Strategic Planning

[Lionel English]

This is a big topic, but I'm proposing it in stages, and most of the heavy lifting won't be due for a couple of months.

This is an introductory/overview post, where I'll lay out what I have in mind and solicit feedback for refining the overall procedure.

I'll note up front that while I have been to presentations of strategic plans before, I have never been involved in the preparation of one, and if anyone has suggestions that would improve the process, please let me know.  I'm going to proceed with what I've been thinking about for the past couple of months, based on the principle that we have relatively few areas available for growth, and thus it shouldn't be too difficult to brainstorm.  And given that we've survived 15 years with no explicit growth plan whatsoever, the consequences of doing this poorly aren't too severe.  They'll just serve as learning opportunities for the next time.

So what I have in mind, in a broad sense, is trying to establish where we want to be at a given point in the future--I've arbitrarily identified our 20th anniversary as our first point--and then establish milestones that will get us to that point in incremental steps, so that we'll have short term goals to work towards that will carry us forward to long term goals.  We will review our progress towards milestones periodically--say quarterly or semi-annually--and adjust either the milestones or the end goals as needed.  At some point in the future we would identify a second goalpost, and begin work on a new X year plan, and so forth.

I have no idea if this will work.  Our growth so far has been entirely organic, and I don't know how a volunteer organization will take to directed growth.  If it turns out to appear to be doing more harm than good, we can abandon the effort, but if we can make it work it might help give a stronger sense of cohesion to the project, and further team spirit, rah rah.  I am somewhat inspired by Henry's example of laying out a migration/growth path for the database with his New Fun/More Fun planning of a year or two ago.

What I'd like to do, unless there are better suggestions, is break the project down into various "growth areas": the db/OI/software area, support systems, financials, etc.  

I will select a board member to head each "committee".  Each committee head will recruit people to brainstorm that growth area.  Board members who are not selected as committee heads will be asked to participate in at least one of the committees, and committee heads may choose to participate as committee members in other committees, in addition to the committees they're being asked to head, but I don't want the committees to be too incestuous.  Each committee head should reach out to people outside the board to flush out their committees.  I'm thinking committees should be around half a dozen members in size, but I'll leave it to the individual committee heads to decide what will work best for their committee.  You may solicit help on one of the lists, or recruit specific individuals, or some combination of the two.

Committees will be asked to think about ways in which they might grow their area of responsibility within the given time frame.  So they'll go through brainstorming sessions, during which they can throw out pie-in-the-sky ideas.  Then they'll weed through the ideas, deciding which are realistically achievable within the given time frame.  They can at this stage allow a bit of leeway for labor and finances, since those areas might grow.  They should identify costs of each idea (financial or labor/bodies), and prioritize the ideas.  Some committees may need to communicate with others for information, some may want to develop tiered strategies for consideration during the reconciliation process (e.g. if we have this much money, do this; if not, do that).

When the committees have finished their work, (for which we can allow four or six weeks), we'll bring things back to the board list and evaluate the ideas and do further weeding and re-prioritize what's left, until we have something that sounds realistic.  Then we'll begin the process of establishing the milestones.

The latter stages may be fairly time consuming as well, so we may decide to create another subcommittee to go through all the "growth area" output and compile a recommended four year plan, which the board can then do up and down votes on, or vote to amend.  And the milestones could then be decided upon similarly.

Over the next few days, please give me your thoughts on the overall process, and then on what growth areas you think we should focus on, and whether or not you have any interest in chairing a specific committee.  Some of my ideas are below.  Don't focus too much at this point on some of the details I'm suggesting, try to focus on the categories themselves.  The committees can determine their own details once they've formed.

Financials:  Decide on a fiscal year (Jan-Dec?  Jul-Jun?), develop budget planning strategies, identify income and expense areas, identify growth areas (e.g. can we increase Google Ad revenues?  How and by how much?  increase paypal donations?  How and by how much?  Find other revenue streams?)

Systems/hardware/support: We should shortly be on two Hetzner servers.  is that ideal?  Do we want a third server?  A fourth?  What for?  What would the costs be?  How would we use three servers?  Four?  What growth plans, if any, do we have for support services, like the wiki, the bugzillas, review board?  More features?  Better integration?  New support apps?

