The true value of strategic foresight and planning!

by: Steven Bowman
Copyright 2008 by Conscious Governance.
All rights reserved. You may forward this in its entirety to anyone you wish.

Conscious strategic foresight and planning points you and your nonprofit board in the right direction and facilitates the board to govern with awareness. Strategic foresight begins by asking the question 'what, why and where' of your nonprofit organization.

There is much misidentification about strategic foresight for nonprofit organizations. Some nonprofit CEO’s and the Boards of nonprofits believe that strategic foresight planning is not important for their organization, and is just for those "for profit" organizations. Without strategic foresight and subsequent strategic planning, a nonprofit organization will be impacted by environmental, global and regulatory changes, reduced revenues, fewer resources, and many other changes, without any idea of why or what they can do before these changes hit them. Strategic foresight is the ability to look at the "Big Picture", and to feed this into the strategic planning process.

Nonprofit strategic planning is valuable as it facilitates the Board, the leadership team and staff generally to become aware of external and internal changes that may impact the effectiveness of the nonprofit organization. It allows the Board and leadership team to proactively respond to those changes, before they become major issues that might threaten the organization. It provides a framework for the Board and leadership team to attend to the serious issues facing their organization and the nonprofit sector.

Strategic planning facilitates the nonprofit Board to discern more ways to be innovative and how to use resources more efficiently and effectively to deliver against their mission. Just as importantly, strategic foresight and strategic planning will help decrease the amount of crisis management the organization has to manage.

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About the author: Steven Bowman is an international speaker, best-selling author and global leader in providing practical frameworks and comprehensive approaches to assist Boards and Senior Executive Teams to reach higher levels of conscious awareness in governance, leadership, strategy and risk. Authors of Conscious Leadership-the Key to Success, and Leading Yourself to Money with Consciousness. Steven Bowman can be contaced by E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . . . This article may be distributed or reproduced as long as the copyright and an active URL is included.