doing that it is not doing currently?
Eighteen of the twenty-one respondents had an answer to that question.
But in response to the question, What is one program or activity the orga­
nization does today that may have outlived its usefulness?—a soft version of
asking What should we subtract to be more focused?—only two people who
completed the survey had a concrete suggestion. Most others did not answer
or were not sure.
Of course, few people object to the idea that focus and prioritization are
important—they are just hard to do in reality.
The first step toward greater prioritization is to provide explicit prompts for
people to consider subtraction as they explore strategy. What should we start
doing?andWhat should we stop doing?
You can also set arbitrary limits for how many significant initiatives to take
on in the new strategy. Arbitrary limits are a blunt tool, but they help force
choices about what’s most important to do and what’s nice to have. Whenever
I have seen it, the conversation about whether Project #5 or Project #6 is more
important only happens when a rule limits the group to just five projects.
Without limits, prioritization is just theoretical.
 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 15

The important part of taking these steps during the planning process is that
they mirror the mindsets and behaviors that help the organization maintain a
focused strategy during the implementation.

ELEMENT 2: THE STRATEGY IS UNDERSTANDABLE

It’s not enough to merely have a strategy. People in the organization need to
understand and believe in it to make progress.
That’s why a focused strategy must be paired with leaders’ clear commu­
nication about it. Because human beings need to coordinate to implement
strategy effectively, it must be simplified for consumption, regardless of its
complexity.
Unfortunately, many organizations do not communicate about strategy
effectively. In Unleashed, Frei and Morriss write: “This scale of leadership
depends on people understanding the strategy well enough to inform their
own decisions with it. In our experience, too many companies are held
back by strategic confusion below the most senior ranks.”6
Instead of conveying simple and effective messages, leaders’ communications
are often filled with jargon and fancy talk. Chip and Dan Heath, professors at
Stanford and Duke, respectively, put this well in their book Made to Stick: “To
a CEO, ‘maximizing shareholder value’ may be an immensely useful rule of
behavior. To a flight attendant, it’s not.”7
Many strategic planning processes leave communication until…you know,
there’s a strategy. So why mention it now? The foundation of effective com­
munication happens throughout the process as you enable people to wrestle
with the case for change.
Later, I’ll provide more specific guidance on creating a “Strategic Prin­
ciple” and a “Focusing Question” to guide this simple communication. The
main point here is that the planning process should be oriented toward
finding the messages that enable stakeholders to understand their role in
the strategy.
16 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

How Effective Is Your Strategy Communication?

As you read through the prompts, answer Yes, No, or I Don’t Know.
1. The average person in our organization could articulate the strategy.
2. The average person in our organization consciously uses the strategy to guide
their day-to-day efforts (e.g., decide what’s most important to work on).
If you answered No or I Don’t Know to either prompt, there is an oppor­
tunity to improve how the strategy is delivered to or consumed by people in
the organization.

ELEMENT 3: THE STRATEGY IS EMBEDDED

How is the organization doing?
What’s most important to accomplish?
What changes should we make to achieve those important objectives?

These questions are the heart of strategy.

The most strategic organizations ask themselves those questions con­
tinually—in fact, they are the heart of every organizational routine. They’re
discussed in the weekly team meeting. The questions are visited when
teams review client feedback. They even come up in budget review
meetings!
Indeed, the annual strategy process is only distinct for the most strategic
organizations because they ask those questions with a longer time horizon.
 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 17

By continually investing in their flexibility and creativity, organizations can

respond to external events and refresh their strategy. When an organization has
the proper routines, it becomes more effective by:

� Learning more rapidly. Routines encourage (or require!) people to

reflect regularly on their work and how the system is operating so they can
identify better paths forward.
� Focusing talent more effectively. When organizations proactively move
the right people to the right work (i.e., where they can make the most
impact), they can achieve more significant results.
� Focusing attention. Leaders can use routines to shape how people define
success and what mental models and questions they can use to drive
independent actions. This encourages everyone to engage in actions that
better align with the organization’s overall strategy.
� Focusing financial resources. Many organizations set a budget once per
year, but a more proactive and ongoing reallocation of resources to the
right activities is a critical factor in aligning action to the organization’s
overall strategy.

Does Strategy Live in Your Organization’s Routines?