DB/OI/software:  More or less building on the work Henry's already done.  The main questions to ask here would be whether or not we can reach and complete New Fun within the allotted time frame.  Do we want to make any revisions to New Fun?  Do we think we can progress to More Fun?  Do we want to think about any scope expaning projects (*not* strips or reference works, as they clearly require too much work, but maybe adding support for ancillaries (handbooks, pin up books, etc) and/or comics in non-comics publications, implementing the "category" (book/periodical) idea, etc?  Adding web service support? 

Membership/lists:  Not sure what growth opportunities might exist here.  Gaining more indexers?  Editors?  List members?  Maintaining status quo?  Developing metrics to measure growth/retention?  Not all ideas have to be related to growth, some ideas might simply relate to figuring out ways to measure our performance, so we'll know how well/poorly we're doing in various areas.

Ideas welcome.

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[CArch...@aol.com]

While not the easiest thing to deal with, I am more comfortable with the organic method of doing things here, for a couple of reasons. One, when we have done this committee things before, often nothing gets achieved and the committees end up abandoned.
Secondly, it has a tendacy to focus ourselves onto one topic at a time. I do not think we have had much success when we have tried to juggle multiple issues at a time.
Thirdly, we have problems remembering Roberts Rules of Order here in the Board room. Trying to create a structure for strategic planning amongst a Board and membership known for its independence might be more a headache than its worth
And Lionel outlines another problem too, that we, as a whole, have little experience in this methodology. We may be spending a lot of time creating rules to follow first before any actual work gets done.

Now all that being said, that does not mean that what Lionel suggests is impossible or cannot be done either. Even though I am comfortable with the organic nature of what we do, we still need focus and timetables to be stuck too by us otherwise we go too far in the other direction.

my best
-Ray

[CArch...@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/28/10 3:18:34 AM, lio...@beanmar.net writes:

What I'd like to do, unless there are better suggestions, is break the project down into various "growth areas": the db/OI/software area, support systems, financials, etc.

i think this is a wise place to start.

my best
-Ray

[Tony Rose]

I went through an extensive strategic planning initiative when I was on the Little Rock school board.  We hired an expensive facilitator and he spent a full day explaining the rules.  I have the notebooks and stuff from that exercise somewhere, I think.

What I recall was that there needs to be a clear statement of core beliefs followed by a clear statement of goals.  Then each goal needs a plan and some way to measure success, like for instance:

Belief:  At the very heart of the GCD Project is the intention of indexing every comic published.  Period.

Goal:  The GCD will encourage more indexing of Japanese language comics and increase their number in the database.

Plan:  Find Japanese speakers among current members, name them as a committee to contact Japanese comics fans and get those fans involved in the project.

Measurement:  By 2014, there will be at least 500 Japanese comics in the database.

Like that.




tony

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[Lionel English]

That corresponds pretty well with the strategic plan presentations I've attended.

 

I think our mission statement from our charter corresponds to a clear statement of core beliefs (or is there a difference?).

 

The things I called "growth areas" probably need a better name--operational areas?  And the goals will come from the proposed committees--they'll generate a goal slush pool, from which the board or another committee will choose what they believe they can achieve within the specified timeframe (i.e. by Spring 2014).  Board will have final approval over the process, and will use the results to prioritize future work.

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Henry Andrews]

I have to say I really like Tony's way formulating the goals and measurements.  I know sometimes the measurements end up feeling arbitrary, but it's almost more important to just have something out there to have a concrete target in mind than it is to worry about exactly what the target it.  A lot of people are more motivated by something concrete.

thanks,
-henry

[Lionel English]

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 12:15 AM, <CArch...@aol.com> wrote:

While not the easiest thing to deal with, I am more comfortable with the organic method of doing things here, for a couple of reasons. One, when we have done this committee things before, often nothing gets achieved and the committees end up abandoned.

 

 

In this instance, I'm hoping to avoid that by having committees with finite life spans--they'll have six to eight weeks to get results.  And since they'll be charged mostly with coming up with ideas, rather than making the final decisions, that should also help speed things along.

