I’m reviewing the strategic plan of a nonprofit organization and I want to share an insight.
This international organization centers feminist and inclusive approaches and seeks to break the dominance of developed countries in its work.
Like most organizations, it has a mission, vision, and values that become the basis for further strategic planning. These are elements of a universal management language that is globally understood and helps to engage people in management. At the same time, applying my feminist knowledge and experience of working in postcolonial contexts, I see that this approach, while useful, has limitations. They are quite easy to overcome if standard approaches are slightly adapted.
On the one hand, it is a great advantage that the process of forming a mission and vision is often a collective one. Dozens or even hundreds of people involved in the organization’s activities can join the discussion. But on the other hand, the final text is the result of the work of one or more people. It is a creative and at the same time powerful action: the choice of words, wording, and interpretations.
The people who write the organization’s mission statement are artists who exercise their freedom of creativity based on the testimony of the community.
Therefore, even in a very inclusive process, decisions about the final version are still concentrated in the hands of one or more people. My observation is that these formulations are likely to either leave the community indifferent or they find them too vague and useless (if not harmful). It’s the same in this strategic plan: people complained about the mission, but the decision to replace some words with others doesn’t get to the heart of the problem.
The connections between values and actions are not obvious to people who have not sat down and written these blocks of the strategic plan themselves. Let me give you an example at the level of individual actions: a person can call herself a feminist (value), but make posts on social media that mock and condemn other women (action). At the level of an organization, it may be that an organization has environmental values but orders a lot of printed materials and disposable tableware. Perhaps there is a logical explanation for this, but most likely such decisions are a matter of debate. Therefore, in fact, people can do almost the opposite to realize the same vision.
This is not to say that this approach to governance is bad — it is much more progressive than those used in the past. But an even better methodology would be one that leaves room for multiple voices, diversity, and inclusion without losing clarity on the next steps.
Three improvements that came to mind:
- Announce the names of the people who formulate the final product and make the choice of words, make their influence and power visible
- Present the results of their work as a product of creativity, which means that it cannot be interpreted in a single way.
- Introduce more diverse connections, elements of actions that can be connected in different ways within the overall structure. When we talk about things philosophically, we allow the debate about the meaning of terms and approaches to go on forever, rather than being limited to the usual research time.
How do you see this balance between collectivity and responsibility for formulating the organization’s key documents?
