A. Read the paragraphs below and add the missing capital letters and the following punctuations marks ( . , ? ! ).
so before we start to move into what strategic doing is, let's talk a little bit about the challenges that strategic doing was designed to meet These challenges of course are really embedded in the idea of complexity our old systems are breaking down the future is coming at us faster than we have ever experienced the boundaries are blurring people are integrating new networks are forming it all seems so so complex and the challenges of course is how we deal with this complexity what do we do how do we manage that
so think about five people and say you've got an average of 50 people in each network you're really talking about a network of 250 people
what could you do by managing that network and guiding that network forward
so it's this notion of what will we do in focusing on a pathway project a project that will start moving us toward our outcome with some clear milestones We can make adjustments if things aren't working right and then dividing up the workload like a phone tree so that we can all work together and take small step when we do that in alignment we end up taking a large step
the next question and the last question is what's our thirty, thirty
and this invites us to establish a process where we come back together again and revise our plan figure out what we've learned make adjustments and then come up with the next 30-day action plan so by dividing our collaboration into definable time buckets one month, three months six months’ time buckets we continuously make adjustments and continuously refocus on what our outcome is and what our, what our next steps are
so what is strategic doing look like when we actually deploy it
well it actually looks more like this it's a process where we're thinking and doing continuously and we're coming together on a regular basis but in between those regular gatherings individuals in the network are off doing their 30-day task so it might be an hour might be two hours might be three hours but certainly it's not very much time because everybody's really focused on their own day job and most of these challenges are we're dealing with our our community challenges
but how do we organize all this
well it turns out that we can organize this with with a managed network that looks something like this at the center there's a core with typically seed investors people who put some money into this process it might be a community foundation it might be a university. it might be a government entity, but the core is a core team of people somewhere between five and nine people, who guide convene and manage the process then there's a handful of focus areas strategic focus areas and anywhere from three to five seven you don't want to have many more than seven focus areas.
but three or four or five focus areas make some sense and then below those those are individual initiatives or you can think of those as pathfinder projects projects that we are going to use to get to our shared outcomes
managing this network actually if everybody understands the basic process at work which is very simple managing the network actually becomes simple because transparency the sharing of ideas and the sharing of resources takes hold throughout the network.
so a strategic doing workshops we've been holding is all over the country and we invite you to contact us if you're interested with developing more of a strategic doing focus to your activities learning about the discipline we run these workshops and we're very happy to to talk to you we we worked primarily with anchor institutions anchor colleges and universities within each, each region or state that we operate in
so for example in alaska we're working with the university of alaska in michigan we’re working with michigan state University in wisconsin it's a University of wisconsin milwaukee and university of wisconsin parkside northern illinois university, university of missouri kansas state.
We're continuing to work and expand this network because colleges and universities can teach these skills and we want to share the curriculum with them so, this is the network that we're starting to build it's a network of as I said colleges and universities that can support communities and regions as they develop this kind of expertise.
is expertise in, in developing new strategies for open loosely connected networks so that's about it I want to thank you very much for spending a couple of minutes with me to give you a sense of, of what strategic doing is please email me if you've got any thoughts and questions and we look forward to working with you.
C. Reading Exercise. Match the headings below to paragraphs 1 to 5 in the following article .
Tim Madden is an Executive Coach and former Headhunter. Founder of Executive Career Upgrades, he's on a mission to help accelerate careers.
In fact, consuming more content than you’re capable of retaining often means you’re focusing on theory at the expense of implementation. It’s impossible to simultaneously take action on multiple pieces of advice at once. How can you expect yourself to look for a mentor, ask for a promotion and start waking up at 5 a.m. all in the same week?
You need to tick off one box before you can move on to the next. Masters of all fields know this. Athletes often spend hours practicing the exact same movement hundreds of times, and writers may prefer to read a classic novel multiple times rather than getting through as many new titles as they can. The more we focus on one thing, the more aware we become of its value and complexity.
So, the next time you read or hear something useful related to career advancement, don’t just nod to yourself and move on to the next thing — refer back to it continuously and don’t seek out any more advice until you’ve taken action.
