Virtual Strategic Planning and Facilitation
At the midway point of a five-year plan, the California Association of Public Information Officials (CAPIO) board scheduled a retreat to review progress towards their strategic objectives, reassess the remaining goals and define the right mix of tactics to meet the resources of the organizations and its members’ needs. Initially, JSR Strategies was engaged to facilitate an in-person strategic planning session, but due to the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19, we pivoted to a hybrid event, with members also participating remotely. To ensure that both remote and on-site board members felt heard and welcome to engage intensely, JSR leaned heavily on a mix of technology combined with our experience in successful facilitation of strategic planning to acknowledge and celebrate successes, reframe the big-picture goals for the organization and establish a high-level tactical plan for 2021 and 2022.
Project Structure
- Discover– JSR reviewed historical research and conducted one-on-one interviews with CAPIO board members to understand goals, success, challenges, priorities and current status of staffing, revenue, operations, branding and cultural responsiveness.
- Collaborate– CAPIO leadership and JSR collaboratively drafted a meeting agenda, activities and presentations. JSR facilitated the 1.5-day retreat with activities that fostered dynamic group participation while staying on task.
- Finalize– Based on decisions made in the strategic planning session, JSR crafted an addendum to the 2018-2022 strategic plan to review high-level tactics for 2021 and 2022.
Research and Preparation Prior to the Session
During the discovery phase, JSR realized that CAPIO had many board members who were not present in the original strategic planning session. Therefore, to keep the meeting agenda focused on collaboration and decisions, much work was done to create a meeting pre-packet (shown above). This packet reviewed foundational messages and documents, outlined membership numbers, discussed group benefits and results of a recent membership survey and addressed many of the questions posed during one-on-one discussions that would have slowed the meeting agenda.