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Truly successful organisations create Vision statements that act as filters for all activities and programs that they are involved in.

Vision statements provide the context where the Board, the staff, constituents and the public all share a common expectation of the organisation. This common expectation can be one of the organisations most powerful management tools, as well as a powerful marketing message.

Conduct the following exercise. Take each of the substantive words in the Vision statement, and ask the questions:

1. What is your organisation actually doing to ensure that the intent behind this word/concept is embedded into all programs and services of the organisation. After all, the Board has agreed that the Vision/Mission statement embodies the guiding principles behind all the organisation stands for.

2. How are all new or proposed programs filtered through the statement to ensure that the intent of the Vision/Mission statement is structured in to the program.

3. Are the Board and staff able to express the key concepts and intent behind the Vision/Mission statement? The exact words are not important, but the intent is crucial.

Tool 2: Creating a Strategic Board
There is a trend towards increasing the number of independant directors (ie not staff or those with a financial interest in the organisation) on Boards to counteract the perceived conflicts of interest and narrowness of focus of the Executive Directors. The practice of Board succession planning should take these characteristics into consideration, with Board skills analysis providing key planning guidelines for the Board, and allowing the board to focus on extracting the most value from Board members.

Boards should be focused on public and member accountability, and typically should reflect this by providing annual reports that provide appropriate details of strategic plans, achievement against strategic plan success measures, forward projections for future years and how these tie in to the strategic plan. Other accountability measures include Board appraisal systems that allow the Board to reflect upon its own performance in light of the strategic plan and other agreed measures.

Boards should be skilled at ensuring that the CEO is accountable to the Board. The CEO's performance is typically reviewed at least annually, if not every six months. Whilst this can be a continual source of annoyance for the CEO, it does protect the organisation from staff who might wish to take the organisation in a direction at odds with the Boards' wishes.

Organisations should be focused on their core purpose. One of the greatest techniques to ensure this occurs is for the agenda of the Board meetings to reflect the strategic plan, which in turn reflects the core purpose of the organisation. This ensures the Board is focused on those key activities they have already agreed are the most important things to the organisation. Most organisations have very operational Board agendas that reflect how well particular projects or Divisions are going, rather than their contribution to the achievement of the strategic plan.

Organisations should review the agenda of their Board meetings to ensure that the following are included: inclusion of a consent agenda item, declaration of conflict of interest, financial reports, Board Operation reports from Board committees (eg Finance/audit, Succession Planning and Compliance committees), reports on outcomes from relevant action plans from the strategic plan, professional Board development, other business, and a section on changes to the strategic environment.

Tool 3: Involving a range of stakeholders
Oranisations typically have a number of stakeholders that are interested in being part of the organisation. These stakeholders are often invited to participate in strategic planning, as it cements the relationship as well as adds value to the planning process through the additional perspectives and skills of the participants.

The most effective strategic planning process involves those people who can add value to that process. It is a mistake to use only the senior staff of the organisation in the planning process. Board members, senior staff, constituent representatives, supporters of the organisation, perhaps even some 'competitors' should be considered for the planning team. Planning teams made up of only staff leaders or the Board may not be functional, as there is a tendency for CEOs to attempt to create something distinctive during their term, and often 'pet' projects get emphasised.

Tool 4:Embedding ethics into the strategic planning process
Society generally and organisations in particular are becoming more preoccupied with ethics. The creation of Codes of Conduct and Codes of Ethics predate any formal legal attempt to codify ethical behaviour. Charitable, trade and professional Not for Profit organisations date back to the 17th century, and there is evidence of Codes of Ethics from this era. It is not surprising, then, that high performing organisations are using ethics as a major strategic tool.

Far from minimising the negative effects of change, strategic planning often exacerbates the problem by ignoring the ethical implications of any proposed strategies. In the current environment, where governance and ethics are under increasingly closer scrutiny, any major organisational decision should consider the ethical dimension. The most effective way to ensure this ethical dimension is considered, is to embed a consideration of ethics into the strategic planning process from the outset.

The strategic planning process typically leads the planning group through the visioning, SWOR (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Risks) analysis, strategy setting and action planning stages. The more sophisticated strategic plans will then shape the Board's agenda, and lead to the development of staff performance measures.

Ethical implications of proposed actions need to be considered at the action planning stage. Identifying and analysing ethical implications of proposed action plans can add a robustness to your strategic planning that will add value to the actions and protect the organisation.