The prompts below will help you consider your organization’s ability to learn
and evolve strategy—i.e., to be strategic. As you read the prompts, answer Yes,
No, or I Don’t Know.

1 We regularly solicit feedback from the people we serve about what they
value most (and least) about our programs and services.
2 We regularly solicit employees’ feedback about their experience and how
we can improve things for them.
3 We regularly solicit feedback from partners, donors, and other external
stakeholders about how well we’re doing and how we can improve.
4 When we learn something—from within or outside—we are good at
sharing the lessons across the organization.
5 We have routines that help us identify the most important activities, and
then we follow through on that prioritization.

The more you answered Yes to the prompts above, the more likely your
organization has the raw ingredients to enable your strategy to evolve.
18 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

ELEMENT 4: THE STRATEGY IS LIVING

Strategy is just today’s best guess about the future—an educated guess,
sure, but a guess nonetheless. Moreover, the quality of that guess is inher­
ently limited by the information the team has when setting the strategy.
The most strategic organizations recognize this dynamic. Rather than
treating their strategies as if they are written on stone tablets, these orga­
nizations continually test their assumptions and update their strategies as
they learn.
In those organizations, people do things like:

� Constantly seek new information

� Robustly debate ideas in the spirit of allowing the best information to
drive solutions
� Proactively surface the organization’s challenges to enable open discussion
of solutions
� Continually reallocate resources from activities whose impact has
decreased to those activities believed to have the highest impact in the
future

This is what it means to have a living strategy. A living strategy is part of the
lifeblood of how the team operates.
A living strategy refreshes itself.
A living strategy is a learning strategy.
Unfortunately, the actions that enable the organization’s strategy to
adapt also require individuals to show vulnerability, and our human
instincts tell us to do the exact opposite. In The Fearless Organization,
Harvard professor Amy Edmondson describes why people hold back to
avoid being negatively judged at work. She writes, “Our image is perpe­
tually at risk. At any moment, we might come across as ignorant, incom­
petent, or intrusive, if we do such things as ask questions, admit mistakes,
offer ideas, or criticize a plan.”8
 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 19

Strategy is both an intellectual and emotional pursuit. An organization can

have a great strategy, but it will never be great at strategy unless the culture
makes it safe for people to have robust debates and to change their minds
when conditions require doing so. That should sound like:
That initiative was a good idea when we started, but if I were to focus our
energy on the highest impact work today, I’d do this other initiative instead.
That pilot helped us learn a lot about our customers. We’ll end the pilot,
but we’ll integrate those lessons to strengthen our other products.
My old answer was good, but this new one is even more right.
Creating such a culture takes time, but it’s vital for enabling the strategy to
remain focused and relevant rather than unwieldy and stale.

How Strategic Is Your Organization’s Culture?

To quickly understand whether the culture supports strategic learning and
adaptation, answer Yes, No, or I Don’t Know to the prompts below.

1 People feel comfortable sharing their challenges and performance shortfalls

in public settings.
2 Leaders of departments proactively and openly end projects that are not
working well or not working as expected.
3 When there’s an error or mistake, we study it openly, without placing blame.
4 People regularly tell me, as a leader, bad news and ask for help before it
becomes a severe problem.

The more you answered Yes to the prompts above, the more likely your
organization can evolve its strategy over time. Regardless of your strategic
planning approach and what strategy your organization pursues, this is a cri­
tical capability to achieve the impact you desire.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
1 The four elements of Strategic FUEL:

� Focused: The strategy is prioritized and achievable

� Understandable: The strategy is communicated so people know how to
apply it
� Embedded: Organizational routines reinforce and power the strategy
� Living: The organization’s culture enables learning and adaptability

2 An organization can have a great strategy, but it will never be great at

strategy unless it addresses all four elements.
3 The work to create a more strategic organization should start at the
beginning of strategic planning rather than waiting until implementation.
20 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

ENGAGE YOUR TEAM

Visit the book website to download the Bonus Resources, which contains a
printable version of the questions under each element of Strategic FUEL.
Engaging your team on those questions can spur action toward building a
more strategic organization.
www.thrivestreetadvisors.com/strategic-fuel-for-nonprofits

WHAT’S NEXT
The rest of this book is organized around the four elements of Strategic
FUEL. The first two elements are what most people think of as strategic
planning—developing and communicating the strategy. However, the organi­
zation’s ability to do something with the strategy requires the routines and
culture of the final two elements.
All four components of Strategic FUEL are part of a holistic system to drive
progress. The elements represent a multiplication problem—when one factor is
zero, it risks slowing overall strategic progress to zero. That’s why you should
address all of the elements in parallel. In the next section, you will see how to
design a planning process that helps you do so.

