Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

Below is a document Bill Spangle prepared for the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC).  Bill and Dora will be doing retreat most of the month of February at SCOL's winter retreat and they won't be able to attend the next two meetings.  In it, Bill outlines in very clear terms KCC's current position, the situation of the planning process, and the next steps we confront.  The SPC hasn't had a chance to discuss it formally in a meeting yet, but there was quite a bit of enthusiasm about putting this out in front of the whole Sangha as soon as possible. 

We want members of the Sangha to have the opportunity to comment on and influence this process while it's happening.  As you'll see, Bill has already incorporated SWOT results into his analysis.  It is a very useful document--easily worth the 5-10 minutes it will take to read and digest.  If you have feedback, please use the comments section below.  

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These are some ideas to get thinking started for the strategic plan goals and preparation for the Leadership retreat. There are three parts:

• A review of progress since the last vision statement.
• A summary of current situation based largely on the SWOT process.
• Some thoughts on the next steps leading up to the leadership retreat and the focus groups.

A Review—

Ready for action.

At the time the Vision statement was drafted many of the items in the vision were in fact just ideas, shared visions of the future. In the 13 years that have passed, many of the elements of the vision have come to life in some way. The sparely stated intention to create a retreat facility has manifested in the acquisition and development of 7000 square feet of facilities at Ser Chö Ösel Ling and we now stand on the verge of beginning long retreats. To meet the growing needs of the sangha there are now 4 teachers at KCC, the Mahamudra program is in its 16th year at KCC, and the programs of instruction and retreats have expanded significantly. But some elements of the vision have only partly been implemented and others, most notably the vision for a new urban center, are still just ideas.

While the accomplishments are by themselves substantial, it is important to note that what the community did to accomplish these things has itself been transformative. The process of acquiring, planning and building the facilities at Ser Chö Ösel Ling has pushed both the organization and individuals to develop new skills and abilities and working relationships. Retreats, land stewardship activities and the task of managing Ser Chö Ösel Ling have had a significant impact as well. In the area of pastoral care, members of the community have risen to the challenges of supporting each other through birth, old age, sickness, and death. Families have come together for mutual support. Long time members have deepened their practice, and a new stream of younger people have become associated with KCC. It is clear that the community itself has matured and evolved along the way.

Current resources and challenges—
Based on this review of the recent history and the sense of the current situation derived from the SWOT process it is possible to put together a sense of the resources and challenges KCC now faces.


We are blessed with a warm and welcoming sangha with many talents, but we are being held back by limitations on our ability to effectively engage the sangha:

• Our volunteer system is vital to our existence, but it's not working well. The ability to engage a new generation of volunteers will be even more critical when key volunteers begin extended retreat.
• The decision making processes and general management of the center are not seen as transparent. In addition, the existing processes do not effectively meet the challenges of managing an increasingly complex organization.
• The current level of financial support from the community does not cover the combined costs of operations of KCC and SCOL.
• Communications is a problem with pervasive impacts. There are problems getting information out to the community in an effective way. There are also few opportunities for sangha wide discussion which makes it hard to have a shared understanding of core issues. There are also limited opportunities for the community to communicate to those in leadership.
• The cramped urban center does not allow for programs to meet the needs of a larger increasingly complex community. The fact that scarcely half the existing sangha can meet at one time means that it is difficult to have a full sense of who we are as a community or what KCC would be like if the facilities were a better match.

In the area of teaching and programs, our teachers and programs are well received. Yet:

• We do not have sufficient room in our urban center for our current programs, much less for growth.
• Succession of teachers, particularly of the resident lama, is a concern. There are also long term concerns for how to make intensive practice more financially accessible to younger people who have the potential to be of long time service.
• There are some gaps in our programs (such as concerning some cohort groups, end of life, programs that lead some practitioners towards long retreat etc.)

Remarkable progress has been made in terms of bringing SCOL to life, yet there are still important concerns:

• For many whose practice revolves around the urban center, the importance of long retreat for sustaining KCC over the long rung is not well understood. A shared understanding of such a core element of the KCC vision is critical.
• There are still a few critical facilities left to build for long retreat and there are also fundraising challenges for these remaining projects as well as ongoing operations.
• There is no clear plan for short term retreats at the land once long retreats are in progress.
• The question of how SCOL will develop in the long run has been set aside while focusing on long retreat preparation. Questions remain like what kind of community will arise on the land? What kind of facilities are appropriate? How to spiritually and financially sustain the retreat facility and the resident community over time.
• There are no clear plans for how to re-integrate graduates from long retreat in supportive ways.

