
Strategic Planning
How we approach strategic planning:
Just as no two non-profits are identical, no two strategic planning exercises are identical. At City Greener Strategies we co-create a strategic planning process in partnership with you. We meet your needs for where you are, and where you want to go.
Our work is customized to meet your needs but we do follow these three principles in co-creating any strategic framework:
1) Strive for “adaptive management,”
2) Be clear about the problem you are trying to solve, and
3) Create measurable, outcome-oriented goals.
In charting your strategic direction, we prefer using models those that mimic natural processes. Fractals, networks, and cycles, for example, are biological and physical dynamics we can mimic in our planning models, providing us with more resilient and fecund strategic frameworks.
In creating a process with you, we may suggest using best practices from thought-provoking frameworks such as:


Emergent Strategy
Inspired by Octavia Butler’s explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is adrienne maree brown’s framework for inviting us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. adrienne’s approach may be useful for teams who want to prepare for, and continuously adapt to, a quickly changing world and community.


Good To Great
I have referred back dozens of times to Jim Collins’ classic business book, Good To Great, and I have personal experience in getting “the flywheel” moving in new and old programs. It is not easy to move that flywheel, but Good To Great, offers some widely-tested do’s and don’ts for practitioners and leaders looking to grow their organization.


Generative Networks
Plastrik, Taylor and Cleveland offer an insightful approach to decoding complicated problems with their book Connecting to Change The World. Studying the role of networks in social and environmental change, they draw some lessons learned from around the country that can help you scale up or expand into new communities or sectors.


Change Management
Sometimes your non-profit’s biggest challenges are internal. Good plans and partnerships might not achieve much if your teams are not evolving and changing how and what they do. John Kotter’s famous Eight Stage Process of Creating Major Change, as published in the Harvard Business Review and his book Leading Change, is a widely-used approach to transform your organization, especially if things feel “stuck.”
Just as no organization is identical, neither are strategic conversations about you and your organization. Click the “Contact Us” tab below to start the discussion about your needs and challenges. No matter the situation, you will learn about yourself and your community.