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Oregon Humane Society — How to Make Your 5-Year Strategy Clear to Your Organization

A laptop sits on a table with some papers and binders behind it. On the screen is Oregon Humane Society's 5-year vision and strategy. One person's hands rest on the laptop keyboard, and another person points at the map on the screen.

Client:

Oregon Humane Society Logo

Impact:

Organizational clarity and alignment around the vision and 5-year strategy

Oregon Humane Society's Challenge

Oregon Humane Society (OHS) had developed an ambitious 5-year vision and strategy, but recognized it needed to simplify, clarify, and communicate it to its employees and stakeholders to successfully bring the vision and strategy to life. OHS reached out to XPLANE to help them visualize their 5-year strategy and facilitate their strategic planning process by creating a set of visualizations to explain the vision and strategy, and a leadership training to enable leaders to confidently share the vision and strategy with their teams and with external stakeholders.

A group of people stand in front of a window covered in sticky notes and papers. One person is placing a new sticky note on the window and another points at a second sticky note while the rest of the group reads and looks on.

XPLANE's Approach

XPLANE first met in person with the CEO to hear the vision for OHS in her own words. We then created a few concept vision and strategy map sketches and included a larger group of OHS leaders and employees to share feedback during our co-creation process. 

For the strategic planning process, we first listened to understand the existing pain points with the strategic planning process that had been initiated and then designed and facilitated workshops with the executive leadership team to capture the key elements needed to move the strategy through the review, budgeting, and activation process.

“XPLANE came in mid-strategic planning and helped create clarity in the process, facilitated difficult prioritization discussions and challenged our team to align on a plan that was achievable, aggressive and in alignment with our 5-year strategy.”

—Chief Operating Officer

The Results

The OHS Vision and Strategy is now clear and simple to understand, and the organization is equipped with a set of communications to better explain it to employees and stakeholders. 

Through the process, OHS achieved greater clarity and alignment around the vision and 5-year strategy, and the Board of Directors is better able to determine strategic priorities and investments aligned to the vision and strategy. Specifically, the Board of Directors leveraged the visualizations to gain alignment during their recent merger with Willamette Humane Society.

OHS leadership continue to leverage the tools to make strategic decisions and ask questions like “If this idea or proposal does not influence our strategic priorities, then does it make sense to do it?”

Focusing on the strategic priorities also helped bring to light important issues like workload so leadership could better understand and help solve for them.

Oregon Humane Society's 5-Year Vision Map titled "Focusing on a Bright Future".

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