Most organizations aren't short on ideas. They're short on agreement about which ideas matter, and on the discipline to say no to the rest. A facilitated planning day puts that decision in front of your leadership team and gets it settled.
The session works best with four to twelve people in the room - the group that can actually commit the organization to a direction. It is built for organizations at a hinge point.
A new market, service line, or facility is on the table, and the team needs to agree on sequence and cost before committing.
A new executive director, CEO, or board chair has arrived, and the inherited plan no longer reflects where the organization is going.
There is a strategic plan, but nobody's opened it in eighteen months and the priorities in it no longer match the work being done.
A funder, lender, or board requires a current plan with measurable goals, and the organization needs one that is honest rather than performative.
Everything is important, so nothing gets finished. The team needs a forced ranking and permission to drop what doesn't make the cut.
Each area has its own plan and its own definition of success, and the seams are starting to show to customers or clients.
The session is one facilitated day, but it doesn't begin or end there. The preparation is what lets a single day produce real decisions instead of a wish list.
An intake conversation, a short questionnaire to everyone attending, and a review of what you already have - existing plans, financials, org structure, recent performance. I bring a written snapshot of where the organization actually stands into the room.
We start with the honest picture rather than the aspirational one. The snapshot goes up, the team pressure-tests it, and we work through a marketing-centric SWOT that names the things people usually only say in the hallway.
Mission, vision, and values get tested against how the organization behaves - not rewritten for their own sake. If they hold, we move on quickly. If they don't, that's the most valuable hour of the day.
Three-to-five-year goals, then the hard part: choosing the handful of strategic priorities that will get real attention and resourcing. Naming what the organization is not doing this year is a deliverable, not a footnote.
Priorities become a twelve-month roadmap with quarterly milestones, named owners, a rough resourcing picture, and the meeting cadence that will keep it alive. We also name the risks that could derail it and what you'd do about each.
Everything from the day comes back as a written plan package your team can circulate, work from, and hand to a board or funder. A follow-up check-in a quarter later tests whether the plan survived contact with the actual year.
Every piece below is written down, agreed on in the room, and yours to use without me.
Nothing is pre-filled. The prep work is specific to your organization, and the day goes where the evidence takes it.
You get a plan short enough that people read it, and structured so it can be worked from directly.
There are no trust falls and no sticky-note walls that get photographed and forgotten. It's a working day with decisions at the end of it.
The governance and cadence are designed so your team runs the plan. If you want ongoing support afterward, that's a separate conversation, not a built-in assumption.
Trevor Percy has spent roughly two decades in marketing, communications, and organizational leadership, working with senior leaders across energy, construction, technology, and non-profit organizations on the Prairies. The value of an independent facilitator is straightforward: everyone in the room gets to participate, including the person who usually has to run the meeting.
Most consultants leave you with a plan. The point of the day is to leave you with your team's ability to run it.
A short call is usually enough to tell whether a planning day is the right instrument for what you're facing - and if it isn't, I'll say so.