Actually, this process has been going on since December, but this was the first time we met offline for strategic planning with almost our entire team.
To sum up, it was very productive, interesting, and inspiring. We wrote more than a hundred pages, several hundred important words, and are ready to move forward with changes.
“When they say ‘strategizing’, I always imagined a 2-day retreat with the whole team where magic happens and everyone leaves motivated and with a clear plan. It’s thought of as a discrete action with a beginning and an end.
But what if you planned to close 3 years ago, and then a full-scale invasion of Ukraine happened, and you just did what you had to do, without asking questions, without paying attention to burnout and all the obstacles? The period of crisis response does not allow you to stop, discuss values and meaning, or plan for the long term. But the need for change was ripe in the team, so here’s how we rethought the idea of strategizing to make it not just for show, but truly effective.
We started planning the strategy in December, and over the course of two months, we had about 10 meetings in working groups with preparation, analysis, raising acute issues and disputes. And this two-day meeting was the culmination of that work, but it was not the end of the process. Yes, we checked our compasses, found time to look ahead to the Ukraine we dream of, and are ready to work for as long as we have the strength. We have agreed on values and outlined the path to the social changes we want to achieve. And now we have to process our ideas to turn them into a concrete plan and concrete solutions, both within the organization and externally.
“For me, this is the first experience of such a deep approach, so now I know that strategizing is not a separate action, but only the beginning of the transformations that the organization needs,” comments Olha Yashchenko, head of the Feminist Workshop.
