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Creating what’s next: the future for agriculture in New Mexico

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Just because the future is uncertain is no reason to put off thinking about it – in fact, it makes it even more imperative. One of the strengths of Strategic Doing is its ability to accommodate uncertainty. Unlike strategic planning, you’re not trying to use past performance data, and you’re not making plans for the next five years – both common pitfalls in traditional Strategic Doing.

As with many states, agriculture is an important part of New Mexico’s economy. Strategic Doing Fellow Lauren Goldstein of New Mexico State University has been using SD to guide a conversation about the “agrifuture” – in this case, small-scale agriculture.  Here’s the framing question:

Imagine the Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque and New Mexico State University leveraged existing agricultural relationships to build an expanded, strategic partnership–what does that look like?

Six working groups launched at the initial workshop, bringing together a diverse range of participating organizations. The mayor’s verdict on the experience shows the impact of using Strategic Doing to have challenging conversations:

“The Aligning Our AgriFuture project made an immediate impact on how we actively implement our longterm strategies for sustainable agriculture in the Village. We’ve reached goals and flown past milestones because the collaboration lets us move at the speed of trust.” -Donald T. Lopez, Mayor of Los Ranchos and NMSU College of Engineering Alumni

Read more about the project, and if you’d like to quiz Lauren about the project, find her in the Strategic Doing network directory.

The cure for strategic planning burnout is in New Mexico

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Many of the people who attend our trainings are there out of desperation from too many strategic planning efforts that have taken months and resulted in little to no change. Ed Morrison has written about the shortcomings of strategic planning, which can be summed up as: it’s usually not very well-suited to the reality in which many organizations – and nearly all collaborations – find themselves.

The Purdue Agile Strategy Lab is headed to New Mexico next month to introduce participants to Strategic Doing and using agile strategy as another way to approach complex collaborative challenges. Based on the conversations we’ve had with our host, the Engineering New Mexico Resource Network at New Mexico State University, we’re confident that the gathering will be a vibrant one, with plenty of good conversation on how to approach big issues.

Join us August 16-18! Las Cruces is a short drive from El Paso and easy to get to. You’ll be among the first to get the brand new Practitioner’s Field Guide, with the very latest in what we’ve learned about agile strategy.