Notes
1 Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman, Jr, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from
America’s Best-Run Companies (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 63, e-book.
2 William McRaven, “The Theory of Special Operations” (Master’s thesis, Naval
Postgraduate Institute, 1993).
3 Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empow­
ering Everyone Around You (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020), 126,
e-book.
4 McRaven (1993).
5 Ibid, 18.
6 Frei and Morriss (2020), 125.
7 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
(New York: Random House, 2007), 57, e-book.
 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 21

8 Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Work­
place for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019), 13, e-book.

References
Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Work­
place for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019), 13, e-book.
Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to
Empowering Everyone Around You (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press,
2020), 126, e-book.
Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
(New York: Random House, 2007), 57, e-book.
William McRaven, “The Theory of Special Operations” (Master’s thesis, Naval Post­
graduate Institute, 1993).
Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman, Jr, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from Amer­
ica’s Best-Run Companies (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 63, e-book.
Designing a Planning Process That
Generates Strategic FUEL
Chapter 2

Determining What Strategic

Planning Approach Your
Organization Needs

Why are you doing strategic planning?

Seriously, take a moment to consider that question.
The why question is the first thing I ask leaders when they are thinking
about strategic planning. If they do not give a direct answer to that ques­
tion, I usually probe more. Is there a strategic challenge you’re attempting to
solve or an opportunity you’re going after?
A colleague told me her go-to question for leaders considering strategic
planning is this: Is there a specific decision you need to make?
The reason you should push yourself to identify a crisp rationale for
strategic planning is that it is often a long, time-consuming process, and
there is no guarantee that the effort will yield a meaningfully improved
strategy or enable you to make critical decisions in front of the organization
with more rigor.
Rather than conducting a generic planning process, you should design
the process to fit your organization’s strategic situation. Doing so increases
the odds that the process will address the correct issues and consume only
the time and resources necessary.

WHAT STRATEGY SITUATION DOES YOUR

ORGANIZATION FACE?
In this section, you will find descriptions of several generic strategy situations.
As you read through the situations, consider their relevance to your
organization.
By identifying the most relevant strategy situations, you’ll be able to
home in on the most important strategic questions to answer during your
organization’s strategic planning process. This is important to ensure that
your team’s efforts are focused appropriately.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003499619-4
24 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

Strategy Situations

A New Opportunity
We’ve been offered a new opportunity—e.g., potential new funding or a
merger or acquisition offer—and we need to decide what to do. Because the
opportunity was unexpected, the team likely has not fully reasoned through
the implications.

B Time to Grow
We are doing well, but want to reach more people, work in new geographies,
or achieve scale. To grow sustainably, we must figure out how to adjust our
programs and organizational capabilities.

C We’re in a Precarious Situation

The organization is in a situation that requires urgent change. A turnaround is
needed, and there’s little time to identify the necessary change.

D The Service or Product Isn’t Cutting It

We’re not delivering in a high-quality way to our clients, or what we’re offer­
ing is becoming less valuable or relevant to them. This may already be visible in
our growth, retention, or satisfaction scores.

E The Money Doesn’t Work

We have a great service, but we’re not making enough money for the organi­
zation to be sustainable. We need to change the economic model to get on a
firmer footing.

F Working Here Isn’t Great

We’re doing great work, but the culture or how we work with each other
makes the experience of working here less than ideal. This makes it harder to
attract and retain talented professionals.

G Unexpected Tsunami
Forces outside our organization are creating an urgent need for us to change.
We’re in uncharted waters.
 Determining What Strategic Planning Approach Your Organization Needs 25

H Gathering Storm
Everything is mostly OK today, but we can see a storm gathering on the hor­
izon that we must prepare for now. This might come from a new competitor, a
technological change, or shifting priorities for customers and funders. The
leadership team may already be seeing early indications of the storm, but it’s
not yet visible to everyone in the organization.

I Stuck in Neutral
We’re stuck in our ways, or we’re not getting better as an organization. We
will eventually get left behind if we cannot become more dynamic.

