A Future By Design

Strategic planning is under attack by those either frustrated by its misuse or incapable of harnessing its power.  Just look at the litany of failures summarized in a sad commentary by Jim Hallon, CAE, in the current issue of Associations Now. 

Luckily, for those who see strategic planning as the means to engage members in a conversation about their own future and their association as the means to change it, there is a new edition of ASAE and the Center's environmental scan by Rohit Talwar of Fast Future Research, due to be released later this month. 

Compared to other so-called strategic exercises of the recent past that were little more than painful recitations of the obvious, the new environmental scan, Designing Your Future: Key Trends, Challenges, and Choices Facing Association and Nonprofit Leaders, is an extraordinary achievement. 

Reading it, I am reminded of Lester Thurow, my all time favorite economist on the speaker circuit, who in 45 minutes can reduce terrifying geopolitical and economic forces to a virtual adventure game, drop you in the center of the action, and arm you with the weapons to fight your way out.

Designing Your Future confronts some extremely unpleasant realities, reduces the most significant to sets of patterns, and offers up alternative responses, each of which produces a bubble of hope.  The case studies make it tangible, the methodology is persuasive.  And a failure of imagination will render it completely useless, protecting you from less adept competitors.

Use tools like Designing Your Future and strategic planning to create a shared dream, mobilizing the people who can achieve it together.  Otherwise, like Jim, you will have to learn to live with disappointment.