 

 

Secondly, it has a tendacy to focus ourselves onto one topic at a time. I do not think we have had much success when we have tried to juggle multiple issues at a time.

 

 

This I'm trying to avoid by putting different people in charge of each group, and encouraging each group to look outside the board for members.  The intitial groups will later collapse into one smaller group that will reconcile the various ideas generated by the larger groups.

 

 

Thirdly, we have problems remembering Roberts Rules of Order here in the Board room. Trying to create a structure for strategic planning amongst a Board and membership known for its independence might be more a headache than its worth
And Lionel outlines another problem too, that we, as a whole, have little experience in this methodology. We may be spending a lot of time creating rules to follow first before any actual work gets done.

 

 

As Tony has noted before, the Board is a delibarative body.  So the Roberts Rules of Order prevents us from coming to decisions hastily.  But, as you note, they can also bog us down.  So one reason for delegating a lot of the footwork to committees is that they *needn't* be bogged down by Robert's Rules of Order.  We can employ those at the end of the process, when the board formally examines the final proposal and either gives it a straight up and down vote, or uses the amendment system to tweak the final proposal a bit.

 

But Stage One is simply accumulating ideas, and Stage Two is combining them, sorting them, and whittling them down to a manageable size.  The board needn't formally do anything till Stage Three.

 

And it might not work too great the first time through, but it will give us practice for the second time through, should we decide that it was a good idea in principle and the only problems were with our execution.

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Tony Rose]

----- "Lionel English" <lio...@beanmar.net> wrote:
>

That corresponds pretty well with the strategic plan presentations I've attended.

 

I think our mission statement from our charter corresponds to a clear statement of core beliefs (or is there a difference?).

There is a difference but we don't need to get bogged down in that.  I probably mis-handled my example.  Our core beliefs statement should say something about the importance of comics to American culture, the tragedy of the uncredited comics of the last century, the importance of preserving and transmitting knowledge, etc etc etc.  Our mission statement would say what we were gonna do about our beliefs:  catalog every comic and make that database available to the masses.

Then:  what are the goals that will make take us toward fulfilling our mission?  Those would be Lionel's developmental areas:  raise more money, index more comics, complete More Fun, etc.

Each goal should suggest an objective, some way in which achieving the goal will further the mission.

Then there would be a plan behind each goal.

Then there would be some way of measuring our success.  And if the goal isn't something quantifiable, it needs to be re-worked until it is:  "We want to make the lists friendlier" would actually be a goal like "Every new subscriber will receive a personalized welcome message" and we would measure that goal by counting how many new subscribers got personalized welcome messages.

It all sounds pretty simple but once we start actually trying to develop goals that help accomplish the mission, you'll see that a lot of people will want things like:  let's be better at what we do.  >shrug< what does that mean?  You have to spell out real, solid objectives.

A good strategic plan has consensus buy-in from the stakeholders or their representatives.  Right now the only stakeholder group that has formal representation are the indexers themselves.  We don't have participation by very many end-users who are not indexers.  Well, maybe Lionel, Roy Thomas, Frank Motler, and Tony Isabella.  :)  But seriously, non-indexing end users need to be a part of planning process.

Does any of this make sense?





tr

 

The things I called "growth areas" probably need a better name--operational areas?  And the goals will come from the proposed committees--they'll generate a goal slush pool, from which the board or another committee will choose what they believe they can achieve within the specified timeframe (i.e. by Spring 2014).  Board will have final approval over the process, and will use the results to prioritize future work.
>
>

> On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 5:47 AM, Tony Rose <tonyr...@comcast.net> wrote:
>

> I went through an extensive strategic planning initiative when I was on the Little Rock school board.  We hired an expensive facilitator and he spent a full day explaining the rules.  I have the notebooks and stuff from that exercise somewhere, I think.
>
> What I recall was that there needs to be a clear statement of core beliefs followed by a clear statement of goals.  Then each goal needs a plan and some way to measure success, like for instance:
>
> Belief:  At the very heart of the GCD Project is the intention of indexing every comic published.  Period.
>
> Goal:  The GCD will encourage more indexing of Japanese language comics and increase their number in the database.
>
> Plan:  Find Japanese speakers among current members, name them as a committee to contact Japanese comics fans and get those fans involved in the project.
>
> Measurement:  By 2014, there will be at least 500 Japanese comics in the database.
>
> Like that.
>
>
>
>
> tony

>
> ----- CArch...@aol.com wrote:
> > While not the easiest thing to deal with, I am more comfortable with the organic method of doing things here, for a couple of reasons. One, when we have done this committee things before, often nothing gets achieved and the committees end up abandoned.

