Child Advocacy Symposium

Cycle 1
Strategic Doing Pack
Ed Morrison

Milwaukee, WI
May 26, 2009
 Overview
This Strategic Doing Pack is designed to guide discussions our Child Advocacy Symposium. It represents
a set of exercises that can help us keep our discussions focused. These exercises are tied to the Strategic
Doing Cycle. At the end of the day, you should have touched on all of the topics needed to compile a
strategic action plan.

Before you begin, you should pass around a sign in sheet to make sure that you have captured all of the
participants and their e-mails.

You should also designate one or more people to take notes. Capturing the key points of your discussion
is vitally important to moving the conversation forward. As you put these notes on the web, it enables
people to reconstruct the history of the conversation and to join the conversation at any point.

We will go through two cycles of Strategic Doing this afternoon.

Cycle 1: What would it look like for SE Wisconsin to become a national leader
in addressing the challenges of at-risk youth? Specifically, what would the Center for Education Innovation
and Regional Economic Development have to do to support this

Cycle 2: We will break into topic areas to explore what Southeast Wisconsin could do to become
nationally recognized leaders in innovation to improve the life prospects of at-risk youth

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With Strategic Doing, we manage collaborations....
Managing collaborations is about managing
conversations

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 Strategic Collaborations are defined
by four key questions...
What could we do together?

What should
How will we learn
we do
together?
together?

What will we
do together?

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 To keep your conversations
on track and focused...

Use workshop exercises and

time limits

Here are examples of these workshop

exercises...

We compile them into a

“Strategic Doing Pack”

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 Strategic Doing
Cycle 1:

Establishing our National Leadership:

Defining the support that the Center can provide

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 What could we do together?
How can we establish
national leadership?

What are the assets we have?

If we connect our assets in new ways,

what opportunities do we see?

What should be the legacy that we hand to our children and grandchildren?

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 Cycle 1:
Workshop Exercise 1:
Explore Focus Areas and Outcomes
Fill out up to four opportunities on this
page and the next
What are the assets within SE Wisconsin that What are the opportunities we see when we
we can connect to establish national leadership connect these assets? How do you describe this
in dealing with the challenges of at-risk youth? opportunity? How can we link and leverage
these assets?

Examples can include people, organizations, events, programs.... Opportunity 1: Example: we could conduct monthly webinars
to inform us of the innovations taking place in the region.

Opportunity 2: Example:We could conduct a Youth Summit

once or twice a year to keep everyone on track and connected

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 Cycle 1:
Workshop Exercise 1
Explore Focus Areas and Outcomes
Fill out up to four opportunities on this
page and the next
What are the assets within SE Wisconsin that What are the opportunities we see when we
we can connect to establish national leadership connect these assets? How do you describe this
in dealing with the challenges of at-risk youth? opportunity? How can we link and leverage
these assets?

Examples can include people, organizations, events, programs.... Opportunity 3: We could establish a network of mentors to
guide at-risk youth

Opportunity 4: Example: We could create social networks that

build stronger relationships among our youth

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 What should we do together?
What opportunity has the
highest potential payoff?

What is the easiest to achieve?

Which opportunity can create the most

excitement?

Which opportunity has the best chance of attracting other partners

outside the education system?

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Pick one opportunity from your first exercise

The opportunity on which we are focusing is:

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 Cycle 1:
Workshop Exercise 2
Define Outcomes in terms of
characteristics

Now we have to define an outcome that makes our
opportunity “real”. What does success look like?
The best way to define an outcome is to start with
a broad statement, and then add some concrete
characteristics.
Define the characteristics of your Outcome. Ask
yourself more detailed questions about what your
outcome looks like. What does success really look
like? Come up with three characteristics.

We see out outcome as: Characteristic 1: Example: A diverse group of participants from
Example: Creating a nationally recognized Youth Summit that government, business and philanthropy will attend our Summit
regularly pushes innovative initiatives to address the challenges of at-
risk youth.

Characteristic 2: Example:Youth will be actively involved in planning

our Summit

Characteristic 3: Example:We will webcast our summit and connect

with people all over the U.S.

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Next, we have to define an activity -- a project or initiative
-- that will get us to our outcome.

Define one project that will get you to your outcome

The project on which we are focusing is:

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 To make our project real, we need milestones or
“SMART Goals”.

These SMART Goals or milestones mark the path from

where we are to where we want to go.

SMART Goals are:

Simple
Measurable
Aggressive, but Achievable
Relevant
Time-sensitive

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 Cycle 1:
Workshop Exercise 3
Define Our Initiative with SMART Goals
(or project milestones)
What is the name of your project:

For this project

We will do this....
by this date....

Example:
By September 2009 We convene a core team of professionals in the region interested in at-risk youth

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What will we do together?
What are the most critical action steps in the
next thirty days?

Who will commit to doing what?

Who will commit to putting this work on line?

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 Cycle 1:
Workshop Exercise 4
Connect Our Project to an Action Plan
for the next 30 days
Name of the Initiative:

Action steps: To move our project forward over the

Responsible By When
next thirty days, we will do these actin steps:

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How will we learn together?
What steps will we take to
get connected on line?

When will we next meet to revise our work?

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 Cycle 1:
Workshop Exercise 5
Connect Your Work
to a Process of Continuous Learning
Date of our next review of our Strategic Action Plan:

Learning Step Responsible By When

Summarize our work from these discussions and turn in this

Strategic Doing Pack

Set time and place for our next review (face to face)

Other steps we can take to stay connected:

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