Strategy as Cohesive Response

UCLA's Richard Rumelt, writing for McKinsey Quarterly Review, offers a bracing perspective on the economy in "Strategy in a Structural Break."

"There is nothing like a crisis to clarify the mind," Rumelt writes. "In suddenly volatile and different times, you must have a strategy...neither a document nor a forecast but rather an overall approach...a coherent viewpoint about the forces at work, not a plan."

So if strategic planning is a priority in 2009, make your own structural break. Start from a position of responsible leadership. 

Adopt the Global Principles for Socially Responsible Associations and Nonprofits and then define your cohesive response to the forces at work.