> > Secondly, it has a tendacy to focus ourselves onto one topic at a time. I do not think we have had much success when we have tried to juggle multiple issues at a time.

> > Thirdly, we have problems remembering Roberts Rules of Order here in the Board room. Trying to create a structure for strategic planning amongst a Board and membership known for its independence might be more a headache than its worth
> > And Lionel outlines another problem too, that we, as a whole, have little experience in this methodology. We may be spending a lot of time creating rules to follow first before any actual work gets done.
> >

[Lionel English]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that we didn't need to develop measurements also.  Yes, any goal we adopt should come with an accompanying measurement.

 

So some goals could be growth related:

* Increase indexers by X%

* Decrease server downtime to Y% (or maintain at Y% or less)

* Maintain at least N months hosting fees in our savings account

 

Other goals could be more boolean in nature:

* Develop tools for fiscal planning and reporting (a budget, a fiscal calendar)

* Add these features to site:  A, B, C, D

 

The measurement for the latter would simply be "we achieved this" or "we didn't achieve this".

 

All goals should relate back to the core beliefs in some way.  "This tool will help us measure this, so we can determine how well we're meeting this goal."  "This goal allows us to be less dependent on this/more self supporting"  "This goal improves site stability, which improves our standing in the comics scholarship community"

[Lionel English]

OK, we've had a bit of discussion on details, but no one has challenged the basic idea here (well, I guess Ray did, but I think he's willing to give it a shot as well :-)

So I'm probably going to divvy out assignments this weekend.  I'll incorporate Tony's example with my instructions to each group, as it does a better job of conveying what we're looking for than my initial descriptions.

Before I do so, does anyone have any final thoughts on the operational areas I've identified below?  Too many?  Too few?  Not the right names or focus areas?  And are there any volunteers to take on any specific areas?  Some of them will probably go to pretty obvious people ;-)

 

> Over the next few days, please give me your thoughts on the overall process, and then on what growth areas you think we should focus on, and whether or not you have any interest in chairing a specific committee.  Some of my ideas are below.  Don't focus too much at this point on some of the details I'm suggesting, try to focus on the categories themselves.  The committees can determine their own details once they've formed.
>
> Financials:  Decide on a fiscal year (Jan-Dec?  Jul-Jun?), develop budget planning strategies, identify income and expense areas, identify growth areas (e.g. can we increase Google Ad revenues?  How and by how much?  increase paypal donations?  How and by how much?  Find other revenue streams?)
>
> Systems/hardware/support: We should shortly be on two Hetzner servers.  is that ideal?  Do we want a third server?  A fourth?  What for?  What would the costs be?  How would we use three servers?  Four?  What growth plans, if any, do we have for support services, like the wiki, the bugzillas, review board?  More features?  Better integration?  New support apps?
>
> DB/OI/software:  More or less building on the work Henry's already done.  The main questions to ask here would be whether or not we can reach and complete New Fun within the allotted time frame.  Do we want to make any revisions to New Fun?  Do we think we can progress to More Fun?  Do we want to think about any scope expaning projects (*not* strips or reference works, as they clearly require too much work, but maybe adding support for ancillaries (handbooks, pin up books, etc) and/or comics in non-comics publications, implementing the "category" (book/periodical) idea, etc?  Adding web service support? 
>
> Membership/lists:  Not sure what growth opportunities might exist here.  Gaining more indexers?  Editors?  List members?  Maintaining status quo?  Developing metrics to measure growth/retention?  Not all ideas have to be related to growth, some ideas might simply relate to figuring out ways to measure our performance, so we'll know how well/poorly we're doing in various areas.
>
> Ideas welcome.
>
>

