When you think of strategic planning, what comes to mind?Hours locked away in a conference room, working through scenarios and exercises that, in the end, will produce a document that feels ok at the time, but you know will rarely see the light of day once the session is complete? Or a valuable exercise that aligns your team, creates thrust for your organization, and builds an actionable plan to keep you on track for the short- and longer-term?There is often fear associated with strategic planning — a fear in investing time, energy, and money in an exercise that, for many, doesn’t seem like it produces a great ROI and isn’t helping you engage your stakeholders.  But here’s the deal…  when done well, strategic planning is an invaluable tool for any nonprofit (in fact, organizations of all types) to help them reach their goals. Strategic planning aligns visions with budgets, builds an action plan, and helps reorient your mission around your stakeholders and their needs. My guest today is Carol Hamilton, the Principal at Grace Social Sector Consulting. She is absolutely great and her and her organization has a lot of invaluable tools and resources to keep nonprofits on track and help them weather the inevitable transitions every nonprofit experiences during its lifespan. Our conversation centered around how to build a great plan that helps you avoid falling into traps and what you can do to quickly get out of a trap if you do get caught in one. I think the best quote from the conversation was that “budgets are essentially a plan in numbers.” There is a lot of invaluable information on this episode and I hope you enjoy it. Here we go. Links: Grace Social Sector Consulting Podcast: Mission ImpactAsk: Have conversations with decision-makers. What are decision-making criteria? Use these as a screen for important decisions, get to good enough vs. perfect.