Blue Fox's 2021 Strategic Planning and 12 Week Year
Defining OUR WHY: "After much discussion and brainstorming, we always came back to the same theme, YOU MATTER!"
It was a strategic planning kind of year for Blue Fox. Our virtual Team met up IRL in New Orleans to strategize about how we can continue to best serve our clients. (ICYMI, we provide outsourced accounting services for nonprofits and social enterprises, along with payroll processing, tax preparation, HR guidance and financial consulting.)
We learned a lot moving through this process and thought you might find some use in a peek behind the curtain... so here's how it all unfolded. We kicked off strategic planning by watching Simon Sinek's Ted Talk, Start With Why.
Inspired, we set out to define OUR WHY.
After much discussion and brainstorming, we always came back to the same theme: YOU MATTER!
Powerful, right?! And so true.
If you've ever talked to our CEO, Chantal Sheehan, or any one of our our foxtastic team members, then you already understand OUR WHY; there's no doubt we make you feel like YOU MATTER!. This theme has been at the core of Blue Fox from day one. It's only now that we recognize it's actually our explicit reason for being.
Chantal Explains:
“We are building a company that lives and breathes YOU MATTER everyday. We did it instinctively and naturally because we consistently show up as caring, authentic humans serving other humans. Now that we recognize that driving force, we plan to be intentional and use it to inform our strategic initiatives.”
The Results - Our Strategic Plan
Based on our strategery (that's a word right?), we identified three areas to focus on:
Deepen Efficiency and Streamline Client Services
Build Internal Capacity
Focus on Data-Driven Decisions
Were we lacking in any of these areas? Not entirely. But technology changes at such a rapid pace and we want to keep up. We need to make sure that we use the latest and greatest tools to serve our clients with our best of breed approach. Our systems should talk to each other like old friends. Our exact processes must be defined, documented, and streamlined constantly. Our team must continue to develop their expertise in both accounting and technology. And, as we advise our clients, we must use data to make decisions.
This felt like a list we could rally behind. And so we did, making huge strategic advancements in just a few months.
How We Got It Done
Have you heard of the 12 Week Year?
It's a book, by Brian P. Morgan and Michael Lennington that promises to help you get more done in 12 weeks than most people get done in 12 months. Essentially, the theory is that if you block out time (literally - on the calendar) each week dedicated to your big goals, you'll actually make progress toward or achieve them in less time.
Naturally, our team of overachieving accounting gurus said, "We're in!" We worked together to map out 12 weeks of tasks, and each team member worked with an accountability buddy to get the job done.
The Results
After a quarter year of intense focus on our strategic goals, we made major improvements to our internal structure and our ability to best serve our nonprofit, social enterprise, and tax clients.
Here's a sample of what we were able to achieve:
Increased integration of accounting systems and tools
Implementation of new sales and client service systems
Identified Our Ideal Client and positioned services accordingly
Further standardized and enhanced the client onboarding experience
Implemented even more data security measures to protect clients
We are a company committed to excellence, growth, efficacy, and service to others (Read: Our 5 Pillars of Service). We serve our clients with best-in-class technology, high touch personal support, strategic insights and most of all respect and kindness.
If your organization is looking for this level of support in accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, tax, HR and/or financial consulting, we're your fox! Let's talk about your back office needs today!
Here are some other articles you might enjoy reading:
5 New Year's Resolutions For Sustainable Nonprofits
3 Vital Resources for Nonprofit Start-Ups
How to Create a Fairly Meaningful Budget
