Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 5th Edition

CHAPTER TENReassessing and Revising Strategies and Plans

What's past is prologue.

—William Shakespeare

The Strategy Change Cycle is not over once strategies and plans have been implemented. Ongoing strategic management of strategy implementation must ensue to take account of likely changes in circumstances—in part to ensure that strategies continue to create public value and in part as a prelude to the next round of strategic planning (see Exhibit 1.1). Times change, situations change, and coalitions change.

Strategies that work must be maintained and protected through vigilance, adaptability, and updated plans. Stability matters and is an important determinant of organizational success (Meier & O'Toole, 2009), particularly when networks are needed for successful strategy implementation. For example, Popp Milward, MacKean, Casebeer, & Lindstrom, R. (2015) found that networks that are more stable are more likely to perform better than those that are always changing. Thus, ironically, if you want things to change, you should also want many other things to remain the same. But not all strategies continue to work as well as they should. These strategies must be bolstered with additional resources, significantly modified or succeeded by a new strategy, or else terminated. In each case, “What's past is prologue.” In addition, ongoing strategic management these days also often means building and maintaining an organization-wide strategic management system.

Strategies cease to work ...