Social Good14

Evolving from Waterfall to Agile Strategic Planning in a Social Services Agency

Dan Montgomery

February 23, 2017

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Conference Video

Watch the video here: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/agile-five-acres

Abstract

"Classic" agile implementations have generally been limited to technical product development groups. How much of “agile” can be transplanted into strategic planning and project management in a service environment with little project management expertise?

Five Acres is a 128 year old social services agency in Southern California. Over the past year, we embarked on a 4-year strategy refresh. The 2012 plan, also facilitated by Dan, had used a classic balanced scorecard framework. While the process engaged a number of employees up front, it resulted in too many performance measures, too many initiatives, and lack of ongoing participation by non-executive employees. The 2016 approach was a radical departure. We created only five agency-wide objectives (compared to 9 in the 2012 strategy) using the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework widely practiced in Silicon Valley. We then invited each of 16 teams to develop 1-3 of their own, based on a collaborative process within the team - rather than a top down cascade of goals. At the same time, we created an agile project management structure to ensure that project priorities are reviewed and rebalanced once a month in the light of emerging information. Rather than a static, top down plan, we’ve achieved a much higher level of ongoing engagement throughout the organization.

About Dan Montgomery

Photo of Dan Montgomery

Founder and Managing Director @ Agile Strategies

Dan is Founder and Managing Director of Agile Strategies. He has come to the world of agile with a diverse background in IT management, human resources, strategic planning, executive and team coaching, and performance measurement. His industry experience includes health care, technology, human services, higher education, natural products, utilities, government, financial services, social entrepreneurship, and construction. This diversity of perspective informs a holistic point of view on how culture, leadership, and work process impact customer value and financial performance.

He is an accomplished trainer and facilitator, and has led strategy courses in a number of locations in the U.S., Canada, and in the Middle East, and led the development of strategic plans for dozens of clients.

Prior to founding Agile Strategies, Dan was Vice President of Professional Services for the Balanced Scorecard Institute and led the company’s consulting practice. He is co-author of The Institute Way: Simplify Strategic Planning and Management with the Balanced Scorecard (The Institute Press, Cary, NC, 2013). His previous professional consulting experience includes work with Accenture and Ernst & Young, as well as management positions in financial services, health care, and technology. Dan has an MBA from the University of Colorado, as well as a Masters in Psychology from Naropa University.

Dan and his wife Beth live in Boulder, Colorado, a center of business innovation and healthy lifestyles.

Presentation Slides

Summary Transcript

Thanks, Shannon. My name is Dan, and I'm a consultant. Thanks, Scott—good to be here. This is my tale of repentance and redemption. What we're discussing is the realization that intervening as a consultant in a system is not fundamentally different from what's already happening in the system. Many of us have had the Frederick Taylor-era mindset that we are the smart people who figure out what needs to happen, and then others just go and execute it.

Four years ago, I worked for a company that was very successful due to its formulaic and predictable approach. Clients went through a set of five workshops, received exact deliverables, and knew the cost upfront. It worked well because people want reliability in what they are buying. However, in many cases, it didn’t work as expected. Clients would get bogged down, but that wasn’t seen as our problem—we were just there to help design a strategic plan and a balanced scorecard.

This talk is about my journey and two of my clients’ journeys—transitioning from a predictive, formulaic, and directed model to a more flexible approach, like jazz. You still have a melody and chord structure, but you don’t always know how it will come together on a given day. The two cases I’ll discuss involve business agility in a social services agency and a healthcare organization.

Case Study: Business Agility in a Social Services Agency

The first organization, Five Acres, started as an orphanage in Los Angeles in 1888 and moved to a five-acre site in 1926 at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. Today, they place 8,500 kids annually into permanent homes across five Southern California counties. Their key measure of success is “permanency”—ensuring children find stable, permanent homes.

When I first worked with them in 2012, they were facing declining government funding and increasing competition from new nonprofits with innovative methods. This meant intense competition for grant funding, government money, and fundraising dollars. We quickly realized they needed to prove their impact to secure funding. That’s why they were initially attracted to the balanced scorecard approach.

