Strategic Planning Workshop @WashU Brown School  

When Tammy Orahood, Director of Global Programs at the Brown School, described their existing 10-year strategy as “built for a time that no longer exists,” she captured the challenge perfectly.

In the years since that plan was written, the School had experienced major changes — a new School of Public Health had spun out, funding and staffing structures had shifted, and international research faced new uncertainty. The question became: How do you create a strategy that adapts to change rather than trying to control it?

I designed and facilitated a one-day strategic workshop (hosted at the St. Louis Zoo!) that brought the international team together to make sense of their new landscape in real time.

Using the Panarchy cycle as a framework, we explored:

• What still holds value and should be nurtured

• What has run its course and can be released

• Where new energy is emerging and how to support it

In just a few hours, the team:

• Mapped and re-evaluated their existing strategy

• Named five new strategic goals that reflected current realities

• Sketched actionable next steps under each goal

Perhaps most importantly, we created space for the team to connect, breathe, and talk honestly about what was changing, emotionally, politically, and practically.

“This has been a fantastic process,” said Tammy. “We made more progress today than we could have in weeks of sending drafts around by email.”

This was more than a planning session, it was sense-making in complexity, and a reminder that strategy can be adaptive, energizing, and even joyful.