Book Title:

Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement, 3rd Edition (Hardcover)
by John M. Bryson

Editorial Reviews:

Book Description

When it was first published more than sixteen years ago, John Bryson’s Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations introduced a new and thoughtful strategic planning model. Since then it has become the standard reference in the field. In this completely revised third edition, Bryson updates his perennial bestseller to help today’s leaders enhance organizational effectiveness.

This new edition:

  • Features the Strategy Change Cycle-a proven planning process used by a large number of organizations
  • Offers detailed guidance on implementing the planning process and includes specific tools and techniques to make the process work in any organization
  • Introduces new material on creating public value, stakeholder analysis, strategy mapping, balanced scorecards, collaboration, and more
  • Includes information about the organizational designs that will encourage strategic thought and action throughout the entire organization
  • Contains a wealth of updated examples and cases

From the Inside Flap

Since John M. Bryson’s widely acclaimed Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations was first published in 1988, it has been reprinted nine times and has become the standard book in the field.

This thoroughly revised and expanded 3rd edition sets the pace and combines information on leadership, strategic planning, and tools that can help leaders and followers enhance organizational achievement. Bryson shows how leaders and managers of public and nonprofit organizations can use strategic planning to strengthen their organizations.

In this expanded edition, the author includes many new examples of successful and unsuccessful strategic planning practices. In addition, this volume offers entirely new chapters that address the implementation of strategic planning, reassess strategies and the strategic planning process, and outline the key leadership roles that must be undertaken if strategic planning is to be effective.

This book outlines the reasons public and nonprofit organizations should embrace strategic planning as a way of improving their performance and presents an effective planning process – Strategy Change Cycle – that has been successfully implemented by a large number of public and nonprofit organizations. Bryson offers detailed guidance on applying the process, describing specific tools and techniques that will prove invaluable. The author discusses the major roles that must be played by individuals and groups for strategic planning to be successful and gives specific guidance on how this can be accomplished. And he clarifies the method by which strategic planning can be institutionalized so that strategic thought and action will be encouraged and embraced within the entire organization.

Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations will be an invaluable resource for leaders, managers, policymakers, and planners in public agencies (such as state and local governments) and in nonprofit organizations (including hospitals).

About the Author

John M. Bryson is a professor of planning and public affairs in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. He consults widely on leadership and strategic planning with public, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations in the United States and abroad. His most recent book (with Fran Ackermann, Colin Eden, and Charles Finn) is Visible Thinking: Unlocking Causal Mapping for Practical Business Results.