--

Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Henry Andrews]

Well I'll obviously take the software side.  Just as obviously, I'd suggest we ask Andrés to helm the hardware / systems side.  He has some great ideas on the topic.

thanks,

-henry

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, March 4, 2010 8:52:47 AM
Subject: Re: [gcd-board] Strategic Planning

--

[Lionel English]

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 8:52 AM, Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net> wrote:

 

> Membership/lists:  Not sure what growth opportunities might exist here.  Gaining more indexers?  Editors?  List members?  Maintaining status quo?  Developing metrics to measure growth/retention?  Not all ideas have to be related to growth, some ideas might simply relate to figuring out ways to measure our performance, so we'll know how well/poorly we're doing in various areas.

 

 

Might change this to just membership.  Goals would be focused around growth of indexers/editors, site traffic, and perhaps membership on gcd-main.  Could include things like stronger presence on social media sites, stronger presense at major and/or mid-size cons, etc.  Developing promotional opportunities.

 

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[tonyr...@comcast.net]

Maybe this should be called "public relations," since everything you
mentioned is outreach-type stuff.

tony

[tonyr...@comcast.net]

I'll lead financials and I'd like to sit on PR if that's all right.

tony

[Lionel English]

Good idea

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Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Lou Mazzella]

I'd be willing to look at membership. -Lou --- On Thu, 3/4/10, Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net> wrote:

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net> Subject: Re: [gcd-board] Strategic Planning

--

[Lou Mazzella]

I'd also like to sit in on finances. -Lou --- On Thu, 3/4/10, Lou Mazzella <gloi...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[Lionel English]

General Instructions

As discussed earlier, we are trying to establish where we want to be at a given point in the future--I've arbitrarily identified our 20th anniversary as our first point, and I'm establishing that anniversary as April 1, 2014.  That date might be off by a few days (I don't recall), but it's the beginning of a quarter, so it's a convenient date.  

The board may refine the statement of core beliefs during the final phases of this process, but for working purposes, let's assume the GCD's primary objective "is to build a publicly accessible database using the latest technology available in order to document the medium of printed comics wherever they may be published", and that our core beliefs relate to that objective.

We would like to establish clear, measurable goals that will help us achieve/retain/support that objective, and then establish milestones that will get us to those goals in incremental steps, so that we'll have short term goals to work towards that will carry us forward to long term goals.  We will review our progress towards milestones periodically--say quarterly or semi-annually--and adjust either the milestones or the end goals as needed.  At some point in the future we would identify a second goalpost, and begin work on a new X year plan, and so forth.

Each goal should support the mission statement, have a plan for achieving the goal, and have a metric by which we can measure our success.  As an example:

Goal:  The GCD will encourage more indexing of Japanese language comics and increase their number in the database.

Plan:  Find Japanese speakers among current members, name them as a committee to contact Japanese comics fans and get those fans involved in the project.

Measurement:  By 2014, there will be at least 500 Japanese comics in the database.

I am breaking the project down into several focus areas, or operational areas, andwill be assigning committee heads to form committees to examine each area and come up with appropriate goals.  We will then reconvene and either form a new committee to reconcile the various ideas, or do so ourselves, in order to establish a final draft we can adopt.

Each committee head will be responsible for recruiting people to brainstorm that focus area.  Board members who are not selected as committee heads will be asked to participate in at least one of the committees, and committee heads may choose to participate as committee members in other committees, in addition to the committees they're being asked to head, but I don't want the committees to be too incestuous.  Each committee head should reach out to people outside the board to flush out their committees.  I'm thinking committees should be around half a dozen members in size, but I'll leave it to the individual committee heads to decide what will work best for their committee.  You may solicit help on one of the lists, or recruit specific individuals, or some combination of the two.

Committees will be asked to think about ways in which their focus area might contribute to the overall objective of the GCD Project within the given time frame.  So they'll go through brainstorming sessions, during which they can throw out pie-in-the-sky ideas.  Then they'll weed through the ideas, deciding which are realistically achievable within the given time frame.  They can at this stage allow a bit of leeway for labor and finances, since those areas might grow.  They should identify costs of each idea (financial or labor/bodies), and prioritize the ideas.  Some committees may need to communicate with others for information, some may want to develop tiered strategies for consideration during the reconciliation process (e.g. if we have this much money, do this; if not, do that).