First, figure out what your broad goal is. For instance, it could be having more of a presence in meetings or developing more of a relationship with your manager. Then, make it SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This will help you to figure out not just your vision but also the tasks that you need to carry out every month, week or day to make it a reality.
Oh, and in case you’re in any doubt over whether plans really work, the evidence is clear. A study (paywall) done in the United Kingdom put people trying to exercise more into three groups: one group tracked their exercise, one tracked and read motivational materials and the third tracked, read motivational materials and also made a concrete plan. Guess what? 91% of the people in the third group met their targets, compared to fewer than 40% in the first two groups.
Although making a plan increases the chances of you taking action, it’s not a guarantee. In many cases, motivation will wane, momentum will slow and you’ll be back to square one. After all, it’s way easier and more comfortable to listen to a podcast about climbing the corporate ladder than it is to take initiative in company meetings. Fortunately, research shows a few ways that you can boost your chances of following the plan.
Answer key
Exercise A
⏩ SITE: www.seabraidiomas.com.br
Hello This is Ed Morrison I wanna talk to you today about strategic doing give you a little bit of an introduction to strategic doing and how it's used and why you might find it valuable.
so before we start to move into what strategic doing is, let's talk a little bit about the challenges that strategic doing was designed to meet These challenges of course are really embedded in the idea of complexity our old systems are breaking down the future is coming at us faster than we have ever experienced the boundaries are blurring people are integrating new networks are forming it all seems so so complex and the challenges of course is how we deal with this complexity what do we do how do we manage that
one of the important insights of strategic doing is that we manage this complexity by following simple rules imagine yourself on the tightrope walking across Niagara Falls as this gentleman in the picture was experiencing wind blowing in the face the mist coming up lights at night dragging a camera all these challenges and what did he do How did he manage this complexity well of course he just put one foot in front of the other.
so this idea of managing complexity with simple rules is actually a compelling idea and one that we want to develop a little further another core idea to strategic doing is conversation it's the notion that if we think about how we manage our conversations we can actually guide our conversations in address strategic issues people move in the direction of their conversations.
So one of the core skills of strategic doing is guiding conversation in focusing that conversation and you make it very tight and and concentrated on critical strategic issues.
so let me get into strategic doing and what that is Er first is that strategic doing is not strategic planning strategic planning developed in the late 1950s or early 1960s is as a way to manage hierarchical organizations big top-down organizations and it's a very linear process we're all fairly familiar with strategic planning where there's a lot of analysis a lot of analysis and then there's an action plan and hopefully something gets done.
In strategic doing we're facing a world without major hierarchies no one can tell anybody what to do so there is the potential for a lot of conflict and so how do we use a process to continuously align people toward shared outcomes and to identify link and leverage opportunities that we might follow.
So let's walk through strategic doing for a minute strategic doing is is focused on two questions the core questions of strategy the first, the first question is, er, where are we going. So, we need outcomes, we need clear measurable outcomes the second question of strategy is how will we get there so we also need pathways these outcomes in these pathways define the strategy so in order to answer these two questions strategic doing actually divides them into four the first two questions are
what could we do and what should we do
so this idea of managing complexity with simple rules is actually a compelling idea and one that we want to develop a little further another core idea to strategic doing is conversation it's the notion that if we think about how we manage our conversations we can actually guide our conversations in address strategic issues people move in the direction of their conversations.
So one of the core skills of strategic doing is guiding conversation in focusing that conversation and you make it very tight and and concentrated on critical strategic issues.
so let me get into strategic doing and what that is Er first is that strategic doing is not strategic planning strategic planning developed in the late 1950s or early 1960s is as a way to manage hierarchical organizations big top-down organizations and it's a very linear process we're all fairly familiar with strategic planning where there's a lot of analysis a lot of analysis and then there's an action plan and hopefully something gets done.
In strategic doing we're facing a world without major hierarchies no one can tell anybody what to do so there is the potential for a lot of conflict and so how do we use a process to continuously align people toward shared outcomes and to identify link and leverage opportunities that we might follow.
