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I thoroughly enjoy helping non-profit organizations throughout Canada and the USA “find their way” through their strategic planning process.

As a strategic planning facilitator, the one question that I often get from organizations is - What’s the difference between a Mission and Vision statement?

Using “SMART Goals” for Setting Objectives in Your Strategic Plan. The one fulfilling attribute of being a business consultant is getting to work with a variety of non-profits and businesses throughout the world that are very unique and passionate about their cause. Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to a non-profit group from New York who are just embarking on creating a strategic plan for their organization. As a strategic planning advisor, I was attempting to guide them and let them know how important the objective setting process will be to their strategic plan. In the strategic consulting business, I see many organizations create strategic plans that are dynamic and are extremely successful. In the transition phase, they are able to execute their objectives with ease and normally have a high success rate in accomplishing their strategic planning objectives. On the other hand, I have also seen organizations struggle with their strategic plans and in some cases, these plans even sit on the shelf collecting dust. This can be for many reasons, but the one major fallacy I see is the lack of setting good clear objectives that are aligned with an organizations mission, vision and values. In the strategic planning world, there is process called "SMART Goals" that is used quite regularly by strategic planning facilitators for setting objectives. SMART is the acronym that stands for Specific, Realistic, Attainable, Relevant and Timeline.

I had a bit of an “AH-HA” moment during one of my previous business meetings with a potential client. The conversation led to him telling me how he despises going to local business events because people are always trying to sell him something.

So, the big dilemma that I get asked when dealing with my Strategic Planning clients before we embark on a Strategic Plan is - Do we use a virtual meeting program like Google Meet for our sessions? Get the Strategic Planning committee together for a mini-strategic planning conference? Or do we do a bit of both?