Customer Reviews

High Impact Tools and Activities for Strategic Planning: Creative Techniques for Facilitating Your Organization's Planning Process

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you have ever been involved in a strategic planning effort that fell short of expectations then this book is for you. In plain language the authors lay out a planning framework with supporting involvement practices to gain organizational buy-in. They provide explanations and case study examples to show the connections between "what needs to be done and how to do it." A chapter titled "The Toolbox" covers the rational and procedures for involvement mechanisms that include "Nominal Group Process to generate ideas, Affinity Diagrams & Mindmaping to organize complex issues and Collapsing Consensus & Las Vegas Voting to help in problem solving & decision-making." There are valuable discussions on organizing the planning effort and post-planning followup / accountability. This volume supports any organizational effort to set goals, improve quality or enhance effectiveness in resource management through collaborative processes.

This book is fabulous! And I use it for much more than planning. The step by step "designs" are clear, flexible, and can be modified for nearly any audience. They can be layered upon each other for a variety of purposes. I have used this collection of great designs (which are easy to locate in the contents) many times with great success. The audience has varied from front line staff to senior leaders in education, business, and health care.

The information in this book is so easy to read and follow that even a novice group facilitator could get it right by reading the introductions and the steps.

There is NO other book on the market that has so much in such a useable format - And I've looked! It's really a bible for change agents who want fail safe designs that really excite and stimulate the audience as well as get the work done. This is a rare combination.

The authors have managed to package a "1 Stop Shopping" tool kit, cook book, workbook, all in one 3 ring binder that is a living book you can add to as you find other things that work or as you modify a design to meet a group's needs.

Simply irreplaceable and worth 2ce what it costs. I'll keep this book in front of me forever - it's already getting dog eared!

Roxana Hewertson -

Organizational Consultant and Change Partner -- Roxana Bahar Hewertson and Associates

And Also-- Director of Administration Facilities and Campus Services Cornell University.

This book is an excellent resource for those involved in planning. In addition to the background and conceptual information provided in the book, the authors have included a variety of activities that can be employed to address specific objectives. There are numerous exercises with "easy to understand" instructions on how to facilitate the activities. I've used several of them recently and received excellent feedback about the process. More importantly, the outcomes were great!

What makes this book great is the authors ability to make planning understandable and INTERESTING! They offer many ideas on how to really involve people in the planning process. They provide lots of help, and explain things carefully. I have used two of the planning activities successfully and i am looking forward to using more. I have read a lot of planning books, this is the first one that got me excited

I have had the opportunity to use the designs in this book over the past year. The designs or "strategic activities" are creative and guarnateed to advance the planning process for a wide range of organizations. The instructions have just the right amount of detail to adaquately prepare the facilitator. There is tremendous felxibility with each acitivity to accomodate longer or shorter amounts of time. The designs are
crip, imaginative, thoughtful, rooted in practice. Its a book I refer to again and again. Its been an invaluable tool to my work.

I really like this book. It shows how to get people to collaborate and be productive. I was involved in an interesting meeting over a month ago, and when I asked the facilitator where she got the ideas for the meeting she told me about this book. I have used it several times and the ideas work. I have shared the book with my husband who is a manager responsible for 350 employees. He has used some of these planning activities in his staff meetings and they have produced great results. We are two satisfied customers.

Great resource for getting people involved. Lot's of interesting, practical and creative ideas. Our organization isn't used to doing things different, but we used the ideas from this book and got Great results! They walk you through the thinking and design of these activities so you understand HOW to do them, and what results to expect. I highly recommend this book.

We have used these activities in a highly inclusive strategic planning process in our school district. We wanted to involve many different stakeholder groups (parents, teachers, students and community members) in our district-wide planning effort. Participants enjoyed these activities. Our district now has a vision of the future that people are proud of and an implementation plan to make it work.

I recently facillitated our organizational retreat and the ideas in this book were very helpful. We have a retreat 2x a year and they aren't very good. This year I was committed to making it a success and this book was great in giving me a lot of ideas and helping us plan for the future. People were excited by the ideas we generated and believe we are going to be sucessful.

Our experience shows that effective collaboration, systems thinking, stakeholder involvement, process design, and leadership are the critical success factors for strategic change. This book provides frameworks, activities, tips and tools to develop the shared ideas and committment necessary for immediate and lasting change.