Traditional Strategic Planning Approach

We conducted five off-site workshops at a historic country club in the San Gabriel Mountains. I always prioritize engaging people in the process, and this group was very enthusiastic—often breaking into a conga line before cocktails at the end of workshops.

For those unfamiliar with the balanced scorecard, it originated at Harvard Business School for Fortune 500 companies. The “balanced” aspect comes from integrating financial and non-financial measures. The framework includes:

  • People – Ensuring the right skills, culture, and workforce.
  • Process (Internal Efficiency) – Improving quality and efficiency.
  • Financial Performance – Demonstrating responsible use of funds.
  • Client Impact – Measuring success in achieving the organization’s mission.

We structured their strategic plan as a hierarchical tree, aligning agency-wide goals with team-level objectives. The plan had a four-year horizon and required cascading objectives across multiple levels.

What Went Wrong?

The plan was ambitious, but execution faltered. The person responsible for tracking progress, against medical advice, purchased an expensive, complex software system to manage all the measures and projects. The system was overwhelming and ineffective.

After that individual left, the CEO took over and managed the 30 strategic initiatives from her office, discarding much of the original framework. Instead of tracking hundreds of metrics, she focused on just seven key measures, managing them through a simple SQL Server app. Essentially, she succeeded despite—or perhaps because of—abandoning much of the formal planning process.

Applying Complexity Theory

Strategic planning often assumes a complicated, mechanical model where thorough analysis leads to predictable results, much like engineering a Boeing Dreamliner. However, organizations function more like biological ecosystems—complex, adaptive, and unpredictable. In complex systems, you can see cause and effect in hindsight, but not in advance. This calls for experimentation, rapid feedback, and continuous adaptation.

Traditional strategy is top-down, long-cycle, and tightly coupled. A more effective approach is bottom-up, fast-cycle, and loosely coupled—allowing for emergent strategy.

Introducing OKRs

Observing the CEO’s success in simplifying the strategy, I introduced Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). Originally developed by Intel and widely adopted in Silicon Valley, OKRs adapt Peter Drucker’s Management by Objectives (1954) to a fast-paced environment.

Unlike balanced scorecards, which define multi-year objectives, OKRs operate on a quarterly cycle. Each team sets its own OKRs, ensuring alignment with top-level priorities while maintaining flexibility. The result is a minimum viable strategy—lightweight, adaptive, and rapidly iterated.

Implementation at Five Acres

We structured the new OKR process around six key priorities, with permanency at the center. Teams reviewed planning assumptions, developed their own OKRs, and aligned efforts through cross-team collaboration. The process now includes bi-monthly retrospectives and resets to maintain agility.

Case Study: Ethos Veterinary Health

Ethos Veterinary Health resulted from a merger of four regional veterinary organizations, forming a network of 14 hospitals across the U.S. Unlike Five Acres, which could convene in-person workshops, Ethos required a remote, scalable approach.

We used an online process called Alignment Optimization to gather strategic insights asynchronously. Employees provided input on key assumptions, goals, and potential risks. Over 100 participants contributed, representing a cross-section of 1,400 employees.

The online format offered several advantages:

  • Asynchronous participation – Eliminated the need for scheduling conflicts.
  • Anonymity – Encouraged candid feedback, avoiding groupthink.
  • Speed – Completed in one-third the time of traditional strategic planning.

Key Findings

Analysis revealed gaps in strategic understanding—many employees were unclear on company strategy. While they supported the direction once understood, there was a strong need for better communication. Other key insights included:

  • Critical staffing shortages.
  • Concerns about neglecting core operations while pursuing new opportunities.
  • Consensus on 47 detailed strategic goals.

We distilled these 47 goals into five strategic epics, focusing on foundational priorities before expanding further. Each epic has a cross-functional team responsible for defining OKRs, tracking outcomes, and managing action portfolios.

Final Thoughts

One of the most valuable things I’ve learned as a consultant is the power of new vocabulary. New terminology enables conversations that were previously impossible. A phrase I introduced at Five Acres—one that continues to resonate—is:

Start less and finish more.

This mantra encapsulates the essence of agility in any domain. Thank you for your time.

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