The Ethics element poses the question: are there any issues of rights, responsibilities, obligations or fairness inherent in what we plan to do in this action plan. If any issues are raised, then these are considered and rewritten into the Scope of the action plan.

Examples of the embedding of ethics into Action Plans of the Strategic Plan include:

Name of Strategy: Strategy 5-Extract maximimum value from all member services
Action Plan 5.1 - Reassessment of all current member services.
Scope: Identify current services and identify any gaps between current services and what we should be providing, recommend any reduction in services or new services.
Resources: Staff time
Start Date: February 2005
Completion: March 2005
Project Manager: GS
Success Measures: Board approves all proposed reduction of services
Ethics: Are we disadvantaging any members by reducing some service?

In today's environment of societal discomfort with corporate behaviour, this simple technique has powerful implications for the profile of the organisation.

Operational techniques
1. Surveys
Fax surveys: 24 hr turnaround, 1 page faxback, media come to you, 80% response, takes around 2 hrs

Surveys: Adds to body of knowledge, highlights those areas you want to highlight, structured so it doesn't cost you, you manage the PR, takes the debate in the area you want it to go

Paid research: you pay someone else to conduct research, adds legitimacy, adds to the body of knowledge, can be a revenue raiser, regulators in particular want research to take to the policy makers

2. Issues management
Caveat: be aware of the boundaries with the industry lobby group, if there is such a body
Main outcomes:
To influence legislation to reflect members or constituents wishes
To advise government of issues that need to be legislated, and their content
To shape current or future interpretations of regulations
To be "port of first call" for government and regulators
To be viewed as a legitimate "body of knowledge" organisation

3. Perception management
Public perception via media. Most important aspect is to establish a working relationship with a small number of journalists. Ask the question: "What does it take to get a story in your paper".

Industry perception: KPIs for staff and CEO re: how industry leaders view their performance. This forces visits and dialogue

4. Communication/PR

• Report against strategic goals
• Don't be busy being busy

5. Sponsorship
Sponsorships are true collaborative enterprises where the underlying theme is: you have a problem, I have a solution. Sponsorship is not about money. It is about each party having access to resources that they cannot tap individually. Sponsorships can be used to raise the profile of Not for Profits by tapping into resources, networks and reputations.

The successful recipients of sponsorship dollars should view the sponsorship package as a potential long term arrangement, with benefits that flow through to the sponsor over a period of time and through a structured series of sponsorship activities. Sponsors prefer to be involved in a series of compatible activities, with the chance of building up their reputation, exposure, and dollar sales over the long term. It is more effective to work with an organisation as a long term partner, than just as a one-off contributor.

The successful sponsorship proposal structures the benefits from the sponsor's viewpoint. You may often find that a corporate does not have selection criteria for which sponsorships they should accept, so you can assist them by establishing these criteria on their behalf. This will at least provide them with a framework. You can then structure your proposal so that the same set of criteria are identified and described in terms of the benefits you are offering.

A suggested set of criteria for the potential sponsor should include, in order of importance:
1. What is the potential to gain business of the sponsored body and their members or constituency?
2. Will the sponsor get naming rights to all/some of the events?
3. Will a member of the recipient organisation's staff be involved? Who from the association will work exclusively with the sponsor?
4. Is there a natural link between the sponsor and the events?
5. Does the event focus on the sponsors target market?
6. Is there a geographical link with the sponsors business?
7. What is the sponsor's ability to deal with the organising body?
8. Are there long term or future opportunities?
9. What is the potential benefit of advertising or promoting the sponsors organization at the venue or in a handbook?
10. What is the potential to capitalise by choosing to advertise the sponsor's involvement externally?
11. What are the potential sales opportunities: corporate hospitality, spin-offs?
12. What is the potential media coverage, how often will the sponsors name or logo be mentioned/seen?

6. Strategic Alliances
Should be formal
Should have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
Measurement of the health of the alliance
- Financial fitness (revenues, cash flow, ROI, reducing costs, purchasing discounts, sales of related products etc),
- Strategic fitness (new market share, new product launches, customer loyalty, transfer of knowledge etc),
- Operational fitness (number of members services, quality of product), and Relationship fitness (cultural fit, trust, decision making speed, problem resolution, loyalty etc)
Finite length of time