Strategic Planning & Facilitation

Strategic Planning

Our approach to Strategic Planning is grounded in Edgar H. Schein’s ‘process consultation’ methodology, uncovering hidden assumptions, and influenced by Brene’ Brown’s concepts on vulnerability as courage. We bring 60+ years of lived experience spanning multiple industries and scale (healthcare to public sector to family businesses, and Fortune 50 to not-for-profit),  We enable a collaborative process that includes board and leadership team development, reframing of mission and vision where needed, scanning of the organization’s current internal and external state and value streams, and an extensive SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. The data we gather informs and drives a prioritized set of visionary and measurable goals, along with a high-level action plan that includes milestones, dates, and owners, so our clients see the desired results.

This approach enables leadership teams to step back, with us as objective partners, to assess the current state, see changes in customer needs, market conditions and other factors, and to make better-informed decisions about how to invest their scarce dollars and people’s time and expertise. We can also provide or arrange any combination of coaching for individual senior leaders and teams, and group facilitation.

Organizations often extend their strategic planning engagement for a deeper dive into detailed plans. We offer six-month and annual follow-ups as well as three-to-five-year plan renewal engagements. Some clients find off-site retreats to be ideal opportunities to create space for designing the future. We strongly recommend face-to-face collaboration for as much of this work as the client can support.

Contact Information:

Shannon: wsrichards.services@gmail.com  (206) 227-3423

John:  jrizzardi@cairncross.com   (206) 254-4444

Results

A non-profit that shelters and serves victims of domestic violence: 24 months after this organization’s board went through this process, the organization cut the ribbon on a new secure housing facility with rooms decorated by renowned interior designers and intentionally furnished to meet the needs of clients, including children and pets. This represented a transformational shift from bare-bones facilities to a collection of beautiful, welcoming spaces within a secure environment.

An employee resource group (ERG) at a Fortune 50 company: A small group in one city who wanted to break through the stigma around mental health grew to over 160,000 employee members led by a diverse, global board of employee directors. Employee volunteers facilitate mental fitness-related conversations, publish a monthly newsletter and content that highlight mental fitness topics and promote events, and raise awareness about local and global resources and employee benefits.

A Fortune 500 company acquired a security software startup: Shannon led many aspects of the transition from an on-premise, monolithic, single-tenant application to a cloud-based, multi-tenant service used by tens of thousands of customers globally, exceeding $40 million in annual revenue three years post-launch.

Operational hygiene inspection: Shannon worked with a nine-person leadership team and >800 engineers across 130+ teams from seven different organizations, to design and implement a global (US, UK, EU) operational hygiene inspection program that centered around a one-hour weekly inspection meeting attended by a diverse audience from VP to frontline operators. The meeting agenda included inspections of operational metrics, analysis of recent customer-impacting events, and knowledge sharing across teams and organizations. Within 12 months of implementation, resolution times improved by >20%, leadership reported significant improvement in cross-team communications, and a reduction in reports of cross-team conflicts.

Finding time: Shannon’s leadership and collaboration recovered 16 weeks of critical path schedule from an 80-week plan (12.8% improvement) by “chasing the bottleneck” across 31 teams, challenging them to dive deeper into their processes and dependencies, shifting priorities, and making tactical changes that enabled them to deliver faster and sustainably.

Our Planners

Shannon Richards leads our strategic planning practice in collaboration with John Rizzardi. We tailor our process to the needs of our clients, who often prioritize one of three primary categories – Growth Trajectory, Adapting to Changes, People-centric AI Transitions – though most engagements incorporate aspects of all three categories.

Shannon Richards Organizations often know they need change, but struggle to define the path forward. That’s where Shannon provides the greatest value. With more than 25 years of leadership experience across Amazon, AWS, healthcare, and mission-driven organizations, Shannon works with executives and leadership teams to turn ambiguity into clear strategy, aligned priorities, and actionable plans.

At Amazon and AWS, Shannon helped senior leaders guide a $500M+ security business with more than 800 employees, translating complex challenges into focused plans and measurable results. He has led organizational turnarounds, built high-performing teams, and designed operational programs that scaled across global organizations.

Prior to Amazon, Shannon spent several years years in healthcare IT, collaborating with business leaders on both the payer and provider sides of large-scale initiatives including enterprise content management (ECM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), integrating complex technologies into business solutions that improved customer and patient experiences, employee satisfaction, and business unit productivity, within a highly regulated industry.

What makes Shannon’s approach different is the balance of strategy and execution. Leaders don’t just leave with ideas — they leave with a practical roadmap, clear ownership, and the confidence to move forward.

Since 2007, Shannon has partnered with mission-driven organizations to develop crisp mission and vision statements, clarify strategic priorities, and create measurable action plans that teams can actually execute.

Backed by a Master’s degree in Organizational Systems Design from Seattle University and more than two decades of Lean and Agile practice, Shannon brings both systems thinking and real-world operational leadership to every engagement.

Whether you need to align your leadership team, refresh your strategic direction, or build an execution-ready roadmap, Shannon helps organizations move from uncertainty to momentum.

John Rizzardi provides strategic, general business planning and dispute resolution assistance to a wide range of companies and their owners. He is nationally recognized for his commercial legal skills. He has represented and counseled hundreds of companies during his 47-year legal career, assisting C-suite executives and managers with their most difficult situations.

In 2014, John was certified by the Hudson Institute of Coaching as an executive and leadership coach. The certification process and subsequent coaching and facilitation engagements augmented his legal experience, enabling him to deploy either targeted or company-wide approaches for his clients.  He looks for inspiration for his own methods and techniques from established authors and instructors such as Patrick Lencioni, Mary Beth O’Neill and Pamela McLean, and his extensive Hudson community of coaches.

As a frequent mediator of commercial disputes, he facilitates drawing out creative solutions to challenging problems. He is comfortable sitting with the uncomfortable and strives to assist leaders and team members in finding common ground, depth of purpose and mutual trust.

John has been involved in executive, departmental, board and firm-wide coaching and strategic planning in various industries and non-profit organizations. One of his most challenging engagements involved a law firm on the brink of a cultural and financial collapse. Through a customized and intensive trust restoration pre-work process, the engagement ended with the firm remaining intact. The bonds between ownership, management and staff were restored. With this strong foundation, the firm could proceed with various initiatives, preserve its culture, and continue with optimal growth in size and profitability.

John participated with a strategic planning group that developed a growth and management plan for a 3,000 member non-profit trade association. The plan, approved by the association’s board, set in motion the global expansion of the association’s reach and tripled the association’s membership. John and Shannon’s approach to the strategic planning process is complementary, additive, and holistic. They bring the best of their significantly different sets of experience to the fore in every engagement.

‘When leaders master authenticity, presence, and self-awareness, they transform themselves from ordinary to inspirational. They connect with their team members in a new way, and team engagement soars. The light of presence shines bright, and it is the role of coaches to help people, leaders and organizations tap into that light.”  Greg Honey in the Forward to The Completely Revised Handbook of Coaching, Pamela McLean, 2012.

John’s personal biography can be accessed at https://www.cairncross.com/our-people/attorneys/john-r-rizzardi-attorney/