Innovation expert C. Otto Scharmer draws on the experience of skillful facilitators in global corporate and nonprofit settings to discern the elements that make these collective “ah-ha’s” possible. His Theory U presents these elements in a coherent process that guides participants beyond habitual patterns of listening and thinking.

Scharmer calls this process “presencing” and outlines the steps in Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges, published in 2009. He is also a co-founder of The Presencing Institute, which provides a wealth of information at: www.presencing.com

If you are interested in exploring this approach to creative thinking and visioning, give me a call. And plan to join me and my colleague Michael Bischoff at the Minnesota Presencing Forum on October 24, 2011. This local event is being planned in conjunction with a global presencing forum organized by Scharmer and others in Boston. You can sign up to receive further information about the local event here.

We’ve all participated in traditional strategic planning – with 30,000-foot environmental scans and SWOT analyses – and then watched the overly ambitious and abstract results gather dust on a shelf. 

Drawing on years of experience with a wide variety of organizations, LaPiana has pioneered a new approach that focuses on strategic thinking, rather than planning, and produces useful tools organizations can use on an ongoing basis to respond strategically to challenges and opportunities as they arise.

As I use this new model, I find my clients appreciate how quickly it gets at the “big questions” they are facing, and provides them with the tools to make pragmatic, actionable decisions. If you’re considering strategic planning – or facing an immediate challenge that requires a strategic response – I encourage you to consider this dynamic approach. It’s efficient, it’s scalable and it really works!

You can learn more about LaPiana’s real-time strategic planning model at his web site. His book The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution is available from the Fieldstone Alliance.

I’d be happy to lead your organization through the process! Give me a call if you’d like to discuss it.

With the wild proliferation of online and email-based communication alternatives, it’s no wonder many of us are experiencing keyboard paralysis. Here are five principles I use to help clients develop simple, manageable communication strategies.

1. Clarify Your Objectives – Who are you trying to reach, and what do you want them to understand or do? Until you answer these questions, it is impossible to craft effective messages or choose the right media, because both depend on the audience.

2. Refresh Your Web Site – Regardless of what else you do, a strong web site is the foundation of your communication strategy. Everything else will either live there or drive people there. It has to be fresh, accessible and easy to update. No excuses.

3. Use the Tools Your Audiences Prefer – Email, newsletters, Twitter, Facebook and blogs will only be effective if the people you hope to reach choose to pay attention. Don’t make assumptions about how your key audiences want to be reached; ask them!

4. Choose Simple Systems – Once you’ve decided which tools to use, pick systems that are easy to use. If you can’t remember how to send a group email, you’ll put it off. If your website is frustrating to update, you’ll avoid it. Make things as easy as possible.

5. Make a Calendar – Once your systems are in place, set up a calendar of recurring tasks. The first week of each month, update your web site; the second, send email updates to targeted groups; and so on. Now you can relax, focus on one thing and do it well.

Communication feels overwhelming when there’s too much to do and we’re not sure what’s most important or where to begin. These five principles can make it simple and manageable. If you’d like help applying them to your situation, give me a call.

The act of writing isn’t all that difficult if you have a clear idea in mind. But most of the time, when I ask people what they would like to write (if they could), the jumble of ideas that follows reveals the actual problem: muddled thinking. 

As a result, many people experience the act of writing as a frustrating process of dumping – and then trying to sort out – a pile of inter-related and incomplete ideas. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. No wonder people think writing is hard!

But writing isn’t hard; thinking is. When you separate the process of thinking from the process of communicating a fully-formed idea, both parts of the process get easier.

The next time you need to write something, take the process apart. Start by writing to explore your ideas, with the purpose of sorting them out. Discuss your drafts with others. What is clear? What remains muddled? Don’t worry about how good your writing is; focus on how clear your ideas are.

Then, when you have clarified your idea, you can begin the process of writing to communicate it. At this point, your writing will flow much more easily. And – wonder of wonders – you may find you can communicate your idea in just a few words.

Clarity! Brevity! Suddenly, you’re a good writer! But it wasn’t really your writing that improved; it was your thinking.

As I work with nonprofit and government organizations to help them connect with the people who matter to them, we inevitably face this question: What to make of blogging, Twitter and the wild proliferation of social media? And how do they relate to our web site, email and “offline” communication strategies?

The answer, of course, depends on your communication objectives. If you simply want to make information about your organization available online, you don’t need a blog. However, if you want to engage – and expand – the audience of people who know and care about what you do, then blogging may be an effective strategy. To be frank, that’s why I’m doing it myself. (And if you’re reading this, maybe it’s working!)

But doesn’t blogging take a lot of work and open us up to criticism? On the first point, no, blogging doesn’t have to be a lot of work, if someone in your organization has the skills, responsibility and authority to do it. For example, this post took me about 30 minutes to write. Since I’m the boss, I didn’t need anyone’s approval; I just pressed Publish!

As for risk, there are always two sides to that question. What is the risk of starting a blog? You could generate controversy or criticism, but you can manage that risk by being thoughtful about what you post, and you can easily monitor the responses and decide which ones to publish. (You could also be ignored, but then you’ve learned something useful about what interests visitors to your site and what doesn’t.)

Equally worth considering, though, are the risks of maintaining a static web site. If you want to engage and grow your audience, but there’s no opportunity to interact on your site, then you’re sending the wrong message. The culture of the Internet is shifting from static sites to interactive ones, and people’s expectations are shifting, too. You get one shot at your first impression, whether online or in person; you don’t want to blow it.

So let’s say you decide to give blogging a try. Then the question becomes how to make it manageable. That’s where an integrated communication strategy comes into play. Once you’ve identified your communication objectives, key audiences and core messages, you can use your web site, email and blog to target, deliver and reinforce those messages. Often, the same “nugget” of content can live multiple lives as a blog post, an email blast and a news item on your home page. Write it once, then get the most out of it.

Yes, it takes a bit of work to figure this all out, set up systems and assign responsibilities, but once the framework is in place the writing part can actually be fun! Give it a try. And if you’d like some help developing an overall communication strategy, setting up convenient systems or honing your message, let me know. I’d be happy to help.