Facilitating Case Studies
Helping NARHA Ride the Right Track to the Future
In 2009 when NARHA, founded as the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, needed to rejuvenate their strategic plan, they invited Tom Pierce back to Denver to facilitate a two-day board retreat.
2007: Success at the Summit
NARHA is an international, nonprofit organization that promotes the therapeutic benefits of equine assisted activities for individuals with and without physical, emotional, and cognitive disabilities.
NARHA’s leaders recalled Tom’s successful process and style two years earlier when he’d guided the board and staff through a complex series of meetings and decisions during a four-day summit. Those 2007 topics included leadership training, board governance training and realignment, membership committee reorganization, and executive coaching.
Past board president Dr. Paul Spiers described the impact of Tom’s guidance:
“Tom Pierce’s insight and coaching helped transform our Board of Trustees into a more effective, more functional, “policy” board. His knowledge of how to achieve effective governance and his strategies for taking us there were superb. Much of our success—and everyone agreed it was a success—was due to Tom’s own approach to leadership.”
2009: Preparing to guide strategic change
Tom’s 2009 NARHA assignment was different. There would be little-to-no coaching or training; this was a pure facilitation challenge. Facing new issues, and realizing that their three-year-old strategic plan was not aging gracefully as the organization grew, NARHA again turned to Tom.
This case study will focus on the Pierce Management Development process rather than on specific decisions that NARHA leaders made.
As always, Tom began well in advance by absorbing the data gathered in extensive interviews with the CEO and board leadership and from a NARHA survey that asked their members to prioritize critical issues. As he worked with the issues and began to understand the desired outcomes, Tom decided on a title, structured the process, and wrote the creative and effective agenda.
Tom reversed the retreat concept by titling the event: “ADVANCE! Thinking Strategically to Invent NARHA’s Future.”
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Stephen Covey’s classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Tom used several of Covey’s habits as agenda subtitles, transformed to reflect how effective associations function.
Tom designed the retreat to flow from general to specific, to assure that participants’ minds were fully engaged before critical decisions had to be made, and to be sure that everyone was comfortable with relevant background information.
Day One Agenda
Here is a sample from the agenda for the kick-off afternoon session, which Tom labeled:
“Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood” (Habit 5)
Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1989
Tom then presented background materials, including a national ASAE study of highly effective associations, to help NARHA leaders see their own association as part of a larger community.
“Sharpen the Saw” for Renewal (Habit 7)
7 Measures of Success – What Remarkable Associations Do That Others Don’t ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership 2006
“Put First Things First” (Habit 3)
NARHA’s 2009 Stakeholders Survey and your written comments to Tom
“Think Win/Win” (Habit 4)
Saturday’s Game Plan: From Ground Rules to Goals
Ditching the Day Two Agenda
Whenever Tom structures a two-day retreat, he knows that: There needs to be a draft advance agenda for the second day, but The actual agenda depends on progress made during Day One dialogue
For example, the advance agenda for NARHA’s 2009 retreat included this Saturday topic, purposely written to be a general catch-all:
“Begin with the End in Mind” (Habit 2)
Moving from Dialogue to Decision
At the end of Day One, many NARHA board members worried that there were many unresolved issues floating on easel pads and in the air. Tom confidently and gently assured everyone that they were doing very well, and the board took a break for dinner.
Drafting a New Day-Two Action Agenda
Working overnight, as Tom often does when facilitating critical-issue retreats, he reorganized all the “messy” messages into neat and logical documents. Then he rewrote the Day Two agenda to assure that Saturday’s all-day meeting would start with traction, gain acceleration, and reach the desired outcome: defining the top-level content and structure of what would become NARHA’s revised strategic plan.
Here is an excerpt from that revised Day Two agenda to illustrate the shift from general planning to specific action:
Clear messaging begins with clear thinking
NARHA’s Hedgehog Principle
(See Jim Collins’s monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors)
- What you are deeply passionate about
- What you can be the best in the world at
- What drives your resource engine
- Time
- Money
- Brand
NARHA’s elevator-door-closing statement
- What do we do?
- Who do we do it for?
- Where do we do it?
Discussion of critical questions:
- To what extent should NARHA expand internationally?
- What is the optimal location for NARHA headquarters?
Structure of NARHA’s new Strategic Plan
To focus board thinking on content, not format, Tom advised NARHA to retain the structure of the existing professionally formatted strategic plan. He then clarified what content decisions needed to be accomplished by 5 p.m. on that Saturday:
Mandatory for today…
Three to five Strategic Goals, written in the present tense, as if in 2012.
Ideally, for today…
Under each Strategic Goal, list two to four Objectives
Completing the plan after today, reflecting our discussion…
Under each Objective, list two to five relevant Tasks
NARHA board president Teresa Morris described Tom’s impact:
“I learned more from that long weekend than ever before in my time spent on boards. Tom’s professionalism and experience, combined with his friendly manner and good humor, were key ingredients for our new NARHA.”
