FastTime® Planning at the
International Leadership Association
by Shelly Wilsey, Director International Leadership Association

One of the aspects of my role as Director of the International Leadership Association (ILA) that I love the most is the opportunity to learn from and with some amazingly talented people. Leland Russell is one such person. We sought a strategic planning consultant to help us design and facilitate a strategic planning retreat for our Board of Directors, but Leland and his Leadership In FastTime® approach contributed much more than we had expected.

When we were searching for someone to facilitate the ILA’s annual strategic planning retreat in 2008, two of our board members, Mark Gerzon and Kathryn Johnson, highly recommended that we engage Leland Russell, President of GEO Group Strategic Services, Inc. They emphasized that his Leadership In FastTime® approach blends virtual and face-to-face planning meetings by means of an easy-to-access online Collaboration Center that he uses to build momentum, facilitate engagement, develop consensus, and shape strategies.

We all hear about so many new technologies that are supposed to save us time and increase our efficiency, so I thought it would be useful to share our experiences working with Leland because his Leadership In FastTime® approach turned out to be a great fit with our desire to quickly and seamlessly link strategic thinking, planning and action.

At our first planning meeting four weeks before the retreat, Leland proposed that prepare for our upcoming face-to-face planning session virtually and “tap the collective intelligence” of the board using an online approach. Rather than send a series of emails, Leland recommended that we use the FastTime® Collaboration Center tools for an iterative retreat preparation process that would unfold over three consecutive weeks. Early each week, the board members would respond to online survey with a short set of strategic questions. Later in the week there would be a teleconference to review the survey results and deepen our understanding of the various issues and perspectives.

My immediate reaction to Leland’s proposal was: “We have just four weeks – it’s impossible to schedule twenty-eight people for weekly online input and three teleconferences that quickly!” I was relieved when Mark Gerzon offered a compromise of having just two weeks on online input and two follow-up teleconferences, but I still thought this was an unobtainable goal. I’m happy to say I was wrong.

Using the Leadership In FastTime® Collaboration Center, we achieved an 80% response rate to the online surveys, and even our most techno-phobic board members easily mastered the system. While a lower percentage joined the two conference calls (due to scheduling conflicts), the virtual process primed our strategic planning pump so that everyone was already engaged in the retreat thinking and planning before they even left home. As a result, our time together virtually was efficient, effective, and invigorating.

How Our Virtual Process Worked

After reviewing the ILA’s historical documents — including our SWOT surveys, an eight year overview of our strategic planning milestones, our first and second five year strategic plans, and the Strategic Initiative work plans — Leland advised us to step back and begin with three big picture questions for the first online survey.

The board responded to these questions using the online collaboration tools, which required about 15-20 minutes of their time. Within a 48-hour window, each board member could pick the time a convenient time to input their responses to the survey.

After the online input was received, Leland quickly synthesized the responses and prepared a Theme Analysis for us to review at the first teleconference later that week.  For example, there were three major themes in our responses to question #2: “What would make ILA truly unique in the realm of leadership and help drive our goal of strategic growth? The top three themes were:

• Strategic Collaboration

• Portal / Aggregator

• Cultural Leadership Expertise

The analysis included all of the responses under each of the themes, so we had the benefit of seeing the exact verbatim comments that supported each theme. The Theme Analysis was emailed to the board prior to the first conference call and virtual collaboration meeting, so we had time to review it and reflect on the themes and verbatim comments.

Here’s how the 60-minute teleconference and virtual collaboration meeting worked:

• We dialed in to a conference call line and also logged into the Leadership In FastTime® Collaboration Center, which had an interactive agenda with each agenda item linked to a collaboration tool.

• Leland did a five-minute review of the themes that emerged for question #1 and pointed out a few of the specific comments that had rich detail worth noting.

• We then had a facilitated 10-minute verbal discussion about what we were seeing.

• The verbal discussion was followed by about ten minutes for input using the online tools, which gave each of us an opportunity to add comments on the current ideas or add new ideas. This input process gave everyone an equal voice and enabled everyone to communicate their views and for others to see them as they appeared on the screen in real-time.

• We repeated this process for questions #2 and #3 and generated seven pages of ideas and remarks during the 60-minute virtual session.

The next week, our second online survey and Collaboration Center session focused on the status of our prior strategic planning – particularly the Key Strategic Issues defined in that plan. For each issue, we answered two questions online:

• On a scale of 1-to-10, how effectively have we addressed this Strategic Issue over the past two years?

• What actions could the board or others take to increase our effectiveness in addressing this issue?

Here’s a really cool part of the Leadership In FastTime® Collaboration Center: after each person entered their 1-to-10 rating, everyone saw all answers, an average rating score, the standard deviation, and the total votes in real time.

The two pre-retreat surveys and follow-up online meeting were extremely valuable because they focused the board’s thinking along two equally important parallel tracks: 1) exploring big picture / horizon questions; 2) determining immediate action steps necessary to address current challenges. In short, we came into the planning retreat well prepared to address future, as well as current, strategic issues.

The other pre-retreat work, in addition to the two online surveys and follow-up collaboration sessions with the full board, focused on the status of the four Strategic Initiatives that had emerged from our prior strategic planning. Each initiative had a board member coordinator. Leland and I worked with them individually to assess their progress over the past twelve months. We used the Leadership In FastTime® “After Action Review” process, which is a simple and very useful tool that can be used periodically to keep teams on track and accountable. Each Strategic Initiative Coordinator answered four questions in writing:

• What did we set out to do?

• What actually happened (good and bad)?

• WHY did those things happen?

• What are the lessons learned?

Leland coached each of the Strategic Initiative Coordinators to help them prepare their After Action Reports, which they presented to the full board at the retreat to ensure that our thinking and planning process incorporated what we had and had not accomplished over the past two years and what we had learned.

Strategic Planning Retreat In Los Angeles

Twenty-seven people attended our face-to-face Strategic Planning Retreat in Los Angeles. This included all but three board members, two Member Interest Group chairs, two ILA members working extensively outside of the USA, three staff members, and Leland, who facilitated the retreat.

A primary focus of the retreat was to create strategies to increase participation and membership in the ILA, particularly outside of North America. This requires a strategic plan to implement appropriate technology, expand our infrastructure, and develop new partnerships. Each Board member brought their laptop and we were all logged into the Leadership In FastTime® Collaboration Center during the meeting, which we used periodically to augment our face-to-face discussions.

While the in-room collaboration process was similar to one we used in our virtual meetings, we took it one step further to accelerate the processes. We had four table teams working together, each drilling down into one Strategic Initiative. Throughout the day, many thoughts, plans, ideas, strategies and questions emerged from the four table teams and they were typed directly into the Collaboration Center (and thereby captured for later online access). Leland called this “harvesting the Collective Intelligence” in real time.

If you’ve ever been frustrated by a meeting dominated by just a few voices, and had difficulty reaching consensus, you’ll appreciate what we were able to accomplish. Points of agreement and issues for discussion among the four Strategic Initiative teams were readily apparent and we moved quickly toward consensus. In fact, it was amazing how often the table teams unknowingly built on one another’s ideas. 

While it certainly wasn’t the most important outcome, it is worth noting that at the end of the meeting there were zero sheets of flip chart paper for some poor soul to later transcribe. Instead, we had everything exported from the Collaboration Center into Excel, so we could make a quick, easy transition from strategic planning to tactical planning and then to implementation.

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