SOAR Into Strategy: A Strengths-Based Approach to Strategic Planning
Strategic planning doesn’t have to begin with what’s wrong. What might become possible if your next strategic conversation started by discovering what your organization does exceptionally well—and then used those strengths to explore opportunities, imagine the future, and define meaningful results?
In this highly interactive five-hour workshop, participants will experience SOAR—Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results, a strengths-based approach to strategic thinking grounded in Appreciative Inquiry.
Rather than simply learning another planning framework, you’ll experience SOAR from three perspectives: yourself, your organization, and the people whose voices can help shape its future.
Through individual reflection, appreciative interviews, partner conversations, and practical strategic planning exercises, you’ll explore what gives your organization life at its best, identify emerging possibilities, clarify aspirations for the future, and consider the results that would demonstrate meaningful success. You’ll also explore an important question for today’s leaders:
What changes when strategy is created with people rather than simply presented to them?
As organizations begin preparing for their upcoming strategic planning cycles, this workshop offers a practical way to create richer strategic conversations, engage stakeholders, and build greater ownership in turning ideas into action.
During the workshop, you will:
- Experience SOAR personally before applying it organizationally
- Learn how Appreciative Inquiry can strengthen strategic conversations
- Practice conducting an appreciative organizational interview
- Develop a preliminary SOAR for your own organization
- Identify emerging strategic priorities and possibilities
- Consider whose voices need to be included in strategic planning
- Design a SOAR conversation you can take back to your organization
You’ll leave with practical questions, tools, and a process you can immediately use to begin a different kind of strategic conversation.
Who should attend?
Business owners, executives, HR and organizational-development professionals, nonprofit leaders, managers, consultants, entrepreneurs, strategic-planning facilitators, and anyone responsible for helping an organization determine where it wants to go next.
Come prepared to think differently about strategy—and leave prepared to start a conversation that can move your organization forward.