Teach yourself The Ecocycle for your next strategic planning workshop

Strategic-blah-blah-planning-blah-blah. Time for a technique to bust out of the word salad that is a strategic planning meeting.

  

This week, I have a technique for running a strategic planning meeting for you. 

Or rather, my excellent friend and fellow-meeting-scientist* Barb Bickford does.

She's going to give you an idea for running a session to:

- make key decisions for a strategic plan

- review a portfolio of projects or activities

- reflect on how to improve a team or process

Barb puts it so well.

”I used to roll my eyes when I heard the words “strategic planning.

In my experience, strategic planning was developed and imposed top-down. If I was even invited to help shape it, the planning meetings were boring and lasted for months. 

Those on the front lines tended to resist or ignore the plan because it imposed new responsibilities unrelated to what they did. 

And, after the first unexpected turn of events, the plan became outdated and was often shelved.”

Ah. So relatable.

Barb goes on: “Then I discovered a planning tool that resolved these frustrations strategic planning. It’s called Ecocycle Planning**, and it can transform both your planning and how you carry it forward.”

 

What is Ecocycle Planning?

I'll let Barb take over from here.

"Ecocycle Planning is a collaborative and visual planning activity that uses the metaphor of the cycle of life (birth, growth, maturity, and decline) to represent the life cycle of a project, work activity, organisation, or relationship. 

What’s different is that the Ecocycle invites the group to focus also on creative destruction and renewal in addition to just talking about how you can grow or become more efficient. 

It’s great for helping people see the big picture and for naming where you are stuck, either from a lack of resources or from the unwillingness to let go of things that are no longer working well."

Here’s the Ecocycle Planning picture - on which the whole session is based (featuring Barb Bickford herself):

 

 

And here’s how it works at a high level (you can access Barb’s full instructions further down).

Imagine you are reviewing your marketing activities, ready to make a strategic plan for next year.

You invite everyone to the session who is involved in the work - representatives from all levels and functions

Introduce and explain the Ecocycle - birth, maturity, creative destruction, and renewal (all present in a healthy organisation, all requiring dynamic input).

Explore the concepts of scarcity and rigidity at either side. Scarcity is where the very things we want to be birthing and growing are limited by resources. Rigidity is where we have some fixed thinking on the most mature or declining activities.

Then ask people to individually write up a post it for each of the activities they are involved in. Be sure to make the scope of this question clear so people are creating cards at a similar conceptual level. The always wise Elisabeth Keuschnigg suggests you encourage people to "go wild and wide first" so that it's not just the left hand side that gets filled up when it comes to placing them on the canvas.

In pairs, ask people to decide on the placement of their cards on the Ecocycle canvas. Then in fours, these placements are finalised.

Step back and digest some of the thinking and patterns. Where is there consensus and where are there differences in opinion?

The Ecocycle will guide you to where you need to add more resources - or start to ‘sunset’ activities that are holding back progress.

Create small groups ask people to identify next actions together.

Derek Hill from High 5 Coaching says the Ecocycle is valuable "particularly when teams are going through some kind of change. It helps to create a sense of inclusion and belonging - as we’re all on the line, even if in different positions".

 

Different from and better than top-down, static planning

In Barb's view, Ecocycle Planning is better than traditional top-down, drawn-out and static strategic planning and here’s why:

1. It’s collaborative, involving people who are familiar with the work “on the ground,” and can not only accurately describe how things actually are, but they also often have considerable insight into how things could be improved.
2. It’s quick and can help you develop a reasonably effective plan in just a few hours, not weeks or months. It doesn’t create the illusion of a perfect and linear plan for the long term. Rather, it helps you identify your next right steps, which is all you usually do anyway.
3. It’s is dynamic, allowing you to easily include new information as it becomes available.
4. It’s fun and helps people get to know and trust each other - and to believe in the thinking that’s being created.

 

Sounds interesting? Got questions?

You can read about the Ecocycle on the Liberating Structures website and download the blank template. 

Barb has created a deeper guide to help you master the Ecocycle quickly - access it here.

And there is also a Figma template and a Mural template (thanks Kim and  Elisabeth).

Thanks Barb for partnering with me on this article!