Community Success Begins with Strategic Planning
How to create an exciting new future for your community or organization!
“We are a diverse community that supports healthy living, personal connections and participation, spiritual and cultural enhancement.”
What are the strategic catalyst processes, how do they work, how are they different from traditional methods? Why are strategic planning and strategic implementation important? How can my group, my community or my organization build a better future? Is there a way we can make change our ally, not our enemy? As W. Edwards Deming noted: “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
Strategic planning is about defining broad objectives and creating projects to accomplish them. It is best guided by a vitally compelling vision. Using a formal step-by-step process with a skilled facilitator gets the work done quickly, thoroughly and effectively. The plan helps community leaders choose between priorities and allocate resources – and create an effective action agenda.
Bargaining, compromising, lobbying and other adversarial methods often seem like the only options for reconciling disagreement within communities and school districts. Our experience proves that harmonizing differences, not ignoring or exaggerating them, leads to solutions that work.
The Running Start Institute™ facilitates unique software-supported processes to powerfully envision a collective future, create agreed-upon objectives, establish priorities, secure and allocate resources and achieve meaningful goals. There are two versions:
- “Community Catalyst™” (or “ComCat™”) for communities, governments, non-profit organizations, foundations;
- “Education Catalyst™” (or “EduCat™”) for schools, school districts, colleges and universities.
The 7-step “Catalyst” processes guide you through creating a thoughtful, dynamic and broadly supported action plan. Every step leads your community towards success:
- Create a Vision
- Brainstorm options and select Initiatives to accomplish the Vision
- Organize Initiatives into Objectives
- Prioritize Objectives
- Assess Stage of Accomplishment
- Interpret Constraints and Opportunities
- Build Action Plan
A Catalyst is much more than traditional strategic planning. Rather than forcing choices between competing ideas, it synthesizes group wisdom to create transformative ideas. It creates collaborations that open up new, unexpected and compelling possibilities.
Running Start Institute™ offers software, training, facilitation for a 3-day community action planning workshop, and ongoing consulting for successful implementation.