So let's walk through strategic doing for a minute strategic doing is is focused on two questions the core questions of strategy the first, the first question is, er, where are we going. So, we need outcomes, we need clear measurable outcomes the second question of strategy is how will we get there so we also need pathways these outcomes in these pathways define the strategy so in order to answer these two questions strategic doing actually divides them into four the first two questions are
what could we do and what should we do
what could we do invites us to take our look at our assets and figure out how we can link and leverage these assets towards shared outcomes explore different opportunities that we might have by adding new assets to our network and see what we could do together to advance our own individual agendas
the second question of course is to make a choice
we can come up with a lot of ideas about what we could do but we have to figure out a very limited number of at least one of course but a very limited number of what we should do and so that the next step of strategic doing is to convert one of these opportunities into an outcome an outcome with shared measurable metrics of success and the reason metrics are important is because we have to understand where this is going together visions don't really work very well and open loosely connected networks when we drive our conversation down to measurable outcomes, then we're pretty sure that we're talking about the same thing
the third question now we're moving into the pathways and the third question is what will we do
the second question of course is to make a choice
we can come up with a lot of ideas about what we could do but we have to figure out a very limited number of at least one of course but a very limited number of what we should do and so that the next step of strategic doing is to convert one of these opportunities into an outcome an outcome with shared measurable metrics of success and the reason metrics are important is because we have to understand where this is going together visions don't really work very well and open loosely connected networks when we drive our conversation down to measurable outcomes, then we're pretty sure that we're talking about the same thing
the third question now we're moving into the pathways and the third question is what will we do
What we’ll do really invites us to focus on our network think about how we can all take steps together small steps relatively small steps together to move toward the outcome by taking small steps together we're actually taking a large step and it's not just the people sitting around the table we're talking about each individual comes in with a network of 30 40 50 sometimes a hundred people that they could call up and say hey I've got a great idea and I'd like your help
so think about five people and say you've got an average of 50 people in each network you're really talking about a network of 250 people
what could you do by managing that network and guiding that network forward
so it's this notion of what will we do in focusing on a pathway project a project that will start moving us toward our outcome with some clear milestones We can make adjustments if things aren't working right and then dividing up the workload like a phone tree so that we can all work together and take small step when we do that in alignment we end up taking a large step
the next question and the last question is what's our thirty, thirty
and this invites us to establish a process where we come back together again and revise our plan figure out what we've learned make adjustments and then come up with the next 30-day action plan so by dividing our collaboration into definable time buckets one month, three months six months’ time buckets we continuously make adjustments and continuously refocus on what our outcome is and what our, what our next steps are
so what is strategic doing look like when we actually deploy it
well it actually looks more like this it's a process where we're thinking and doing continuously and we're coming together on a regular basis but in between those regular gatherings individuals in the network are off doing their 30-day task so it might be an hour might be two hours might be three hours but certainly it's not very much time because everybody's really focused on their own day job and most of these challenges are we're dealing with our our community challenges
but how do we organize all this
well it turns out that we can organize this with with a managed network that looks something like this at the center there's a core with typically seed investors people who put some money into this process it might be a community foundation it might be a university. it might be a government entity, but the core is a core team of people somewhere between five and nine people, who guide convene and manage the process then there's a handful of focus areas strategic focus areas and anywhere from three to five seven you don't want to have many more than seven focus areas.
but three or four or five focus areas make some sense and then below those those are individual initiatives or you can think of those as pathfinder projects projects that we are going to use to get to our shared outcomes
managing this network actually if everybody understands the basic process at work which is very simple managing the network actually becomes simple because transparency the sharing of ideas and the sharing of resources takes hold throughout the network.
so a strategic doing workshops we've been holding is all over the country and we invite you to contact us if you're interested with developing more of a strategic doing focus to your activities learning about the discipline we run these workshops and we're very happy to to talk to you we we worked primarily with anchor institutions anchor colleges and universities within each, each region or state that we operate in
so for example in alaska we're working with the university of alaska in michigan we’re working with michigan state University in wisconsin it's a University of wisconsin milwaukee and university of wisconsin parkside northern illinois university, university of missouri kansas state.
We're continuing to work and expand this network because colleges and universities can teach these skills and we want to share the curriculum with them so, this is the network that we're starting to build it's a network of as I said colleges and universities that can support communities and regions as they develop this kind of expertise.
is expertise in, in developing new strategies for open loosely connected networks so that's about it I want to thank you very much for spending a couple of minutes with me to give you a sense of, of what strategic doing is please email me if you've got any thoughts and questions and we look forward to working with you.
