Preface

Strategic management—that is, developing and implementing strategies designed to achieve desirable goals—is now increasingly required of most public and nonprofit organizations (see Figure P.1). These organizations therefore can benefit from techniques that produce highly effective strategies that can and will be implemented. Strategy mapping is such a technique. Indeed, strategy mapping is the most effective technique we know of for helping organizational leaders, managers, and other stakeholders (1) understand the challenges they face; (2) develop mission, goals, strategies, and actions to address them; and (3) do so in a quick and effective way.

Figure P.1. Strategic Management.

Strategically managed organizations develop and implement strategies designed to achieve desirable goals.

John Bryson’s Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations (4th edition, 2011) has played an important role in introducing strategic planning and management to a generation or more of students and practitioners. The book presents an overview of strategic planning and management and offers guidance on how to design and manage the process of strategy formulation and implementation. It presents strategy mapping as a major approach to strategy development, and a resource at the end includes mapping process guidelines. That resource, however, is not a workbook. Similarly, Fran Ackermann and Colin Eden’s Making Strategy: Mapping Out Strategic Success (2nd edition, 2011) also helps readers understand how to engage in four different but related aspects of strategic management: issue management, purpose identification, achieving competitive advantage, and stakeholder management. Their book also makes extensive use of strategy mapping, but it, too, is not a workbook.

Visual Strategy is meant to fill the workbook gap and is designed to help leaders, managers, and other stakeholders of public and nonprofit organizations make use of the technique we also call visual strategy mapping (ViSM). ViSM is the most powerful technique and tool we know of for helping an individual—and especially a group—figure out what to do, how to do it, and why. (ViSM was referred to as “action-oriented strategy mapping” in Bryson, 2011; the new name is more descriptive and is easier to say.)

ViSM is a causal mapping process. A causal map links statements with arrows indicating how one statement leads to another. By using a few simple but important rules for formulating statements and creating links, causal maps help reveal relevant values and possible goals, strategies, actions, and underlying assumptions. The maps then help focus dialogue and deliberation on which among the possibilities actually should be chosen. The more deeply mappers engage, the more the maps act as a powerful vehicle for negotiating agreements that are owned by all of the group. Depending on the situation, these maps may include anywhere from two dozen to hundreds of statements.

There are several reasons why ViSM is so effective. The method helps individuals and groups

• Make sense of challenging situations involving often complex, interconnected issues
• Engage in careful, logical thinking aimed at understanding and managing complexity
• Manage the complexity involved in dealing with a large number of relevant ideas and their interconnections
• Develop answers to strategic questions that are not necessarily obvious and may result in surprising outcomes
• Explore and evaluate mission, goals, strategies, actions, and underlying assumptions
• Develop “line of sight” relationships between mission and actions
• Create shared meaning through participation and dialogue
• Facilitate negotiation and commitment to agreements about what to do, how to do it, and why
• Communicate strategies in an easily understood and acted upon way, so that implementers clearly understand what is to be done, how, and why
• Provide a vehicle for guiding, monitoring, and reviewing strategy implementation

For all these reasons, strategy mapping leads to strategy documents that are alive and on their way to being realized in practice. The developers own the strategy and do what they can to make it happen. Mapping thus leads to the opposite of many strategic planning processes—documents that sit on a shelf and are used by no one (see Figure P.2).

Figure P.2. The Strategy Morgue.

The strategy morgue is where lie the results of typical strategic planning sessions that do not make use of visual strategy mapping.

Purposes of the Workbook

Visual Strategy is intended to help make public and nonprofit strategic management easier and more effective. In addition, the workbook has a number of subsidiary purposes. Specifically, it is intended to

• Help readers better understand strategic management
• Provide readers practical guidance and step-by-step instructions in how to do strategy mapping
• Help readers understand the rationale for doing strategy mapping

Offering practical guidance will include providing readers with additional resources at the end of the workbook:

• A comparison of ViSM with other common kinds of mapping, such as theory of change, logic models, forward and backward mapping, balanced scorecard mapping, concept mapping, and mind mapping
• A checklist of mapping kit items needed for a strategy-mapping session
• Information on where to get software support
• Supplemental reading and other resources for the reflective practitioner

The workbook thus provides added detail and practical guidance to the discussions of strategy mapping in two chapters of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations:

• Chapter Six, “Identifying Strategic Issues Facing the Organization”
• Chapter Seven, “Formulating and Adopting Strategies and Plans”

Throughout the workbook readers will find cross references to John’s book, as well as to Fran and Colin’s book, Making Strategy. These books provide much more of the background and reasoning behind what is in this workbook, so readers who want to know more will know where to go. In addition, there are references to works by other people as well.

Audience

As noted earlier, this workbook is intended primarily for leaders, managers, planners, employees, and other stakeholders of public and nonprofit organizations. Many people in business organizations are also likely to find the workbook useful either because they have a direct business relationship with public or nonprofit organizations or because they find strategy mapping generally applicable to their business. We also know from our personal and teaching experience that many people will find the workbook useful for their personal strategic planning.

The audience for Visual Strategy therefore consists of

• Persons interested in developing strategies for their organizations (or part thereof), networks, collaborations, or communities
• Sponsors, champions, and funders of strategic planning and management processes
• Strategic planning and management consultants and process facilitators
• Teachers and students of strategic planning
• Individuals or small groups interested in developing strategies for themselves
• Evaluators of organizations, strategies, programs, or other kinds of interventions

Where This Workbook Will Be Relevant

This workbook is designed to be of use to a variety of people and groups working on developing, implementing, and evaluating strategies for

• Public and nonprofit organizations as whole entities of any size. This focus may well include attention to the purposes of strategies, the issues they are meant to address, stakeholder relationships, and competences necessary to implement strategies.
• Parts of public and nonprofit organizations (departments, divisions, offices, bureaus, units). Again, this focus can include attention to the purposes of strategies, issues, stakeholder relationships, and competences.
• Personnel involved with programs, projects, business processes, and functions (such as human resources management, finance, purchasing, and information technology and management) that cross departmental lines within an organization.
• Collaborations involving programs, projects, business processes, and services that include more than one organization (or part of an organization) in more than one sector.
• Networks or groups of organizations focusing on cross-cutting functions or issues.
• Communities.
• In some cases, single individuals or small groups.

How This Workbook Facilitates Strategic Planning and Management

The workbook can help make strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation easier in a variety of ways:

• Readers are introduced to a powerful method (technique and tool) for developing and clarifying strategy.
• Mapping is presented in a simple step-by-step fashion accompanied by easily understood activities the reader can practice.
• Icons are offered throughout that cross-reference other relevant parts of the workbook; point to additional useful information contained in John’s Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit...