How best to prepare and build for an unknown future? How can we gather honest insights from staff, customers, and market experts that will help us in envisioning where we can go?
Much of Dr. Newton’s work is centred on helping organizations with their strategic planning, a process that can take many forms.
i) In situations where the executive team has a strongly understood future vision, Elizabeth’s role tends to be more focused on facilitating the leadership retreat. First, comes working with you to build a fitting agenda for strategy discussions. Then, it’s guiding discussions to consider shifting market demands, unearth unspoken concerns, prioritize values and outcomes, and look for more opportunities to coordinate your team efforts.
ii) For new exciting ventures, or for existing organizations where future possibilities are more varied , Elizabeth – and partners depending on the size of the project – are first brought in for a more extensive process that starts with in-depth research with staff, boards, external stakeholders along with key document and past planning reviews, best practices research and much more. Ultimately, the goal always is to build a collaborative, dynamic process with a broad sense of ownership and clear, actionable outcomes. Through this process, we will unearth key themes that we can then bring into the retreat and the building of strategy.
iii) In today’s world, it is particularly important that strategic planning not be a once in a year process with rigid dictates and one, linear path. Post retreat, we can work with organizations to set themselves up – with the right data, processes, and teams – to be strategically nimble.