B. Now, listen the audio below and check if you added the right punctuation. If you still have any questions, go to the end of this page and you'll find the answer for that.
hhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqk1ibe9sDw&t=80s
C. Reading Exercise. Match the headings below to paragraphs 1 to 5 in the following article .
Make (and stick to) a concrete plan
Focus on quality over quantity
Success awaits you
Use implementation intentions
Get an accountability partner
D. Read the article below. Match the words/phrases in red to these verb forms below.
👉 Present Simple
👉 Present Continuous
👉 Past Simple
👉 Present Perfect Simple
👉 Present Simple
👉 Present Continuous
👉 Past Simple
👉 Present Perfect Simple
👉 Present Simple Passive
👉 Future tense
How To Turn Advice Into Action
Forbes Councils Member
COUNCIL POST| Membership (Fee-Based)
Chances are that you know someone who spends all their time consuming personal development content and professional advice but doesn’t seem to benefit from what they’re learning. They can talk for hours about what their coach has taught them, but their life and job title remain unchanged.
How can this be possible, you ask? Are they being scammed? Not exactly, but having an intellectual understanding of what your obstacles are and how to overcome them is very different from actually doing the work. If you think you might be guilty of this phenomenon yourself, here are a few ways you can begin to turn advice into action.
1._______________________________
It can feel incredibly productive to read a new professional development book every week or a thought leadership article every day, but consuming more content doesn’t automatically result in better results. Action is required.In fact, consuming more content than you’re capable of retaining often means you’re focusing on theory at the expense of implementation. It’s impossible to simultaneously take action on multiple pieces of advice at once. How can you expect yourself to look for a mentor, ask for a promotion and start waking up at 5 a.m. all in the same week?
You need to tick off one box before you can move on to the next. Masters of all fields know this. Athletes often spend hours practicing the exact same movement hundreds of times, and writers may prefer to read a classic novel multiple times rather than getting through as many new titles as they can. The more we focus on one thing, the more aware we become of its value and complexity.
So, the next time you read or hear something useful related to career advancement, don’t just nod to yourself and move on to the next thing — refer back to it continuously and don’t seek out any more advice until you’ve taken action.
2._______________________________
Once you’ve figured out the strategy you want to focus on first, it’s time to ensure you progress from intellectual understanding to implementation. To do this, you’ll need an action plan.First, figure out what your broad goal is. For instance, it could be having more of a presence in meetings or developing more of a relationship with your manager. Then, make it SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This will help you to figure out not just your vision but also the tasks that you need to carry out every month, week or day to make it a reality.
Oh, and in case you’re in any doubt over whether plans really work, the evidence is clear. A study (paywall) done in the United Kingdom put people trying to exercise more into three groups: one group tracked their exercise, one tracked and read motivational materials and the third tracked, read motivational materials and also made a concrete plan. Guess what? 91% of the people in the third group met their targets, compared to fewer than 40% in the first two groups.
Although making a plan increases the chances of you taking action, it’s not a guarantee. In many cases, motivation will wane, momentum will slow and you’ll be back to square one. After all, it’s way easier and more comfortable to listen to a podcast about climbing the corporate ladder than it is to take initiative in company meetings. Fortunately, research shows a few ways that you can boost your chances of following the plan.
3._______________________________
“Implementation intentions” might sound like a fancy buzzword, but it’s actually a simple yet proven way of keeping yourself on track. Basically, all you need to do is identify the time and location you want to carry out your plan. This works even better if you can build a specific association with carrying out a habit. For instance, instead of promising yourself you’ll strike up a conversation with one person in your office per day at 11 a.m., you could remind yourself to talk to someone new every time you grab your mid-morning coffee.4._______________________________
As much as we like to think we can achieve all our goals alone, it’s often not the reality. Social pressure plays a huge role in motivating us, so telling at least one other person what your goal is and asking them to check in on you periodically can help keep you on track. The best thing about an accountability partner is that you’re doing the exact same thing to help them, so you don’t need to feel like a burden. You could even download an app that serves as an accountability buddy if you don’t have anyone suitable to ask — better than nothing, right?5._______________________________
Becoming a better professional is a difficult task. It’s certainly a lot more difficult than reading a book about how to become a better professional. But the good news is that taking action demands no more time, intelligence or inherent ability than consuming advice — it just requires you to follow a few careful strategies. So, choose a piece of advice that really resonates with you and go all-in on making it your reality.===================================================
Answer key
Exercise A
Hello! This is Ed Morrison.
