To move your organisation forward, you need a highly effective strategic planning facilitator with a proven process. You need an experienced strategic planning facilitator who’s highly adept at engaging your people to discuss the challenges they face and identify solutions.
Especially when your organisation is undergoing a period of rapid growth or change, or is facing specific challenges, it’s imperative that you’ve considered the relevant questions and developed the right strategic plan to guide the organisation towards a successful future.
You need a strategic planning facilitator who skillfully leads discussions while soliciting insights from your team members, generating robust, productive debate on the challenges facing your organisation and igniting the strategic thinking of your entire team.
In this short video Richard discusses how to run an effective strategic planning workshop
Richard Woodward: expert facilitator with real world experience
Richard has 30 years’ experience working with, and training, leading organisations across Australia, the UK and New Zealand. The first half of Richard’s career was in senior business development and marketing roles in leading organisations in Australia and UK such as KPMG, Royal Automobile Club, the Commonwealth Bank, Stadium Australia and Sydney Opera House. The last 15 years Richard has spent facilitating strategy workshops and providing business development training to leading organisations across Australia as well as overseas.
This is a robust strategic planning process developed through Richard’s significant experience facilitating strategic planning sessions for a wide variety of corporate, government and not-for-profit organisations across different sectors and industries.
These include:
- Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade
- Museum of Contemporary Art
- National Archives of Australia
- Biennale of Sydney
- National Electrical & Communications Association
- SDN Children's Services
- Community Foundations NZ
- Access Sydney Community Transport
- Unilever
- Fairfax Events
- National Portrait Gallery
- Learning Links
- Create Foundation
- Rockend
- Events ACT
- Invest Canberra
- ACT Tourism
- Queensland Department Education, Training & Employment
- St. Vincent's Curran Foundation
- Northern Stevedoring Services
- Royal Botanic Gardens
- Centennial Parklands
- Assa Abloy
- Taronga Conservation Society
- National Gallery of Australia
- Diversified Communications
- Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
- Cancer Council Qld
- Sports Dieticians Australia
- McGrath Foundation
- Blacktown City Council
- Hawkesbury & Penrith Respite Services
- Priava (Australia and UK)
- Elderton Homes
- The Parks Community Network
- Ipswich Council
- Podiatry Association
- Palliative Care Victoria
- Outback NSW Tourism
- Optical Distributors & Manufacturers Association (ODMA)
- Australian Museum
- Steel Reinforcement Institute of Australia (SRIA)
It’s this combination of facilitation and business experience which means that Richard knows the right questions to ask and why these leading organisations ask him back to facilitate their strategy sessions year after year.
The process of working with Richard
Prior to the strategic planning session
As your planning day facilitator, Richard discusses your desired outcomes in order to custom design a robust session plan that outlines the key questions to be addressed, timeframes, and the methodology for gathering information. Once agreed, this will be turned into an agenda for your strategic planning session.
During the strategic planning session
As a strategic planning facilitator, Richard helps clients address typical questions such as:
Reflection helps to ensure that your strategic plan capitalises on the invaluable experience of your team while minimising the likelihood of past mistakes being repeated. While reviewing progress in implementing strategic plans, Richard poses typical questions such as:
Ultimately, effective facilitation creates the ideal conditions for insights to ripen and reveal themselves. Richard’s strategic planning facilitation involves led questioning and conversations, robust discussions to explore meaningful points, drawing out opinions, and encouraging participation. He guides the group towards the desired outcomes, summarising the key points at regular intervals while building consensus.
Participants leave with clarity and enduring inspiration, clear on where they are headed, why and – perhaps most importantly – equipped with concrete knowledge of how they are going to get there, with personal accountability, check-ins and timelines.
After the strategic planning session
Richard will debrief the workshop facilitation, discuss results and gain agreement as to the next steps.
Common questions
Where does Richard facilitate strategic planning workshops?
Richard is able to facilitate strategic planning workshops anywhere in the world and regularly facilitates these across Australia, as well as the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
How long do these strategic planning workshops take?
This very much depends on what the organization needs. Strategic planning workshops range from just half a day to three days and occasionally longer.
What type of workshops does Richard facilitate?
Richard spends most of his time facilitating strategic planning workshops, team planning days, advisory panels as well as corporate partner workshops.
Who should attend these planning days?
Bringing your team’s talents together will make the collective outcome far much better as strategic planning helps to cross-pollinate ideas and taps into expertise and experience not previously examined. All organisations have value and expertise in their teams that they’re not accessing. The more people within your organisation you can involve in strategic planning, the better the outcome is likely to be.
Will Richard write up the notes after a strategic planning workshop?
Some clients solicit Richard to write up notes of outcomes following a strategic planning workshop while other clients prefer to write these up themselves.
How will we get started?
Contact Richard by email or phone to arrange an initial discussion around what you are looking to achieve. If Richard is available on your dates and can assist, he will send his quotation. Once you confirm by email that you would like to proceed, Richard will arrange a time with you to start the preparation phase.
Find out why leading organisations request Richard’s strategic planning facilitation year after year
Inquire now about Richard’s availability at your next strategic planning day. Call Richard on 0414 886 018 or fill out the form below.