A
- action plan
- A plan for the day-to-day operation of an organization or an organizational unit over the next one to twelve months. It includes a prioritized list of proposed projects as well as plans for all projects that have been funded. Development of an action plan should never require more than two months. The action plan should be reviewed and updated weekly.
- alignment
- (1) The arrangement of things in a line, meaning in the organizational context that there should be a direct connection all the way from mission to operations on the ground and the production of desired outputs and outcomes. (2) The arrangement and adjustment of things so they are in a proper relationship to each other and therefore better coordination occurs. (3) Essential agreement among individuals, groups, and organizations involved in implementation about what should be done, how, and why.
C
- champions
- People having primary responsibility for managing strategic planning efforts on a day-to-day basis.
- competencies
- Capabilities, sets of actions, or strategies at which the organization is particularly good, or the resources (broadly conceived) on which it can draw to perform well in terms of its critical success factors. A competency is the ability to do something well. A distinctive competency is a competency that is very difficult for others to replicate and so it is a source of enduring organizational advantage. A core competency is central to the success of the organization; it is difficult for others to replicate and so is a source of enduring organizational advantage. A distinctive core competency is not only central to the success of the organization but helps the organization add more public value than alternative providers have. Examples of distinctive core competencies are ways of delivering services that are unique and especially valued by recipients, and ways of maintaining the organization’s reputation and people’s trust in it far in excess of what rivals can do. An asset is a resource that may be used to support a competency, distinctive competency, core competency, or distinctive core competency. A distinctive asset is a supportive resource that is unique to the organization. A core distinctive asset is a distinctive asset that is central to the achievement of the organization’s business aspirations.
- critical success factor
- Something that the organization must do or a criterion it must meet in order to be successful in the eyes of its key stakeholders, especially those in its external environment.
D
- decision making
- The process of making an authoritative choice about what to do in a particular circumstance.
- deliberation
- Deliberation denotes careful, intentional, typically slow consideration of possible choices prior to choosing next steps. Both analysis and synthesis are typically involved, as is dialogue.
- dialogue
- Dialogue focuses on discovery and listening to each other. The purpose is to increase understanding by hearing what others think and why they think that way. This curiosity to discover each other’s assumptions, judgments, values, attitudes, opinions, hopes, expectations, and fears helps everyone learn and creates new, shared understanding.
F
- formative evaluation
- An evaluation focused on program or project improvement, not on making summary judgments about effectiveness. Formative evaluation seeks to understand what is going on in a program or project, to analyze what is working and what is not, and to feed information and recommendations back to implementers about how to improve it.
G
- goal
- A long-term organizational target or direction of development. It states what the organization wants to accomplish or become over the next several years. Goals provide the basis for decisions about the nature, scope, and relative priorities of all projects and activities. Everything the organization does should help it move toward attainment of one or more goals.
I
- implementation
- The effort to realize in practice an organization’s mission, goals, and strategies; the meeting of its mandates; continued organizational learning; and the ongoing creation of public value.
M
- mandate
- Something an organization is required to do (or not do), often imposed by an external actor. Mandates may be formal, such as laws, rules, or regulations, or informal, such as political mandates for change or deeply held public expectations. Mandates vary in what they require. Sometimes they require that a particular process or set of activities be followed; at other times they specify that a particular standard or outcome be achieved. Sometimes they simply authorize action in a specific area for very general purposes.
- milestone
- A significant date or event during execution of a project—often associated with the end of a phase or subphase.
- mission statement
- A statement of organizational purpose.
O
- objective
- A measurable target that must be met on the way to attaining a goal.
- ongoing operations
- Permanent endeavors that produce repetitive outputs, with resources assigned to the repeated accomplishment of basically the same sets of tasks, according to the standards institutionalized in a product or service life cycle.
- outcomes
- The end results, consequences, and ideally benefits of outputs for stakeholders, and the larger meanings attached to those outputs.
- outputs
- The actual things or final products produced by actions, behaviors, programs, projects, products, or services; the direct consequences produced by the implemented strategy, program, project, or other implementation element.
P
- performance measure
- A means of reasonably objectively assessing the results of programs, products, projects, or services.
- public value
- The public and nonprofit sector equivalent of shareholder value. Public value is what the organization does, can, or should create that the public (or parts of it) values in a collective sense. The focus is on shared or collective benefits.
S
- sponsors
- People (typically, top positional leaders) who have the prestige, power, and authority to commit the organization to strategic planning (and often implementation) and to hold people accountable for doing so.
- stakeholder
- Any person, group, or organization that can place a claim on an organization’s attention, resources, or output, or is affected by that output.
- strategic management
- The integration of strategic planning and implementation across an organization (or other entity) in an ongoing way to enhance the fulfillment of mission, meeting of mandates, and sustained creation of public value.
- strategic planning
- A deliberative, disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why it does it. Strategic planning is an approach to dealing with the serious challenges that organizations, parts of organizations, collaborations, and communities face.
- strategy
- The means by which an organization intends to accomplish a goal or objective. It summarizes a pattern across policies, programs, projects, decisions, and resource allocations.
V
- values
- Principles, beliefs, and the like that form an important part of the foundation on which an organization operates. Value statements answer these questions: How do we want to conduct our business? How do we want to treat our key stakeholders? What do we really care about—that is, value? Values are a part of an organization’s culture, so there may very well be a difference between the values people espouse and the values they actually follow in practice.
- values statement
- A description of the code of behavior (in relation to employees, other key stakeholders, and society at large) to which an organization adheres or aspires.
- vision sketch
- A brief description of what an organization will look like if it succeeds in implementing its strategies and achieving its full potential. A vision sketch is shorter and less detailed than a vision of success.
- vision of success
- A description of what an organization will look like if it succeeds in implementing its strategies and achieves its full potential. Often this statement includes the organization’s mission, basic philosophy and core values, goals, basic strategies, performance criteria, important decision-making rules, and the ethical standards expected of all employees.