I wanna talk to you today about strategic doing. Give you a little bit of an introduction to strategic doing and how it's used and why you might find it valuable.
So, before we start to move into what strategic doing is, let's talk a little bit about the challenges that strategic doing was designed to meet. These challenges of course, are really embedded in the idea of complexity. Our old systems are breaking down. The future is coming at us faster than we have ever experienced. The boundaries are blurring. People are integrating. New networks are forming. It all seems so, so complex and the challenges of course, is how we deal with this complexity.
What do we do? How do we manage that?
One of the important insights of strategic doing is that we manage this complexity by following simple rules. Imagine yourself on the tightrope, walking across Niagara Falls, as this gentleman, in the picture, was experiencing. Wind, blowing in the face, the mist coming up, lights at night dragging a camera, all these challenges. And what did he do? How did he manage this complexity? Well, of course he just put one foot in front of the other.
So, this idea of managing complexity with simple rules is actually a compelling idea and one that we want to develop a little further. Another core idea to strategic doing is conversation. It's the notion that if we think about how we manage our conversations we can actually guide our conversations in address strategic issues. People move in the direction of their conversations.
So, one of the core skills of strategic doing is guiding conversation. in focusing that conversation. And, you make it very tight and, and concentrated on critical strategic issues.
So let me get into strategic doing and what that is.
Er, first, is that strategic doing is not strategic planning. Strategic planning developed in the late 1950s or early 1960s is as a way to manage hierarchical organizations, big top-down organizations, and it's a very linear process. We're all fairly familiar with strategic planning, where there's a lot of analysis, a lot of analysis and then there's an action plan and hopefully something gets done.
In strategic doing we're facing a world without major hierarchies. No one can tell anybody what to do. So, there is the potential for a lot of conflict and so how do we use a process to continuously align people toward shared outcomes and to identify link and leverage opportunities that we might follow.
So, let's walk through strategic doing for a minute. Strategic doing is, is, focused on two questions. The core questions of strategy. The first, the first question is, er, where are we going. So, we need outcomes, we need clear measurable outcomes. The second question of strategy is, how will we get there. So, we also need pathways. These outcomes in these pathways define the strategy. So, in order to answer these two questions strategic doing actually divides them into four. The first two questions are:
What could we do and what should we do?
What could we do invites us to take our look at our assets and figure out how we can link and leverage these assets towards shared outcomes. Explore different opportunities that we might have by adding new assets to our network. And see what we could do together to advance our own individual agendas.
The second question of course is to make a choice.
We can come up with a lot of ideas about what we could do, but we have to figure out a very limited number of at least one, of course, but a very limited number of what we should do and so that the next step of strategic doing is to convert one of these opportunities into an outcome, an outcome with shared measurable metrics of success. And the reason metrics are important is because we have to understand where this is going together. Visions don't really work very well and open loosely connected networks. when we drive our conversation down to measurable outcomes, then we're pretty sure that we're talking about the same thing.
The third question now, we're moving into the pathways and the third question is, what will we do?
I wanna talk to you today about strategic doing. Give you a little bit of an introduction to strategic doing and how it's used and why you might find it valuable.
So, before we start to move into what strategic doing is, let's talk a little bit about the challenges that strategic doing was designed to meet. These challenges of course, are really embedded in the idea of complexity. Our old systems are breaking down. The future is coming at us faster than we have ever experienced. The boundaries are blurring. People are integrating. New networks are forming. It all seems so, so complex and the challenges of course, is how we deal with this complexity.
What do we do? How do we manage that?
One of the important insights of strategic doing is that we manage this complexity by following simple rules. Imagine yourself on the tightrope, walking across Niagara Falls, as this gentleman, in the picture, was experiencing. Wind, blowing in the face, the mist coming up, lights at night dragging a camera, all these challenges. And what did he do? How did he manage this complexity? Well, of course he just put one foot in front of the other.
