This was one of the most important learnings/insights that I took away from the ASAE & The Center Annual Meeting this year. It was a statement that my new favorite person, Patti Digh, made during the opening session on diversity.

A lot of conversations about diversity focus on recruiting. We need more people of color in our staff, membership, organization, etc. We need to attract more women, people with disabilities, members of the GLBT community, etc. While this may be true, Patti’s point was that simply having diversity in numbers is not enough. You have to examine your organiztaional culture, practices, and systems, even your own personal beliefs and biases, because it’s those things that created the lack of diversity in the first place. Simply adding more water to the stream is not going to change the way it flows. But if you change the landscape you can end up with water in new places.

I remember hearing a diversity expert speaking to some elite private schools in the DC area and he begged them to stop recruiting people of color (to the shock of many in the crowd). Don’t recruit people of color until you have made changes to your school and its culture so that the people of color will WANT to be there (then, of course, by all means, do the recruiting!).

Beyond diversity, though, the phrase is helping me take a fresh look at things. It’s a reminder that sometimes we get so focused on the water and where we want the water to be, that we ignore what’s going on in the land contour department.

For example, Lisa Junker has invited a dialogue over on Acronym related to the debate about strategic planning. As I and others pointed out, the Journal of Association Leadership and Associations Now simultaneously published articles with rather polar opposite conclusions about strategic planning. So check out the comments to Lisa’s post and see what people are saying.

Although I obviously think strategic planning is flawed, the point I made on Acronym is that we need to change the conversation. The debate never ends, so we must be focusing on the wrong thing. I’m a bit disappointed that I hadn’t made this connection when I posted to Acronym last night, but the water/land metaphor probably hits home in this case.

Strategic planning is like adding chemicals to a stream and then claiming the stream runs through town at exactly the right place because of the chemicals that were added. Those of us who don’t like strategic planning look at streams that miss the town and blame the chemicals. Strategic planners say "No, you just didn’t add the chemicals in the right amounts or at the right time." We disagree. We look for organic ways to meet the chemical needs. We look for alternatives. Suddenly the debate is about chemistry.

But neither side is even aware of the contour of the land, and it’s certainly not what we’re talking about. My goal is to figure out how to articulate the "land contour" issues around organizations and strategy so we can have more productive conversations. But I’m pretty clear: it’s not about planning.