Logo

Changing Vision to Implementation:
Using Appreciative Inquiry to Define your Nonprofit, Part 4 (of 4)

What's the most difficult part of any planning process? It's that final step, the one where you will be determining the implementation strategy. When it comes to asking, "Where are we going next? What should our next projects be?" things just aren't as clear as they might have been when you were planning.  Let's face it - it's always easier to look backward than to look forward. And how often have you heard about planning that was done by a few people without much input from others? About brilliant strategic plans that languished in file cabinets?

Many small florets joined together make this fabulous flower glow in the city sunshine

A great tool for moving strategy to implementation is to use Appreciative Inquiry in the Design phase. It assures that everyone has ownership and takes responsibility for their part, and that you will be carrying out ideas generated from within your organization. And these will be ideas that focus forward on a positive and realistic future.

Appreciative Inquiry encourages the involvement of everyone associated with your organization, and asks to hear their voices. In the "discovery" phase, all participants look at what was and is best about the organization and its history. In the "dreaming" process, everyone imagines the best possible outcomes, and envisions how they could be accomplished. The "design" phase takes those visions and dreams forward by defining real projects for implementation. Now, at last, what had looked impossible seems reachable, because you'll have clear images of what the organization could and should be are on the table.

But can you really use ideas that people dreamed up? Won't they be far fetched? When people are "dreaming" they often worry that they are making ridiculous suggestions, or proposing fantasies that will never be possible. But here's what really happens: most of the things people dream are very plausible and appealing, and sometimes make such good sense that once they have been verbalized, the response from the group is, "Of course!" or, "Yes, that's just what we should be doing."

Here's how to take the next step into the design phase:

1. Take all the ideas that were generated through the dreaming process, which ideally will be on 4x8 sticky notes, and divide them into three groups. (Since the notes stick together you'll need to display them on posterboards.) Some of them will go on "immediate implementation" posterboards, some of them will be "later implementation", and some, "results", will only happen as a result of other actions that have been taken.

Put the "result" ideas aside for now. Those can be posted where everyone can continue to look at them. You'll be revisiting these in the future, when you begin to see the changes effected.

2. Sort out the "immediate implementation" ideas into a few coherent choices. Sorting is a tricky step, and this works best, if your organization is small, when the whole group does it together. It's a time consuming process, and with a larger organization, having a smaller group pre-sort the ideas will make the important step of deciding on what to implement much easier. The pre-sort group will need to narrow the ideas down to a few categories that can be realistically be accomplished. You may have hundreds of amazing ideas generated by the dreaming session, or you may only have a handful. If you have a large number, try to consolidate them keeping as much of the original language as possible. That is, don't lose the excitement of these suggestions by melding them all together. Give each category of selected ideas an overall heading, and keep a list of all the branching ideas on the same page.

3. Have the group rewrite the selected ideas as if they are happening now, so you can hear how they come across. For instance: "I wish we could open a new afterschool program for any kid who needed it", could become, "Our afterschool program is now available for any child who needs it or any child who wants to attend." The idea’s power is much easier to gauge when it's written as an affirmative statement.

4. Post these ideas on boards around the room and ask the assembled group to walk over to the idea they think is the most important, and the one they would most like to work on. Realistically, the ones that people will be most drawn to are the ones with the greatest chance of success. In nonprofits, where the personal commitment of both staff and volunteers is often high, enthusiasm for a project can be a fairly reliable indicator of how well that project will succeed.

5. You may get different responses from the different constituencies who are participating. Well, that's good! Give the different groups a chance, perhaps in another meeting, or by using a video camera to tape some of their responses, to express their ideas to each other. (You don't need to do anything fancy for this. You're not making a documentary. Just record specific ideas.)

Why have people walk over to the boards? You'll see that groups will physically form around the ideas that have the greatest power. These groups can start meeting immediately - and they will, right in front of the posterboards. You may need to do this exercise several times with first priority and second priority choices. Having people actually get up to cross a room and join a group is a dramatic statement in itself. It feels very different from sitting with your hand raised, and changes the involvement of the participants from passive to active, very literally.

Who should be involved? The board should be spearheading this process, and signing off on the choices made, but clearly staff should be deeply involved as well. Depending on the size of the board and the number of staff, this may be done in several stages, with groups of 10 to 15 people. If the whole board is larger, you'll want to keep the board together to do this. But, as much as possible, try to mix board and staff so they can learn from and interact with each other.

This is not a plan with a finite end that solves everything (is there really such a thing?), but a way to take action on exciting and feasible dreams. The plan’s effectiveness and strength lie in the group participation and process. You'll implement whatever projects can be launched now by the very people who will be taking responsibility for them, while laying the groundwork for larger ideas. You will end up with defined projects that were generated by the whole community, linked to the organization's history, and reflective of everyone's desire for the best that could be.

The choices made here will have come around full circle to being able to answer the question that the group first started with: Why do we need to exist? They will have grown out of a collective understanding of the organization's history and strengths, and they will reflect the passion of those who are committed to the organization. And now that you have a set of projects endorsed by the board of directors and executive director, you can start on the next step: creating a grantseeking calendar so that you can look for support for these important projects.

What is Appreciative Inquiry? Appreciative Inquiry is a methodology for developmental change, created by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva at Case Western Reserve Weatherhead School of Management in the 1980's. It focuses on the best in an organization, using provocative questions, storytelling and directed conversation. Find out more.

Reprinted with permission from Grantstation. From the March 22 issue of the GrantStation Newsletter.