So, this idea of managing complexity with simple rules is actually a compelling idea and one that we want to develop a little further. Another core idea to strategic doing is conversation. It's the notion that if we think about how we manage our conversations we can actually guide our conversations in address strategic issues. People move in the direction of their conversations.
So, one of the core skills of strategic doing is guiding conversation. in focusing that conversation. And, you make it very tight and, and concentrated on critical strategic issues.
So let me get into strategic doing and what that is.
Er, first, is that strategic doing is not strategic planning. Strategic planning developed in the late 1950s or early 1960s is as a way to manage hierarchical organizations, big top-down organizations, and it's a very linear process. We're all fairly familiar with strategic planning, where there's a lot of analysis, a lot of analysis and then there's an action plan and hopefully something gets done.
In strategic doing we're facing a world without major hierarchies. No one can tell anybody what to do. So, there is the potential for a lot of conflict and so how do we use a process to continuously align people toward shared outcomes and to identify link and leverage opportunities that we might follow.
So, let's walk through strategic doing for a minute. Strategic doing is, is, focused on two questions. The core questions of strategy. The first, the first question is, er, where are we going. So, we need outcomes, we need clear measurable outcomes. The second question of strategy is, how will we get there. So, we also need pathways. These outcomes in these pathways define the strategy. So, in order to answer these two questions strategic doing actually divides them into four. The first two questions are:
What could we do and what should we do?
What could we do invites us to take our look at our assets and figure out how we can link and leverage these assets towards shared outcomes. Explore different opportunities that we might have by adding new assets to our network. And see what we could do together to advance our own individual agendas.
The second question of course is to make a choice.
We can come up with a lot of ideas about what we could do, but we have to figure out a very limited number of at least one, of course, but a very limited number of what we should do and so that the next step of strategic doing is to convert one of these opportunities into an outcome, an outcome with shared measurable metrics of success. And the reason metrics are important is because we have to understand where this is going together. Visions don't really work very well and open loosely connected networks. when we drive our conversation down to measurable outcomes, then we're pretty sure that we're talking about the same thing.
The third question now, we're moving into the pathways and the third question is, what will we do?
What we’ll do really invites us to focus on our network. Think about how we can all take steps together, small steps relatively, small steps together to move toward the outcome .By taking small steps together, we're actually taking a large step and it's not just the people sitting around the table we're talking about. Each individual comes in with a network of 30, 40, 50, sometimes, a hundred people that they could call up and say: Hey, I've got a great idea and I'd like your help.
So, think about five people and say you've got an average of 50 people in each network. You're really talking about a network of 250 people.
What could you do by managing that network and guiding that network forward?
So, it's this notion of what will we do in focusing on a pathway project, a project that will start moving us toward our outcome with some clear milestones. We can make adjustments if things aren't working right and then dividing up the workload like a phone tree, so that we can all work together and take small steps. When we do that in alignment, we end up taking a large step.
The next question and the last question is what's our thirty, thirty?
And this invites us to establish a process where we come back together again and revise our plan. Figure out what we've learned. Make adjustments and then come up with the next 30-day action plan. So, by dividing our collaboration into definable time buckets. one month, three months, six months’ time buckets. we continuously make adjustments and continuously refocus on what our outcome is and what our, what our next steps are.
So, what is strategic doing look like when we actually deploy it?
Well, it actually looks more like this. It's a process where we're thinking and doing continuously and we're coming together on a regular basis, but in between those regular gatherings individuals in the network are off doing their 30-day task, so it might be an hour, might be two hours, might be three hours, but certainly it's not very much time, because everybody's really focused on their own day job and most of these challenges are, we're dealing with our, our community challenges.
But how do we organize all this?
Well, it turns out that we can organize this with, with a managed network that looks something like this: at the center there's a core with typically seed investors people who put some money into this process. It might be a Community Foundation. It might be a university. It might be a government entity, but the core is, a core team of people somewhere between five and nine people, who guide convene and manage the process. Then, there's a handful of focus areas, strategic focus areas and anywhere from three to five, seven, you don't want to have many more than seven focus areas.
