Strategic Plan - No New Updates
Update and Next Steps:
Our current strategic plan was approved in spring 2020 after much collaboration between various stakeholders. I’m excited for the opportunity to have those of you who are interested, engage in this new planning process. As you may know, the VISIONS community began developing our next strategic plan last spring (generally, a Strategic Plan is intended to guide an organization's direction for 3-5 years AND to some extent, it is also a living document).
Community meetings were held between April and September and were well-attended; it has been great to have so much engagement around this plan. For those who may have missed earlier communications about this process, a summary is below.
In 2024, we engaged Jay Vogt, a talented external consultant, to support us in the process. Jay was already familiar with VISIONS work and he participated in our October PACE last fall. He also met with the community last fall to help identify action steps for the goals identified. We’ve also been reviewing various surveys and 1:1 conversations held over the past few years. See arc of the plan Jay shared with the community here.
Goal groups met in November and reviewed comments from the internal community around the five goals previously identified during our community meetings.
Thank you to those who have participated to help bring us to this point in the planning process, and thank you in advance for your continued support and participation to lay the foundation for our next 40 years of impact!
Here is the arc of VISIONS’ strategic plan:
- The board affirmed the process and VISIONS' guiding ideas at its spring retreat on April 19. If you are interested in contributing to this process, please let me know.
- Assessment and discovery have been ongoing for a couple years via various community surveys.
- Critical strategic issues have emerged from our assessment and discovery, as well as in conversations with the staff and consultants. The larger internal community has been discussing these topics at community calls (April and May) and will hold two more in June and September. Recordings and notes have been shared for anyone who missed them and would like to participate. I invite you to come and share your insights on the next two calls as well. More details about topics for each month are listed below.
- The community came together on the morning of September 27th to set further goals based on the various feedback as part of our anniversary celebration.
- Teams were formed around each goal and met in November to define objectives, initiatives, and success metrics.
- Strategic planning will feed operational planning and budgeting in 2025 (FY26).
- The board will approve the new strategic plan in May of 2025 for FY26.
We hosted discussion sessions around the various strategic issues that were identified based on your feedback on the several surveys shared with the community over the last few years. These discussions have been occurring and will continue to occur at the next several community meetings (with a small break over the summer).
Your insights have been essential and helped direct the content of our next strategic plan! The schedule of community call discussions and themes that were discussed are below.
Strategic Plan Discussion Schedule
- April 5
- MODEL (11 mentions)
- How can we best modernize our model (i.e. honor the model, while updating language, etc.)
- May 3
- June 7 - Admin Town Hall (Salesforce, Operations, Personnel, etc., and including pay model strategic issue)
- September 13
- GROWTH (08 mentions)
- How can we best grow our consultancy business (in a sustainable way)?
- PUSHBACK (06 mentions)
- How can we best respond to the current political climate and the pushback on DEI?
Thank you for all of your input that has brought us to this point in the planning process, and thank you in advance for your continued support and participation that will further lay the foundation for our next 40 years of impact!
What about reviewing our mission, vision and values statements?
Some questions during our last community meeting about whether the mission, vision and values statements had been changed (or should be). Because the mission, vision statements and values were created in 2019 (approved in spring 2020) through a committee process with various internal stakeholders we considered these "legacy" documents since they had been a part of VISIONS historically. As a result, the process has not included revisions of them.
That said, the Board did briefly review the mission statement at the spring 2024 retreat and voted to keep it as is for the above reasons with one small exception. (See description below for what a mission statement is meant to do and what it is not meant to do).
The original mission was:
Our mission is to empower the creation of environments where differences are recognized, understood, appreciated, and utilized for the benefit of all through both time-tested and innovative training and tools, public advocacy, and consulting models addressing the personal, interpersonal, cultural, and institutional levels.
The board voted to remove the section that described how we do our work.
Otherwise, we plan to leave the mission statement as is and engage in a robust, community-wide analysis of these statements after the strategic plan is approved in preparation for the next Strategic Plan. That said, if anyone feels strongly that we should revise these before proceeding with this next strategic plan, please contact Elika. I would be happy to hear your thoughts. See link to a survey (please respond by January 10) and more on things to consider when designing an effective mission statement below.
Next steps:
The goal team leads reviewed all inputs on December 11, 2024 with the staff and will operationalize the suggestions as workplans by mid January.
Please respond to the survey link by January 10, 2025 if you have any strong opinions about the mission statement after reading the below regarding mission statements.
The draft based on everyone’s input will be shared with and discussed by the board in January 2025. The board will then approve the plan in May 2025. If the board recommends any significant changes to the draft plan, I will make sure we share it with the community for review and feedback. The board will make the ultimate decision per their purview at their spring meeting.
The strategic plan will be launched/introduced to the entire internal VISIONS community at the all organization retreat in the bay area October 2025.
Mission Statement:
The current (slightly revised) mission reads as:
- To empower the creation of environments where differences are recognized, understood, appreciated, and utilized for the benefit of all.
Mission revisions can be illuminating and inspiring. They can also be open-ended and exhausting. VISIONS seeks to engage its community in a thoughtful, inclusive and efficient process that leads to a revised and updated mission statement over the next three years.
CONTEXT FOR VISIONS’ MISSION REVIEW
A mission statement, in the view of this consultant, answer two basic questions:
- Whom do we serve?
- What is our ultimate aim?
It can also answer:
It is not intended to answer:
- What do we do? The recent version of the mission statement included "through both time-tested and innovative training and tools, public advocacy, and consulting models addressing the personal, interpersonal, cultural, and institutional levels" , and thus was simplified by the board per above.
In our view, VISIONS’ current mission statement answers these two questions:
- Whom do we serve? ["For the benefit of all"]
- What is our ultimate aim? ["empowering the creation of environments where differences are recognized, understood, appreciated, and utilized"]
Structurally, VISIONS’ current mission statement is sound.
However, should the answers to the questions change, the mission must change with it.
- Is there a better beneficiary of our work than “for the benefit of all”? If not for the benefit of all, for whom?
- Is there a better aim of the work of VISIONS than “empowering (or supporting) the creation of environments where differences are recognized, understood, appreciated, and utilized”? If not that, what is our ultimate aim/purpose?
We are kindly requesting our internal community to answer these two questions on this survey by January 10. Depending on the responses we receive, we may ask you to hone in on two statements that resonate most with you.
Depending on the responses we receive, we may schedule a community call early in 2025 to review the most common responses before we move to finalize in May.
