By Caralyn Spector, Joe Kluger, and Alan Brown
A Thoughtful, Deliberate Path to Transformational Change
Many organizations arrive at moments of crisis surprised and unprepared. Whether due to staff departures, financial fatigue from declining audiences and/or chronic reliance on emergency funding from a handful of major donors, or shifts in external conditions, institutions often suddenly find themselves at a crossroads without a clear roadmap forward. Too often, the structural problems have developed gradually over many years and been masked by the use of non-recurring revenues. Leaders often find themselves out of time and resources before seeking help, leading to a reactive, rather than proactive, posture. The Blank Canvas Project offers organizations contemplating transformational change with a structured, two-step approach to organizational reinvention:
- Step 1: Capacity Assessment and Viability Diagnostic
- Step 2: Pathways to Transformational Change – A Facilitated Visioning Process
When is Transformational Change Warranted?
- When enlightened leadership recognizes a need for proactive evolution of the core programming model
- When an organization’s mission has outlived its useful life, and leaders are ready to ask, ‘What’s next?’
- When donor attrition or diminished audience demand poses an existential threat to viability, and “right-sizing” or recapitalizing the current business model will not sufficiently address the problem
- When a leadership transition creates a new window of opportunity for long-needed change
We note that many organizations persevere through chronic financial distress for years or even decades without considering transformational change. Conditions favorable to transformational change cannot take root until there is widespread acknowledgement that the status quo is not an option. For this reason, most strategic planning processes do not consider alternative pathways to achieving the mission. While there may be scenarios for navigating “Plan A,” there is seldom a “Plan B” or “Plan C” that reflects anything other than incremental change. Too often, in fact, any “Plan B” representing material change is tacitly understood to mean dissolution – which is rarely discussed or considered seriously.
How is this Different from Conventional Planning?
The Blank Canvas process is designed as a change readiness and transformation pathway—a structured yet flexible framework that helps organizations navigate disruption, address core issues, reimagine their purpose, and develop an alternative vision of sustainability. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach but rather a structured process with a clear logic model that outlines a pathway to planned, paradigmatic change. Therefore, it is only suited for organizations prepared to rethink fundamentals, and not suited for organizations aiming to fine tune and recapitalize an existing business model.
Step 1: Capacity Assessment and Viability Diagnostic
A critical and often missing component of planning process designs is an early diagnostic exercise to establish the conceptual frame for planning. RFPs for planning consultants often make unhelpful assumptions about what kind of planning work is needed. In responding to RFPs, consultants seldom contradict the foundational terms of engagement and are unable to assess the ‘real’ situation with organizational capacity at the proposal stage. This can result in sub-optimal planning designs that fail to resolve an organization’s most critical issues.
The first step in our process is a rapid, four-week diagnostic effort to gain perspective and make objective recommendations for what planning work is necessary, feasible, and most likely to resolve core issues. This process examines:
- Board capacity for strategic thinking and commitment to addressing core issues
- Executive leadership capacity for strategic thinking and transformational change
- Organizational culture of growth-mindset, creativity, and trust of leadership
- The extent to which strategic alternatives to the current business model have been identified or vetted
- Financial realities (i.e., cash flow requirements and available capital) and runway
- Programmatic assets and capacities in relation to community support
- The questions of what scope of change is necessary, what problems need to be resolved prior to undertaking planning work, and what would be an optimal approach to planning
This analysis could lead to a range of possible outcomes, which might include a recommendation to: (a) engage in board development work as a prerequisite to further planning; (b) address succession planning before undertaking further planning work; (c) focus planning efforts on end-of-lifecycle options such as dissolution or consolidation; (d) pause operations in order to clear the way for transformational change; or (e) proceed with a planning process of some sort, while continuing operations. The organization may accept or reject our recommendations.
Step 2: Pathways to Transformational Change
The second step in our process is contingent upon a positive assessment of readiness for change in the first step of the process, and the willingness of organizational leadership to undertake a planning process that necessarily leads to significant change. If an organization opts for incremental change, we’ll happily refer them to other consultants who might better meet their needs.
Working from the basic parameters of a defined process, we’ll negotiate a scope of planning work and general timeline with organization leaders. Our process centers the creative act of envisioning multiple possible futures for the organization – not just one – through an intensive and iterative facilitation process that solicits and values multiple perspectives on what the organization’s future might look like. This results in a ‘portfolio of futures’ document outlining a small number of strategic directions for further evaluation.
Each of the scenarios is then progressively fleshed out in terms of likely impact on mission fulfillment, community benefit, operational issues, and financial requirements. Through an iterative vetting process involving key stakeholders, the list of ‘future’ scenarios is winnowed down. This is best approached as a fluid process that can expand or contract based on the level of comfort of key leaders. Organizations may need to ‘sit with’ the strategic options for a period of time, for example, to gather additional community input.
The components of this process include:
- Generative conversations about strategic pathways to mission fulfillment, informed by community needs, macro trends, external factors, programmatic ambitions, realistically achievable resources, and sector best practices
- Written documentation of a ‘portfolio of futures’, progressively updated
- Evaluation of ‘futures’ against constraints and opportunities represented by existing facilities, employment agreements, technologies, historical partnerships, the competitive environment, etc.
- Assessment of the capitalization requirements of each ‘future’
- In-person conversations with board members and other key stakeholders to invite feedback on ‘futures’
- One or more retreats to evaluate ‘futures’ and move to consensus on a preferred option
- Consideration of what additional work is necessary to ‘vet’ the preferred option to a sufficient level of due diligence so as to inform a formal decision by the organization’s board
This is primarily visioning and facilitation work, not operational planning work. We are solving for strategic direction, not a detailed operating model.
Please contact Caralyn Spector for more details, at caralyn@phllab.com.