Helene Mazur, Innovative Strategic Planning for Boards and Management Teams
The world has changed. Are you ahead of the curve or struggling to catch up?
A properly facilitated strategic planning process is one of the most effective ways to move forward with impact while building ownership and accountability. Our role as facilitator is to create an environment where everyone can quickly move from 'business as usual' thinking to creatively work together on the future of your organization. To take an organization to a new level of success requires vision and innovative thinking. Are you ready to create a forward-thinking plan to addresses your critical needs and opportunities?
Our process is well-thought out and structured, but not the least bit boring. Together we will create a dynamic agenda designed to engage every participant while we address the complexities in your business. Follow-up is built in to drive success.
Get ready to:
- Think in new ways, see new perspectives
- Address changing realities
- Leverage organizational strengths
- Build ownership
- Strengthen the team
- Revitalize
- Focus limited resources on what is most important
Don’t get left behind.
Helene is one of the very best facilitators I have experienced in some 40 years of working and being in management.
Bill Foster, President, Foster Coaching/Consulting Group
Why Hire a Facilitator?
A facilitator can make or break the success of a strategic planning process. An outside facilitator will not guarantee the success of a plan, but it is likely that without one, the full creative potential in the room won't be tapped.
Strategic planning discussions can be difficult because of a number of factors that include:
- Personal values
- Deeply held beliefs about the organization and where it's going
- Different perspectives on the marketplace
- Conflicting goals
- Complexities among people who have been working together for some time
- Behavior patterns
- Knowledge about how the firm has done business in the past
- Some people may perceive that their careers will depend on how they relate during the process
Unless differences are dealt with carefully and openly, they can result in disagreement that will ultimately undermine the strategic plan. An outside facilitator can look at the organization, the leadership team, and the planning process objectively. Trained in how to keep a discussion on track while taking everyone's concerns into consideration, an experienced facilitator can help participants leave with a feeling of stronger cohesiveness, accomplishment, and excitement about their role on the team.
Can't we do it ourselves?
Some try to do strategic planning on their own. Often what happens is that the discussions quickly break down into operational issues and gets stuck in detail as opposed to staying focused on the big picture. Participants fall into common patterns and aren't sure how to look from new perspectives. Meetings get off track and often don't produce action items or a way to assure the planned actions really take place.
My goal as a strategic planning facilitator is to support your organization to do its best thinking within time constraints to create a motivating, actionable plan. Helene Mazur
As an independent, objective facilitator I bring outside perspective, experience and the skills to:
- Keep the group focused
- Ask probing questions
- Encourage full participation
- Balance personalities
- Promote mutual understanding
- Foster inclusive actions
- Teach the group new thinking skills
- Advance the personal learning of each group member
- Enable groups to tap their collective wisdom,
- Help create sound, intelligent, sustainable agreements
What Strategic Planning Participants Have to Say About Meetings Facilitated by Helene
In a relatively tight timeframe we were able to systematically discuss all aspects of a complex problem and leave the room with consensus around next steps.
Local School Board
Armed with great questions we went out to members, artists, teachers and the community and gathered information that enabled us to gain perspective on the value we provide, and the needs of our stakeholders and target market
Non-profit arts center
Excellent management of session when we started to go off-track , Excellent ability to educate/re-educate with lots of information in a succinct, easily understandable way. Helene allowed everyone to participate.
June Stahl , Stahl Soap
Helene kept us moving forward in a positive and productive way despite our best attempts to get bogged down in minutiae
Brought out a lot of issues that had been just drifting along, and put us on a path to fixing them
Helene did a great job of bringing structure to a potentially chaotic mess of issues. She was focused and helped bring the best out of us.
National Association of Science Writers
As a result of this three-day workshop we were able to leave with a prioritized list of action items to improve the process, and communicate our new standards with the entire organization.
Apparel Company
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