What’s it called?

I'm sitting on a conference call with fellow strategic planners under the imprimatur of the Association for Strategic Planning discussing a survey to learn about successful strategic planning practices among not-for-profit 501(c)3 organizations and strategic planning consultants who work with these organizations.

You'd think that asking "what works" for your organization or your clients and "what doesn't work" for your organization or your clients would be simple.

It's not that simple.

Two big hurdles need to be dealt with before we can finish creating a meaningful survey to learn about successful strategic planning practices from the universe of U.S. based 501(c)3 non-for-profit organizations.

• First, we need to address the very obvious issue of respondent bias - organizational leaders thinking their planning processes and organizations are perhaps more successful than they really are or could be, and strategic planning consultants thinking their processes and clients are similarly more successful than they are or laying lack of planning process success not the process but on client failure.

• Second and perhaps harder to deal with is the hurdle of properly sorting out what is included in the respondent's strategic planning process because there is no agreement about what various planning elements are called.

The nomenclature issue has vexed me throughout my planning career, most recently as I prepared to sit for the Strategic Management Professional certification examination.  The study materials and references covered the gamut of planning practices, systems and approaches.  It was obvious that no standard language exists in strategic planning.  (The CPAs and CFOs have it easy, with accounting organizations and governmental bodies promulgating accounting standards.  As long as you know what set of accounting standards you are following, you can look up the term and know what it means!)

Here's an incomplete list of terms used in various planning systems, approaches and processes:

• Mission, Purpose

• Vision, Shared Vision

• Gaps

• Values, Core Values

• Critical Success Factors, Strengths, Core Competencies, Competitive Advantage, Customer Value Proposition 

• Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

• Strategies, Goals, Aims, Objectives, Priorities

• Scenarios

• Tactics, Actions, Action Steps

• Initiatives, Programs, Projects

• Timelines, Milestones

• Measurements, Success Measures

• Outcomes, Outputs, Results, Accomplishments

• Assessment, Planning Update, Re-Planning

For our survey we need to ask questions that recognize that differrent processes use different terms for the same thing, as well as realize that not all processes do the same thing.  This is a challenge!

Anyone have a strategic planning dictionary or better yet a translator so we all are speaking the same planning language?  Anyone have the same thought that I do, that people may be unecessarily complicating the process, perhaps because by tossing in different terms one gains advantage as process author or consultant?

Maybe it's time for for an Association for Strategic Planning initiative to standardize or at least align planning language so it's easier to talk about what works in strategic planning and what does not work. 

In the meantime, since one person's objective can be another's goal, I suggest that when speaking about planning processes, systems and procedures, be sure the meaning of the descriptive words used are made clear to everyone up front.  

Otherwise, do you reallly know what I mean when I talk about assuring your organization improves dramatically and achieves much greater success through effective, facilitated strategic planning using a process that addresses vision, gaps, strategies and action steps to close the gaps, implementation, measurement, assessment and re-planning?