This document summarizes Bryson's chapter on identifying strategic issues facing an organization. It discusses that identifying strategic issues is the heart of strategic planning and involves fundamental questions or challenges affecting the organization. The purpose is to create a strategic issue agenda. There are various approaches to identifying issues, such as directly from mandates and strengths/weaknesses, through goals, or by envisioning future success. Once identified, issues are categorized and prioritized to guide strategy development.

1. Bryson Chapter 6
Identifying Strategic Issues Facing the
Organization

2.  Identifying strategic issues is the heart of the
strategic planning process
 A strategic issue is a fundmental policy
question or critical challenge affecting an
organization’s mandates, mission and values,
product or service level and mix, clients,
users or payers, costs, financing, structure,
processes, or management.
 The purpose of this step (Step 5) is to
identify the fundamental policy questions-
the strategic issue agenda- facing the
organization.

3.  The organization’s culture will effect which issues get
on the agenda and how they are framed and will also
effect which strategic options get serious
consideration in step 6, strategy formulation and plan
development. The need to change the organization’s
culture may thus become a strategic issue itself if the
culture binds the organization to important issues
and possibilities for action. It is also worth keeping
in that every major strategy will involve a cultural
change.
 Identifying strategic issues typically is one of the
most riveting steps for participants in strategic
planning. Virtually every strategic issue involves
conflicts over what will be done, why it will be done,
how and how much of it will be done, when it will be
done, where it will be done, who will do it, or who
will be advantaged or disadvantaged by it. These
conflicts are typically desirable and even necessary
because they clarify the issues.

4.  Desired Outcomes;
This step should result in the creation of the
organization’s strategic issue agenda. This agenda is a
product of three intermediate outcomes:
1. The first is a list of the issues faced by the
organization
2. The second is the division of the list into two
categories: strategic and operational
( Generally strategic issues imply a need for
exploring or creating new knowledge. Operational
issues imply exploiting existing knowledge.)
3. The third is the arrangement of the strategic issues
in some sort of order: priority, logical, or temporal.
4. It also helps to recognize that in terms of the
immediacy of the attention they acquire, there are
three diff

5. 4. It also helps to recognize that in terms of
the immediacy of the attention they acquire,
there are three different kinds of strategic
issues:
a. issues that require no action at present
but that must be continuously monitored
b. issues that can be handled as part of the
organization’s regular strategic planning
cycle
c. issues that require an immediate
response and therefore cannot be handled in
a more routine way

6.  Benefits
1. Attention is focused on what is truly important
2. Attention is focused on issues, not answers
3. The identification of issues usually creates the
kind of useful tension necessary to prompt
organizational change
4. Strategic issue identification should provide
useful clues about how to resolve each issue
5. If the strategic planning process has not been
real to participants previously, it will become
real for them now
6. A final very important benefit will have been
gained: the organization’s character will be
strengthened. Strong character emerge only
from confronting serious difficulties squarely
and courageously.

7.  Describing Strategic Issues
An adequate strategic issue description (1) phases
the issue as a question the organization can do
something about and that has more than one
answer, (2) discusses the confluence of factors
(mission, mandates, and internal and
environmental aspects, or SWOCS) that makes
the issue strategic, and (3) articulates the
consequences of not addressing the issue.
At the same time, this description should probably
be no longer than a page or two if it is to attract
the attention and be useful to busy decision
makers and opinion leaders.
Once a list of strategic issues has been prepared,
the team can figure out just how strategic each
issue is.

8.  Seven Approaches to Strategic Issue Identification
The seven approaches to identifying issues are the direct
approach, the goals approach, the vision of success
approach, the indirect approach, oval mapping approach,
the tension approach, and the systems analysis approach.
In general, governments and nonprofit agencies will find
the direct and oval mapping approaches most useful, but
which approach to use depends on the situation at hand.
1. The direct approach is probably the most useful to most
government and nonprofit organizations. Using this
approach, planners go straight from a review of
mandates, mission, and SWOCs to identification of
strategic issues.
2. In the goals approach- which is more in keeping with
traditional planning theory- the organization first
establishes goals and objectives for itself and then goes
on to identify issues that need to be addressed to
achieve those goals and objectives or else goes straight
to developing strategies.

9. 3. In the vision of success approach, organizational members
are asked to develop a “best” picture of the organization
in the future, as it fulfills its mission and achieves success.
This vision of success developed in this step will be
sketchier than the more elaborate vision called for in step
8 of the strategic planning process.
4. The indirect approach , as its name implies, is a more
indirect way to identify strategic issues than the direct
approach.
5. The oval mapping approach involves creation of word-and-
arrow diagrams in which statements about potential
actions the organization might take, how these actions
might be taken, and why are linked by arrows indicating
the cause and effect or influence relationships between
them.
6. The issues tension approach which frames issues around
certain defined tensions.
7. Systems analysis can be used to discern the best way to
frame issues when the issue area can be conceptualized
as ssystem.

10.  Process Guidelines
1. Review the organization’s mandates, mission,
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
challenges, including any key indicators the
organization watches-or should watch.
2. Select an approach to strategic issue identification
that fits the organizations situation: direct, goals,
vision of success, indirect, oval mapping, tensions,
or systems analysis. Note: In this course, we will
focus on the direct approach.
3. Once a list of issues has been prepared, try to
separate them into strategic and operational issues.
4. If it would be helpful, use a litmus test to develop
some measure of just how “strategic” an issue is
(Exhibit 6.1).
5. Once strategic issues have been identified, arrange
them in a priority, logical, or temporal order, as a
prelude to strategy development.

11. 6. Remain aware that there is an art to framing
strategic issues.
7. Remember that different strategic issues will
require different kinds of attention and
treatment
8. Focus on issues, not answers
9. Reach agreement among key decision makers
that a major fraction of their time together will
be devoted to the identification and resolution
of strategic issues.
10. Keep it light
11. Notwithstanding efforts to keep things light,
remember that participants may fall into “the
pit” or “hit the wall” (i.e. face a dilemma,
vicious circle , or paradox that seems it cannot
be resolved)

12. 12. Be aware that agreement on strategic
issues to be addressed in the next step is
likely to mark an important organizational
decision point
13. Manage the transition to strategy
development
The transition to the next step in the process
will require careful management. It is one
thing to talk about what is fundamnetal,
quite another to take action based on those
discussions.