J We’re Misaligned
The departments or units of our organization are working on different strate­
gies, are not working well together on organization-wide strategies, or are
working at cross purposes.

K Out of Control
Significant growth or change in the recent past has made things feel out of control.
We need to keep going in the same direction but make things feel more manageable.

L It’s All Good

Of course, we can improve here or there, but we’re firing on all cylinders.

M Time-Based Need to Plan

We’re just updating the strategic plan because the current one is expiring.
We’ll probably do another three- or five-year plan, but there’s no sharp edge to
our thinking.

N Funder-Driven Need to Plan

We’re pretty clear on the strategy—we’re just doing strategic planning to have
something that looks smart and interesting to funders.

MAPPING YOUR STRATEGIC SITUATION TO PLANNING

APPROACH
Depending on your organization’s situation, the planning process may vary in how
fast, how inclusive, and how much change it entails for your core programs,
26 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits

products, or services. This section outlines how you might use the reflection you did
earlier and identify what planning approach is most relevant to your organization.

Strategy Situation Approach to Planning

Gathering Storm The BIG PROCESS Approach
New Opportunity Design a slower process with all of the bells and
Time to Grow whistles and imagination of strategy. Focus on deep
engagement to enable a broad understanding of the
need for and implications of change.

We’re in a Precarious Situation The Focused, Tactical Problem Solving

Unexpected Tsunami Approach
The Service or Product Isn’t Convene cross-functional teams of experts who
Cutting It can design solutions directly and quickly.
The Money Doesn’t Work

Working Here Isn’t Great The Leadership, Routines, and Culture

Stuck in Neutral Approach
We’re Misaligned Take the work outside of a “strategy” framing,
Out of Control which can distract from the day-to-day leadership
work needed for success.

It’s All Good Consider Skipping Strategic Planning Altogether

Time-Based Need to Plan It’s probably not worth the time and effort.
Funder-Driven Need to Plan

The BIG PROCESS Approach

This is what most people have in mind when they think of a “strategic plan­
ning process,” and it may include many of the following activities:

� Forming a cross-functional planning team that will spend months on the effort
� Conducting employee surveys and listening sessions
� Conducting extensive outreach to stakeholders
� Analyzing “competitors”
� Undertaking an inclusive, consensus-based decision-making process
� Creating a detailed implementation plan and financial model

Just reading those points is exhausting!

Going through this robust process is worthwhile when the strategy calls for
substantial change—and a primary objective of the planning process is to pre­
pare the organization for that change.
This is most relevant for the Gathering Storm, New Opportunity, and
Time to Grow strategy situations. In those situations, the gathering storm,
opportunity, or growth challenges are novel for people in the organization.
Most people have not seen the change on the horizon or reasoned through
 Determining What Strategic Planning Approach Your Organization Needs 27

what the change might mean for the organization. In these cases, going more
slowly and being more inclusive at each step may ease the route.
Another reason to do the big process is because the potential change may
require a deeper analysis of its impacts, and this work requires many perspectives.
For example, if the question is How do we pursue this new opportunity (e.g., pro­
gram, geographic expansion, service) while keeping our existing work strong?, having
everyone who might be affected by the change share their perspectives may be
critical to understanding whether the opportunity is as attractive as it seems.
Of course, all of that perspective gathering takes time—some organizations
spend six to eighteen months(!) on strategic planning—so it is most relevant to
those strategy situations where there is sufficient time to decide and to act.
Finally, the big process approach may also be relevant where external factors
demand that the process appear robust and deliberate. I once worked with a
nonprofit that works on affordable housing on a new five-year strategic plan.
The organization had the good fortune of securing most of its revenue from
government earmarks. The funding dynamic required the organization to stay
within the middle-of-the-road consensus of its Congressional backers. Hence,
we knew the organization’s new five-year strategy would almost surely match
its previous strategic plan. Bold was not an option.
But even though it could have done a copy-and-paste strategic plan, the orga­
nization had to conduct a deliberate planning process with heavy stakeholder
engagement to legitimize the new plan. So, while the big process approach is not
ideal for every strategic situation, it was a reasonable choice for that nonprofit.
Because of the time and effort involved in the big process approach, you
should not pursue it if you can get away with other, more tailored approaches
discussed in this section.