The observations above are based on reflections on KCC history and the SWOT process. The SPC should determine if these points are a good summary of the current situation at KCC and reflect the challenges that we face— and revise this draft as needed. I would propose that by considering this current picture and reviewing the mission and vision, it will be possible to gain clarity about goals.


Next steps in the planning process—
Preparing for the leadership retreat and beyond.

Between now and the leadership retreat the SPC needs to develop a set of goals that can be reviewed at the leadership retreat and used as a basis for discussion of potential strategies. By the time of the leadership retreat the SPC should also have a draft plan for how the focus groups and cohort groups will work.

The SPC should keep in mind that the goals could change as a result of leadership and sangha review. That said, it is important for the SPC to do its best to frame the issues and present specific goals to foster effective discussion at the leadership retreat.

In thinking about the goals and strategies and the work of the focus groups there are a number of questions that come to mind:


How much can we accomplish within the strategic plan?
If we are to keep to the time table we have established it will be essential to create a reasonable scope of work for the plan itself and be able to judge the appropriate level of detail. Some issues may be relatively easy to figure out during the plan process. Other things may be just too weighty or complex to resolve in this time frame: For example, changing to an executive director system may have some advantages but within the scope of the strategic plan it may not be possible to do more than create a plan to evaluate the viability an ED in the future.

The answer to the question of how much we can accomplish in the plan hinges in large measure on how deeply we can discuss the really weighty matters at the leadership retreat. For example, if the leadership finds a very compelling case for an executive director, the strategic planning process could be tasked with figuring out options for making it work. On the other hand, if the case is just not that clear, the plan could just lay out a strategy for evaluating whether an executive director would be a good way to go. Or we could be directed to take a couple of promising options and put them before the sangha for discussion.

To get the most out of the strategic planning process it will be important to prepare carefully for the leadership retreat with questions carefully framed and basic financial and operational data on hand.


What is the time frame for different elements of the strategic plan?
Most of the work needed to transform the organization and management, improve the financial picture and engage volunteers needs to happen in the near future perhaps the 0-3 year time frame. The strategies, implementation plans and measures of success should correspondingly be quite specific. Other goals related to succession and general sustainability will have a longer time frame, since the cycle of training for future teachers is a multi decade process. Some elements of this work may have very specific tasks in the short term but the level of detail for the long term will be much less.


How deeply intertwined are the issues?
The financial picture depends in large part on pledges from members. Membership in turn depends on whether we get a new urban center and when that might occur. A larger urban center might seem unmanageable without an executive director and more effective volunteer engagement. But supporting an executive director in turn depends on the financial picture.

Within the strategic plan it is essential to be able to work with and coordinate these kinds of intertwined threads. But it is also essential to be able to break the larger picture down into parts that can be investigated in manageable ways and be discussed in focus groups without being overwhelming.

Some of the more thorny intertwined issues like finance, operations, volunteer management etc may need to be broken down into parts and worked on over a series of meetings and then be put back together.


Who should be a part of the focus groups?
In addition to making an open invitation, it will be helpful if we can identify people with some expertise in the subject area and also some who are aware of the KCC history related to the focal point.

We also hope that the strategic planning process will draw in new people who will in turn become part of implementing the plan. People who have designed a process have a personal stake in the outcome and will understand how it is supposed to work. People who are part of the discussions will also be well informed about the key issues and become good candidates for board membership and other key leadership roles. It will be worth some effort to make sure that the focus groups become a vehicle for drawing in people as high level volunteers.


What are the things that we need to do right away to capture the momentum of the SWOT and rectify communication gaps?
Communication came through loud and clear at the SWOT and we need to continue our efforts to do the SPC work in an open and transparent way. There are other things that can also be done in parallel with the SPC work to maintain the momentum and promote sangha engagement. The idea to reinstitute the monthly Sangha meeting (not an SPC job) is one way to take an immediate step in that direction. Those meetings could be used to make announcements about progress in the planning process as well as to foster more general discussion. Focus groups will provide opportunity to discuss issues in more detail and there is a commitment by the teachers to make at least an occasional Q/A session available for discussions where the widest engagement is desired. These would be good venues to discuss core issues like the role of long retreat, the family dharma group (that is scheduled for March 11) and other topics where broad discussion and engagement are important.

One of the things to be careful about is winding up with too many meetings with overlapping and inadequately defined topics.

These are just a few thoughts that come to me, I hope that they will be useful in the coming weeks.

Bill Spangle