When the committees have finished their work, we'll bring things back to the board list and evaluate the ideas and do further weeding and re-prioritize what's left, until we have something that sounds realistic.  I'll ask for a progress report at the beginning of April, and depending on where we're at I might grant a two or four week extension for each committees report.  

Once we've established the basic strategic plan, we will announce it to the membership and post it to the wiki.  Then we'll begin the process of establishing the milestones, or will delegate it.

I am including a few example ideas below with each committee assignment, but none of the committees are obligated to use these ideas.

The Assignments

Tony:  Financials

identify income and expense areas, identify growth areas (e.g. can we increase Google Ad revenues?  How and by how much?  increase paypal donations?  How and by how much?  Find other revenue streams?)  Decide on a reserve fund (X months operational expenses?)

Ralf:  Systems/hardware/support

For now, I'm sticking with my initial idea of having a board member head each committee, but in the future we may not do it this way.  Obviously, current sys admins will be the people you want on your team, though you're not limited to them,  What growth plans, if any, do we have for support services, like the wiki, the bugzillas, review board?  More features?  Better integration?  New support apps?  Do we see the need for more hardware?  Why?  Ways to improve/maintain stability, performance.

Henry: DB/OI/software

The main questions to ask here would be whether or not we can reach and complete New Fun within the allotted time frame.  Do we want to make any revisions to New Fun?  Do we think we can progress to More Fun?  Do we want to think about any scope expaning projects (*not* strips or reference works, as they clearly require too much work, but maybe adding support for ancillaries (handbooks, pin up books, etc) and/or comics in non-comics publications, implementing the "category" (book/periodical) idea, etc)?  Adding web service support? Recruit more developers.

Lou: Outreach/Public Relations

Increase visibility.  Increase site traffic.  Recruit more indexers?  Editors?  

-- 

Lionel English

lio...@beanmar.net

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Lionel English]

Chairmen, please take note of who has already volunteered to work with you.  I would also like to be on each of the committees, though I'm not planning on taking a leadership role in any of them

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Henry Andrews]

I would like to also sit on the Outreach/PR committee if there is space.  I don't have a driving agenda for this but do have an interest.

I'm available to help the System/Hardware committee, especially if the topic of using virtual machines comes up, but would prefer to have fairly minimal involvement there.  Not sure if that means I need to be "on" the committee or not- I'll leave it up to Ralf.

I have no interest in Financials :-)  I have trouble enough remembering to pay attention to my own.  (also, I figure I should try to have at least one committee that I have no involvement in whatsoever :-)

thanks,

-henry

--

[Matthew Gore]

PR committee for me, please.

 

Matt

[Lionel English]

Chairmen, please also take note that if your committees fill up with board people, try reaching out to a few non-board people anyway :-)  One of my (unstated) goals is to get more people involved in the big picture tasks.

--
Lionel English
lio...@beanmar.net

[Will Allred]

I’d like to sit in on Systems/hardware/support with Ralf and the DB/OI/software with Henry.

 

Will

______________________________

 

Will Allred  <wal...@gmail.com>

http://www.quantumzone.org/           http://www.comics.org/

 

From: gcd-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:gcd-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Lionel English
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 12:28 AM
To: GCD Board
Subject: [gcd-board] Re: Strategic Planning

 

General Instructions

--

[CArch...@aol.com]

PR might be the only committee I can think of that I would be some measure qualified for.

my best
-Ray

[CArch...@aol.com]

In a message dated 3/4/10 1:39:13 PM, lio...@beanmar.net writes:

Might change this to just membership.  Goals would be focused around growth of indexers/editors, site traffic, and perhaps membership on gcd-main.  Could include things like stronger presence on social media sites, stronger presense at major and/or mid-size cons, etc.  Developing promotional opportunities.

I would add to this to help revitalize our internationa indexers and those memberships and lists too.

my best
-Ray

[CArch...@aol.com]

I can do membership committee too.

my best
-Ray