But three or four or five focus areas make some sense and then below those, those, are individual initiatives or you can think of those as pathfinder projects, projects that we are going to use to get to our shared outcomes.
Managing this network actually, if everybody understands the basic process at work which is very simple. Managing, the network actually becomes simple, because transparency the sharing of ideas and the sharing of resources, takes hold throughout the network.
So, a strategic doing workshops we've been holding is all over the country and we invite you to contact us if you're interested with developing more of a strategic doing focus to your activities, learning about the discipline, we run these workshops, and we're very happy to, to talk to you we. we worked primarily with anchor institutions, anchor colleges and universities, within each, each region or state that we operate in.
So, for example in Alaska, we're working with the University of Alaska. In Michigan, we’re working with Michigan State University. in Wisconsin, it's a University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and University of Wisconsin Parkside Northern Illinois. University, University of Missouri, Kansas State.
We're continuing to work and expand this network because colleges and universities can teach these skills and we want to share the curriculum with them. So, this is the network that we're starting to build. It's a network of, as I said, colleges and universities that can support communities and regions as they develop this kind of expertise.
Is expertise in, in developing new strategies for open loosely connected networks. So, that's about it. I want to thank you very much for spending a couple of minutes with me, to give you a sense of, of what strategic doing is. Please, email me if you've got any thoughts and questions and we look forward to working with you.
So, think about five people and say you've got an average of 50 people in each network. You're really talking about a network of 250 people.
What could you do by managing that network and guiding that network forward?
So, it's this notion of what will we do in focusing on a pathway project, a project that will start moving us toward our outcome with some clear milestones. We can make adjustments if things aren't working right and then dividing up the workload like a phone tree, so that we can all work together and take small steps. When we do that in alignment, we end up taking a large step.
The next question and the last question is what's our thirty, thirty?
And this invites us to establish a process where we come back together again and revise our plan. Figure out what we've learned. Make adjustments and then come up with the next 30-day action plan. So, by dividing our collaboration into definable time buckets. one month, three months, six months’ time buckets. we continuously make adjustments and continuously refocus on what our outcome is and what our, what our next steps are.
So, what is strategic doing look like when we actually deploy it?
Well, it actually looks more like this. It's a process where we're thinking and doing continuously and we're coming together on a regular basis, but in between those regular gatherings individuals in the network are off doing their 30-day task, so it might be an hour, might be two hours, might be three hours, but certainly it's not very much time, because everybody's really focused on their own day job and most of these challenges are, we're dealing with our, our community challenges.
But how do we organize all this?
Well, it turns out that we can organize this with, with a managed network that looks something like this: at the center there's a core with typically seed investors people who put some money into this process. It might be a Community Foundation. It might be a university. It might be a government entity, but the core is, a core team of people somewhere between five and nine people, who guide convene and manage the process. Then, there's a handful of focus areas, strategic focus areas and anywhere from three to five, seven, you don't want to have many more than seven focus areas.
But three or four or five focus areas make some sense and then below those, those, are individual initiatives or you can think of those as pathfinder projects, projects that we are going to use to get to our shared outcomes.
Managing this network actually, if everybody understands the basic process at work which is very simple. Managing, the network actually becomes simple, because transparency the sharing of ideas and the sharing of resources, takes hold throughout the network.
So, a strategic doing workshops we've been holding is all over the country and we invite you to contact us if you're interested with developing more of a strategic doing focus to your activities, learning about the discipline, we run these workshops, and we're very happy to, to talk to you we. we worked primarily with anchor institutions, anchor colleges and universities, within each, each region or state that we operate in.
So, for example in Alaska, we're working with the University of Alaska. In Michigan, we’re working with Michigan State University. in Wisconsin, it's a University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and University of Wisconsin Parkside Northern Illinois. University, University of Missouri, Kansas State.
We're continuing to work and expand this network because colleges and universities can teach these skills and we want to share the curriculum with them. So, this is the network that we're starting to build. It's a network of, as I said, colleges and universities that can support communities and regions as they develop this kind of expertise.
Is expertise in, in developing new strategies for open loosely connected networks. So, that's about it. I want to thank you very much for spending a couple of minutes with me, to give you a sense of, of what strategic doing is. Please, email me if you've got any thoughts and questions and we look forward to working with you.
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