Focused, Tactical Problem Solving: The Tiger Team Approach

If the strategic challenge is evident to most people and well defined in scope,
the best approach is to ask the people in your organization with the most
relevant expertise to solve the challenge directly. This approach is most
appropriate for The Service or Product Isn’t Cutting It, We’re in a Pre­
carious Situation, and the Unexpected Tsunami.
In these situations, you need expert voices to apply the best knowledge quickly.
Or, put another way, the effort to solicit a more comprehensive set of perspectives
may not yield better ideas about the solution. Hence, a tiger team can be helpful.
One client, an organization that provides public defenders for those who
cannot afford lawyers, adopted this approach. The organization’s leaders star­
ted the strategic planning process with an instinct that a more agile, action-
oriented approach would suit them.
That instinct was confirmed when its leadership team evaluated the drivers
and inhibitors of progress against the previous strategic plan. A primary insight:
Where they made progress were those areas that had focused attention.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 Pipes instead of Parget for chimneys, either circular for masonry,
or 14 by 9 in., and other forms and sizes, not to injure the bond of
brickwork; Grecian, Italian, pan, plain, and ornamental tiles, instead
of slates, for roofs, with tiles for the hips, valleys, and ridges, a
desirable substitute for lead, those for ridges with pyramidal points,
lilies, &c.; paving tiles, 6, 7½, and 9 in. square, blue and red, to lay in
checquer; skirting tiles; garden edging tiles, very neat; channel tiles;
sough grate tiles; drain shell tiles; conduit pipes, of various
diameters, from 3 to 16 in., with dead or socket joints, also conical,
to fit one within another—the 12 and 16 in. are well adapted fur small
sewers. Great numbers of the different sorts and sizes of these pipes
have been used upon the railways, especially the London and
Birmingham, the Great Western, and Birmingham and Gloucester
lines. At home and abroad they are preferred to lead, iron, &c., to
convey water for domestic use. The paving of this material, whether
square or oblong, is clean, efficient, and durable; it is well adapted
for ground floors in general, for outyards, footpaths in towns, &c.
Bath Depôt—Mr. W. Davey, the Quay.
Bristol Depôt—Mr. G. S. Burroughs, Canon’s-marsh.
Isle of Wight—Mr. Ent. Paxton, Ryde.
An early call is most respectfully solicited.

ORNAMENTAL GLASS, Wedgwood Vases, China and Earthenware.

—APSLEY PELLATT, only surviving partner of the firm of Pellatt and
Green, many years since removed from St. Paul’s churchyard to the
Falcon Glass Works, Holland-street, Blackfriars, which is the only
establishment in London where every operation connected with
glass manufacture (as blowing, cutting, engraving, stoppering, &c.)
may be seen in full operation every Tuesday, Wednesday, and
Thursday. For a description, with engravings, see Penny Magazine,
No. 572. The extensive show-rooms contain a large assortment of
decanters, wine glasses, desert services, toilet and smelling bottles,
medical and philosophical glass ware, crystal renaissance
chandeliers, massive, highly refractive, and decorated with large
arabesque ornamental drops, easily cleaned; also girandoles,
candlesticks, &c. The china and earthenware comprise breakfast,
dinner, desert, tea, and chamber services, from the best
manufacturers; together with an extensive selection of Etruscan,
Italian, and other vases, modelled and executed by the most able
artists at Messrs. Wedgwood’s works, at Etruria, including his
celebrated chef-d’œuvre copy of the largest Etruscan vase in the
British Museum, the Portland vase, &c. Printed lists, with sketches,
may be had on application.

SMITH’S PATENT DOUBLE AND SINGLE ACTION DOOR-

SPRINGS are warranted to be the cheapest and best.
Patent weather-tight Fastenings and Cill bars for French
casements, which render the French windows perfectly dry, and
make a secure, cheap, and invisible fastening. Improved cramps for
laying floors.
Manufactory for Iron and Brass work of every description. Depôt
for the Patent Wire, Rope, and Sash Line, 69, Princes-street,
Leicester-square.
London:—Printed by Messrs. J. L. Cox & Sons, 75, Great Queen-
street, Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields; and published by Francis Newton,
at the Office, 2, York-street, Covent-garden, where all Letters
and Communications for the Editor are to be addressed.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BUILDER,
NO. 1, DECEMBER 31, 1842 ***

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