In the coming year, I’m planning on greatly expanding my executive coaching practice, focusing on leaders who want to make better decisions about social impact. This has inspired me to reflect on the content I offer in this space as well.
Since I launched this newsletter, I have mainly shared tactics on the “how” of thinking strategically about social impact. But for a little while, I am going to try shifting focus to the “who” — the types of leaders I have encountered in this work, their most common problems, and how I think they can deal with them. I’d love to know what you think about it.
Imagine you are sitting at the desk from which you lead at your organization. Or if you aren’t a leader, imagine the desk you may sit at some day.
Now picture your strategy.
If you are like 99 percent of leaders working on social impact, you pictured something external to yourself.
The most likely culprit is a strategic plan in a three-ring binder on a shelf. You are probably accustomed to talking to people about what is in that binder and how it came to be there. (You probably also have a running list of all the parts that are out of date.)
The next most likely external source of strategy is your mission and vision statement. Other likely suspects include board retreats, listening tours, or facilitated processes with funders and other stakeholders.
None of these things are bad, but they are also not strategy. They are plans. And as Dwight Eisenhower said, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
As a leader, you’re now in the battle. The social impact you said you’d achieve in those plans is going to happen or not. Take a page from Ike and re-insert yourself in the process as the one who keeps planning after the plans are done.
When you do, you’ll see that strategy is a more of a verb than a noun. It is a living thing, and its heartbeat is decisions.
“Decision” is not a comfortable word. It comes from the same root as the word “scissor.” The spirit is cutting off a range of possibilities in favor of one particular outcome.
This tends to make people uneasy because a great deal of (alleged) decision-making in the social impact sector is inclusive or consensus-driven. Everybody gets a say. You probably remember that from your board retreat.
But even as it closes off some possibilities, a decision is a creative choice to make something real, just as surely as a director yelling “Cut!” gets you one step closer to a movie. A decision made at the right time moves the possibilities forward.
Before D-Day, Eisenhower wrote a short note to be published if the invasion failed. It read in part: ”My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
The social impact you hope to achieve will occur or it won’t. Your choices will contribute to that outcome or they won’t. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a chance to reflect and make better choices next time. To me, that process of reflection is what strategy actually is.