Strategic Planning in Complexity

A StrategicPlan “built for a time that no longer exists.”

That’s how Tammy Orahood, Director, Global Programs at the Brown School at Wash U, described their 10-year strategic plan.

And she was right. Since the plan was written, so much has changed:

🔄 A new School of Public Health had spun out, taking staff and programs with it.
🔄 New funding cuts and uncertainty about international students and research had created a much more uncertain environment.

The challenge: How do you create a living strategy that responds to that complexity, rather than trying to tame it?

I came to help, and we hosted a half day workshop at the St Louis zoo!

I had the pleasure of designing and facilitating a one-day strategic workshop for the international team.

Rather than spending the summer emailing strategy documents back and forth in isolation, we brought people together in one room, with their collective brainpower and deep institutional knowledge.

We used the Panarchy cycle to explore the current strategy:

🔍 What still holds value and should be nurtured?
🧹 What has run its course and needs to be let go?
🌱 Where is new energy emerging, and how can it be supported?

In just a few hours, we:

Mapped the current strategy, deciding collectively what needed to be ditched and what should be kept.
Named five new strategic goals that reflected the current reality.
Sketched out actionable activities under each goal.

Perhaps most importantly, created space for the team to #connect, #breathe, and talk honestly about what’s changing, and what matters most for them now.

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

This wasn’t just about planning, it was about sense-making in complexity.

About creating ownership across the team. About acknowledging the emotional and political dimensions of change in higher education, especially for those working in social work and international research in this unprecedented moment.

Strategic planning doesn’t have to be dry or top-down. Get it done! It doesn't have to be painful

It can be adaptive. Energizing. A fun day at the zoo with people who care about the same things you do.

And when done right, it builds not just a plan, but shared momentum.
Tammy Orahood Zizi Shillig, LMSW Paul Backman-Levy Mitra Naseh Sojung Park Proscovia Nabunya, PhD Jacqueline Martinez Pullen Tyler De Shon, PhD, MBA Aytakin Huseynli, Ph.D.

and others!