Many organizations ─ non-profit, for-profit, and government ─ struggle with the need to expend significant resources on short term decision making and near-term fiscal health at the expense of putting in place the strategic planning components needed to secure long term organizational stability and mission success. Although this incongruity is well known in professional spaces and organizations do attempt to challenge the status quo, they often still rely on irregular trainings, static dashboards, and other occasional activities to build and fortify their planning cultures. And, the results often fall far short of expectations. This session will explore how organizations can take meaningful steps to embed strong and evolving planning practices into their cultures that move beyond traditional techniques. Using learnings from my cross sector professional experience, the session will cover critical practices and principles to consider when designing and implementing a planning infrastructure including:

• Motivating meaningful cross silo learning and communication
• Balancing accountability and risk management mechanisms with learning outcomes
• Moving beyond the “C suite trophy” to engrain strategy responsibility from top to bottom
• Modeling trusted and genuine cross unit relationships that transcend headwinds
• Trading in one-size-fits-all approaches for flexible tools and frameworks
• Shifting from leadership support to sponsorship