3 Barriers to Strategic Thinking and Planning That The Muslim Community Must Overcome
It is famously said that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
Why, then, do we optimize to provide pounds of cure instead of looking at prevention?
The conundrum is common to pretty much any type of strategic planning. How do we prioritize and balance efforts as we strive to solve short and long-term needs - especially when both require different types of actions.
In this article, I will highlight three barriers to long-term strategic planning, particularly as they relate to Islamic organizations.
1) Heroism
This is the mode we find ourselves in most often. There are urgent and immediate issues that must be solved. So we set out to fix them. We do the work needed to keep our heads above water.
This is a natural mode of operation for most non-profits, particularly in the Muslim community. Every day there are myriad problems of an urgent nature that must be dealt with immediately. Even in cases where people realize the need to get out of the weeds and address bigger picture problems - they are unable to due to a lack of time and resources. Time and resources, it should be noted, that are taken up by the firefighter approach to dealing with issues.
Eventually, this becomes an accepted way of working. It is what it is. Not only do we accept this as the default, but we reward it and incentivize it. In the corporate world, such heroes who go above and beyond receive recognition, bonuses, and sometimes even promotions. The person who sacrifices all their free time and family time for a month to get a major masjid project done gets recognized and lauded - a role model others in the community should aspire to emulate.
Here’s what’s wrong with that picture though. It’s not the person who stepped in and sacrificed that is wrong. What is wrong is the system in place that requires such heroic intervention to begin with.
Why is the success of a masjid project contingent on the efforts of one (or a couple) of individuals sacrificing everything and working like crazy? Why isn’t there a better infrastructure in place to forecast the work needed and properly account for it?
The point here is not to redirect the efforts of those making sacrifices and addressing urgent problems. Urgent problems cannot cause us to get into such a deep tunnel that we no longer see the big picture. The point is that an organization must task a group of people with focusing on larger strategic priorities and giving them the time and resources needed to do it. Without this effort, any type of long-term strategic initiative will always be undermined by the urgency of immediate issues and put an organization into reactive mode.
2) How Do You Evaluate ROI?
What’s the Return On Investment? This is a perfectly logical and rational question to ask. It helps assess whether an action is worth taking by looking at the benefit over the cost.
For example, should the masjid invest in solar panels? A quick look at the ROI will help determine the overall cost, how long it would take to break even, and what the long-term savings might be. Based on this, a reasonable decision can be made whether investing in solar panels is worth it or not.
What if the decision isn’t that clear cut though? What is the ROI on increasing the construction costs of a new masjid by 15% to build an upgraded and more accommodating sister’s section?
How do you measure the ROI of hiring a sister’s religious coordinator or a youth director? I’ve written previously about the thought process behind these types of questions - Your Masjid Is Not a Fortune 500 Company, Nor Should It Be. They are driven by a desire to quantify the unquantifiable.
A masjid hosting daily iftar for the community in Ramadan has an obvious benefit - but it is not one that can be quantified financially or in a spreadsheet.
The desire to seek quantifiable metrics is a way to seek clarity in an area of ambiguity. The problem is that community work is ambiguous by nature. Clear-cut metrics and data points will not exist. We can measure things like the number of people in attendance at a program, but we cannot measure the impact that a seed of inspiration sown in the heart of one attendee will have years down the road.
When it comes to looking at ROI we need to broaden our perspectives beyond looking at it only from a financial lens. What about a values-based ROI? What is the ROI of doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do? The ROI of barakah (blessing) put into something by Allah is immeasurable, and yet, arguably more important than the financial ROI we can measure.
This alludes to a more significant role that strategic planning plays which is the alignment of vision. Why does your organization exist, who does it serve, and why?
A strong values-driven mission and vision is needed to propel the work in the right direction. This is the “bigger picture” that those involved in strategic planning must protect and be mindful of in any decision-making process. This does not mean finances cannot be taken into account, but that it should not be the only litmus test applied.
3) Systems Are Perfectly Designed to get the Results They Get
Systemic racism and poverty are obvious examples of this. We have less obvious examples at play within our communities as well.
The fundraising dinner model is a system and highlights both of the problems mentioned above. It is dependent on heroes to make large donations (often exceeding 6 figures) to provide sustainability for our institutions. And when those heroes come through, it financially justifies the ROI of a fundraising dinner over a more sustainable strategy that may take 10 years to come to fruition.
The way we collect and distribute zakat is, for lack of a better term, a system. We operate from within the frameworks and try to solve the problems we only see in front of us. This is why most organizations spend the bulk of their focus on optimizing their collection forms and distribution tracking (to make sure people are not scamming the masjid). We also focus heavily on identifying where zakat funds can be spent (usually with the intent to justify spending zakat funds to cover other revenue shortfalls instead of spending on those in need).
If we step out of the system, we are presented with different questions. Instead of tracking how much we give to each person to make sure they don’t somehow get too much, we should be asking how we can uplift them? Who can we partner with in the distribution of our zakat funds to help uplift people and get them on their feet?
Instead of focusing on whether zakat funds can be used to cover shortfalls in fundraising for construction and other efforts, we should be asking why we need to look at zakat funds for that in the first place?
Why aren’t people donating more? Why have the big figure donations dried up? These questions are more difficult but tend to point us to better identifying real problems. Has an institution lost relevance? Has something happened that caused people to stop supporting?
Those are tough questions to answer. It’s much easier to debate tapping into zakat funds instead - and so we do.
True strategic thinking requires asking those tougher questions to identify problems that we are not face-to-face with on a daily basis because these are the problems affecting the big picture. Our blindness to that must be rectified.
These barriers are not easy to overcome. After all, how easy is it to solve a problem you can’t yet see? Strategic planning requires intentional effort and time. We must find ways to enable people to do this work, otherwise, organizations will continue to tread water without ever feeling like they will make headway.
“Yet it is not right for all the believers to go out [to battle] together: out of each community, a group should go out to gain understanding of the religion, so that they can teach their people when they return and so that they can guard themselves against evil” (9:122).
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