Who needs to attend the planning meetings?
As a general rule, planning can be accomplished by a sub-group within an organization not everyone has to participate. Ideally, the planning group will be comprised of at least one person from each unit or each level of organizational work (i.e., staff, board, volunteer). In addition to representative participation, the planning group should have someone with authority to make decisions, someone who has responsibility for carrying out decisions, someone who knows the milieux backwards and forwards (subject matter expertise), and input from someone who uses or benefits from the service or product the organization offers. In addition to diversity of experience, planning teams should encompass diversity of thinking styles. The world sometimes seems to be sharply divided into two types of people big picture visionaries, and practical nuts-and-bolts people. Planning teams require both types. The big picture folks have difficulty reaching closure and won’t be able to convert a vision to an a
