Strategy Sessions
Strategy without the hassle (or giant price tag) of strategic planning .
Get your vision out of your head and onto paper so you can lead your team forward with clarity and conviction.
“Lia worked with our Executive Leadership team over the course of three intensive sessions to help us get aligned as a team, develop a compelling story of our strategic direction, and equip us with the tools to build coalition.”
— Ally Thurman, New Door Ventures
Creating a compelling vision and strategic direction can be a confidence-building, engaging, and clarifying process.
In other words, strategy doesn’t have to suck.
So why is it often so hard?
Because leading an organization means you’re absorbing information from everywhere, holding the goals of many diverse stakeholders, and navigating an ever-changing landscape. Add on layers of your identity, leadership style, and team dynamics, and it’s not hard to see why things get murky and putting a clear vision and strategic direction on paper is, well—hard. Even seasoned leaders get derailed.
It’s why orgs spend hundreds of thousands on strategic plans that aren’t actionable or nimble enough to actually use. A 100-page deck doesn’t equal a strategy.
I know this firsthand: When I first started as a new ED, I knew I needed to communicate a sticky, compelling story of where the organization is headed, why, and what the path was to get there.
Not just to raise money, recruit an all-star team, build a board, and sell the program. But also because I needed it for me—so I could come to work every day inspired and clear-headed about our vision, plan, and decision-making process.
Getting there wasn’t easy: I was getting often conflicting messages, including from my own brain, and the noise clouded my judgement made it feel impossible to listen to own thoughts. My planning time became an ever-moving work block on my calendar.
Eventually, I created a series of sessions for me and my small team to get us to put pen to paper, together, in a simple way. When we finally did crystallize the vision, it was simple: Just 3-4 pages. It motivated me and my team, brought in funders and partners, and guided our decisions. But it was the process itself brought me the clarity I needed to lead confidently and with purpose.
If you want and need to crystallize and clarify your vision but the idea of engaging in a long, expensive, and complex strategic planning process makes you want to run and hide, you don’t need a strategic plan.
You do need strategy sessions.
Why Strategy Sessions?
Many org leaders spend many thousands of dollars on complex processes that drag on for months, culminating in endless PowerPoint slides and dense documents. Theoretically, it seems useful. Practically… not so much.
A process of that scale often takes on a life of its own, leaving the ED and leadership team feeling steamrolled by competing perspectives—still struggling to locate convictions of their own.
Maybe these sound familiar:
You know you need to crystallize your vision so you can communicate it clearly to all stakeholders, not to mention yourself.
You know you should spend chunks of time strategizing, but as a new ED or founding ED, all you seem to have time for is the details. You know you’re too in the weeds, but it feels too hard to get out of them. And besides, you’re not sure how you’d spend the “strategy” time even if you had it.
You have big (and small) ideas about the direction of the organization—hunches, beliefs, perspectives—but you second guess yourself or don’t believe they could possibly have weight. You think you’re too new in the job, or too inexperienced to put your perspectives out there.
You think a “good” leader listens to allllll the stakeholders first and then comes up with an amalgamation of them as the vision or strategy. The problem is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and you’ve spent too much time gathering input and not enough time making sense of it. After all that listening, it’s hard to tell what you even believe anymore in the first place.
Your board wants you to invest in a huge strategic planning project with a consulting firm and stakeholder groups with lots and lots of spreadsheets and decks. You’re not opposed to this, but you have a hunch that until you get your own head wrapped around what you think, the process will get unwieldy and won’t get you the results you want. You want a plan that yields movement, not just optics.
You have powerful stakeholders to answer to, and sometimes it feels like their perspectives hold more weight than your own. Should your funders, your board, or your team drive the direction of the organization? Whose perspective should you give preference to?
Your team is looking to you for guidance on where to focus and needs an inspiring picture of what’s ahead. You are trying but can’t seem to create the kind of clarity they are craving and feel like you’re falling short.
Imagine…
You have space—real, spacious space—with a supportive coach-sultant who asks the questions you didn’t know you needed to ask yourself.
You build your confidence in your perspective, no longer susceptible to taking on everyone else’s.
You build the foundation for a strategic planning process or fundraising campaign so you can go into it feeling clear and convicted instead of pulled in a million directions.
You get clear on your own thoughts so you can get perspectives from other stakeholders, test hypotheses with those most impacted, and shift as new information emerges from a solid foundation instead of from shaky ground.
You reclaim thinking space for yourself—remembering and re-embodying why you believe in this mission in the first place.
You walk away with a tangible Vision/Strategy document you can refer to, shop around, get input on, and that can serve as a reminder of your beliefs and perspectives when needed.
You tackle your perfectionism head-on and build new belief systems about what strategy is, setting you up for more ease in the future.
You get clear on what matters most, allowing you to say NO more and set better boundaries towards sustainability.
Are Strategy Sessions a fit for you?
Strategy Sessions are for…
EDs, CEOs or organizational leaders who are founding something, stepping into a new role and trying to clarify their perspective, or facing an inflection point (a new strategic plan, big organizational change, etc.)
Leaders who want a “done with you” approach
Leaders who are open to where the process might take you, without attachment to a specific outcome or deliverable.
Leaders willing to dig deep and ask the hard questions
Leaders ready and excited to commit time and space to reflection, pre-and post-work, and session time.
Strategy Sessions may not be for…
Leaders hoping to outsource their strategic thinking or visioning to a consultant
Leaders who would rather have a “done for you” approach
Leaders who aren’t able to commit the time and energy required to ensure that their vision and strategic direction land in a good place
Leaders who want to push an already conceived-of agenda (vs. enter with ideas and curiosity)
How’s it work?
You (and perhaps 1-2 members of your team) will come together with me over five 90-minute sessions that are part guided facilitation and part coaching.
After some discovery, so I can deeply know your organization’s current state, we’ll start putting the pieces together—starting with “where you’ve been”, moving to “where you are now,” and then going to “where you’re headed” over the course of our sessions.
After each session, I’ll synthesize our notes and send some pre-thinking for the next session.
Throughout our time together, the themes will crystallize and we’ll get closer and closer to clarity. I’ll help guide us there, and we’ll continuously affirm or reject hypotheses.
After our sessions, I’ll draft a Vision/Strategy document and then we’ll meet one last time to discuss it.
I’ll do one more iteration and then you’re off to the races!