Alignment around “why” and not just “what”

October 19, 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonathanpoisner @ 1:30 pm

I was talking with someone recently about the struggle of getting a board and staff to stay aligned around a planned set of activities.

In the course of the conversation, I came up with a theory as to why they were having so much difficulty.

The problem is they had agreed on what to do, but they had never articulated in writing why.  Over time, those differences in why were causing some of the participants to believe a switch should now happen because circumstances had changed.

In addition, they had brought on new board and staff members who weren’t part of the original decision and were only presented with the plan for what they were going to do.  Not knowing why, they were less likely to embrace it.

That’s why it’s critical in plans not just to say what you’re going to do, but to include enough of the “why” to make agreements durable over time.  That means agreeing upon the “lay of the land” or underlying facts driving the decision.  And it means agreeing upon strategic assumptions or a theory about the way the world works to reached a shared understanding of why doing what you’re planning will have the impact you desire and expect.   Sometimes this is organization-wide as a “theory of change.”  Oftentimes it’s more granular, program by program.

This can make plans longer.  So it may be some of this is in an appendix.

Bottom line: articulating “why” along with “what” will make your plans more durable as a means of aligning staff and board.

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