The Fundamentals of my Personal Strategic Plan

If you’ve talked to me at all over the last year, it’s probably come up that I invested in myself* in 2023 and worked with a stylist to get my “colors done” and define my personal style. I hadn’t felt like myself for several years and knew I needed a change. How I looked and felt wasn’t necessarily bad. It was fine. But I wanted to be better than fine.

I mean it when I say that the work I’ve done with my stylist has been life-changing. Getting ready is so much easier than it used to be because I have way less in my closet, it all coordinates, and I only keep or buy things that fit perfectly and that I genuinely love. I feel more confident and - maybe most importantly - I feel like I’m presenting to the world authentically. I’ve enjoyed the process so much that I spent Tuesday sitting in her chair, staring at myself in the mirror, and testing out all of the colors in my pallet to see what combinations work best for me, get new ideas for how I can combine my colors and clothes in the future, and getting motivated to keep at it because I know that it’s working for me.

So what does this have to do with nonprofits, fundraising, or my consulting work? A lot…

In a sense, my style journey over the last year became the foundation for a personal strategic plan. And I learned a few lessons over the last year that I think can also be helpful to the organizations I work with.

• Being asked to examine how I want people to think of me has helped me hone in on my values and what I need to do to communicate them externally.
  I was forced to name how I want people to think about me, what values I want to present to the world, and what it means to show up for myself. There were moments of confusion… What do I do when two of my value words - professional and fun - seem like opposites but feel correct to me at my core? (Turns out, according to my style archetype, that actually makes a lot of sense!) This process helped me shape my branding strategy, redefined my mission in life, and gave me tools to make informed decisions so I stay in sync with the values I identified.

• Bringing in an expert to help facilitate this transformation gave me access to knowledge and skills I didn’t personally possess.
  If I hadn’t leaned on my stylist’s experience, I would still be stuck. For years, I knew something wasn’t working. I wasn’t excited about anything. I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong so I didn’t have a clue how to fix it. So I brought in someone with years of experience in this area to give me the framework and language to identify pain points and develop solutions to move forward.

• By trusting a defined and proven process, I’ve been able to move closer to my goals faster than I ever could have done on my own.
  In the beginning, I set clear benchmarks for myself and began incorporating what I learned into my day-to-day rhythm. It didn’t take long for me to realize that what I was doing was working which built momentum to continue moving forward. Some changes were immediate, some were incremental, but combined they gave me the tools to take control of a part of my life that was getting in the way of my success.

I’ve worked with several organizations over the years that are struggling with mediocrity, just like I was in my personal style. And none of us want to languish in mediocrity forever. We as humans, the organizations we work for, and the people we serve deserve better.

When things are going fine but there’s a general lack of enthusiasm or direction, it can be tricky to determine what needs to be fixed. Maybe you’re just trying to figure out what to do tomorrow and there’s no sense of urgency or organizational capacity for a full-blown strategic plan. Maybe decisions are being made that aren’t harmful but also aren’t helping the organization grow. Maybe the status quo has become stale but you can’t figure out where to even start shaking things up just enough to breathe new life into your work.

Starting with the fundamentals of examining your mission, vision, values - and how they are playing out in the day-to-day work of the organization - is a great first step. That may be all you need to jump-start new ideas, boost enthusiasm, and make incremental change that ultimately transforms the organization.

I learned that I needed to bring in an expert to help tease out what small changes I could make to make a huge difference, ask tough questions that I didn’t know how to ask myself, and provide a step-by-step plan to move forward became the foundation for a bigger, brighter future. Let me know if that’s something your organization is looking to do as well! I’d love to walk alongside you as you go through your own transformative journey.

*When I first wrote this, I used the words “spent a bunch of money” and quickly realized that diminished the fact that this was actually an investment that’s come back to me in spades. Over the years I’ve wasted thousands of dollars on clothes that I didn’t really like and didn’t look that good on me and I no longer do that. The amount I paid was worth it for me to make every day moving forward that much brighter. So let’s be mindful of the language we use and recognize that sometimes we need to make a short-term investment in ourselves and our organizations to build a brighter future, shall we?