Adaptive Strategy
Clear priorities. An aligned team. A strategic plan built to adapt.
Your strategy shouldn’t be written in stone
There are a thousand things others want you to do. House families. Protect the environment. Educate the next generation. Care for aging Friends. Support service members searching for peace. Advocate for the vulnerable. Strengthen your community. Sustain the organizations Quakers have built over centuries.
As a group, you’ve come together and identified a hundred possible items your organization could take on to work toward your mission. You can’t take them all on at once. Realistically, you could have two, maybe three priorities from that group. Anything more than that is no longer a priority but a shopping list.
If you’ve ever tried to create a 10-year plan, you know how quickly things can fall apart. You need a way to make choices and decisions without being overwhelmed by all the possibilities.
You can’t afford to spend 10 months developing a 10-year plan that’s already obsolete.
“Robin helped us secure a grant to cover some costs of the collaboration, drafted and led initial negotiations of a collaboration agreement and helped us finalize details of our executive director transition. Through this collaboration, Community Ventures has doubled our staff and our affordable housing rental management operations. If not for Robin’s help, we might still be in conversations and spinning our wheels. Robin gave us the framework through her experience and guided the course to make this possible.”
Troy Hannigan
Executive Director, Community Ventures
Planning for the world as it is and as it might become
This is exactly the kind of muddle Robin Mohr & Associates helps Quaker organizations find their way out of. Not with a rigid plan but with a process that brings your whole team together, surfaces the hard choices, and leaves you with a strategy you’ll use.
Most strategic plans are written for one version of the future. The problem is, the future rarely cooperates. Robin’s approach uses scenario-based planning to map how your organization would respond to forces outside your control — so nothing catches you off guard.
Some strategies will serve you well in any scenario. Others only make sense if a particular future unfolds. Knowing the difference is what turns a plan into a compass.
Our Customized Approach
Three phases, one clear direction
A personalized process designed to meet your organization where it is and move you forward with clarity.
Evaluate
We take stock of where you’ve been, what’s working, what isn’t, and what forces are shaping the road ahead.
Ideate
We surface every possibility on the table from past ideas, new thinking, and opportunities you haven’t considered yet.
Prioritize
Through a process of discernment, we align your team around 1-3 clear initiatives and put a written plan in your hands.
A strategy fixed on priorities and flexible on tactics
When you come out the other side of this work, something shifts. You stop reacting to everything and start moving forward with intention. Your board stops pulling in different directions. Your team knows not just what you’re doing, but why — and what you’re choosing not to do.
You have a plan that was built to flex, so when the world changes around you (and it will), you’re not starting from scratch. You’re making a course correction.
After working together, Quaker organizations walk away with:
- A team that came to unity before decisions were made and is committed to seeing them through
- Confidence in how to make hard choices going forward, and the criteria to make those choices
- The ability to say no to good ideas that aren’t their idea for now
- A process they can explain clearly to funders, partners, staff, and collaborators
Everything starts with a conversation
Let’s talk about where your organization is right now and what it would look like to move forward with a strategy your whole team believes in.