Getting a strategic plan approved can feel like the hard part is over. It isn’t. What follows – the real work of strategy execution – is its own undertaking, and it’s often where implementation slows, stalls, or drifts. Most strategic plans never get fully executed, and the gap is rarely about the quality of the thinking that went into them.
Strategic Planning the Genuine Contact Way brings planning and implementation into one process rather than two separate efforts. The same conversations that build your high-level strategy also define what it will take to put it into practice – who needs to be involved, how, and what capacity your organization needs to build. Read more about what this workshop covers.
What You Will Learn
By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:
- Build working definitions of strategy, strategy focused culture, and strategy focused organization, based on your own reflection and experience, and guide the leaders, teams, and stakeholders you work with toward a shared definition of these same concepts.
- Assess an organization’s readiness for strategic planning, and define clearly what is fixed and what is open to change as the process begins.
- Design and lead an approach for engaging the people of an organization throughout strategic planning – giving them real information, real influence over emerging ideas, and a genuine stake in the plan as it develops.
- Guide a group through generating and organizing ideas for an organization’s future direction, and distill the results into a small number of high-level strategies clear enough for everyone in the organization to understand and act on.
- Build the connections between an organization’s high-level strategies and the practical work required to achieve them, producing a plan with clear objectives, measures, and milestones that people can act on.
- Lead a group through a complete strategic planning process, from building shared understanding through to being ready to implement the finished plan, and develop your own repeatable approach to this work.
- Distinguish between performance management and monitoring and adjusting implementation of a strategic plan, and recognize when a plan itself needs to be refreshed.
Who This Serves
This workshop serves organizational leaders responsible for creating and accomplishing a strategic plan, and the consultants and organizational development practitioners who guide clients through one. Participants often include executive directors and senior leaders heading into a planning process, managers who will translate strategy into operational work, and board members overseeing organizational strategy. No prior experience with the Genuine Contact Way is required – what matters is a real stake in seeing strategic planning succeed.
Workshop Details
📆 Dates: October 22, 23, 29 & 30, 2026
🕘 Time: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM EDT / 3:00 PM – 7:00 PM CEST (convert to your time zone)
📔 Pre-work: Approximately 9 hours of self-paced prework, completed any time before October 22, 2026
💻 Format: 4 live half-day sessions, online
💻 Platform: Zoom for live sessions, Miro for collaborative activities – no prior experience with either is required
🌍 Language of instruction: English – sessions are designed with accessibility in mind for participants whose first language is not English
👥 Participant limit: Maximum 20 participants
Investment
- Early Bird: $1,497 CAD (register by September 30, 2026)
- Regular: $1,997 CAD
- GCO member discount: 10% off the applicable rate
What’s Included
- Four live half-day sessions with Birgitt Williams and Rachel Bolton
- Access to the Learning Hub – self-paced prework materials and an ongoing resource after the workshop
- Workshop materials and process guides
- Your own working strategy map and implementation blueprint, built during the workshop
- Peer-to-peer mentoring circle access after the workshop
- Certificate of completion
- First-year complimentary Genuine Contact Organization membership, for participants attending their first Genuine Contact learning module
- The four sessions ask for real time and focus, and what you leave with – a plan people are ready to work toward, and a process you can lead again – is built to outlast the workshop itself.
By completing registration and payment, you agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions.
