Managing Tensions and Finding the Right Trade-Offs

Every strategic plan involves trade-offs. The ones that hold up over five years are usually the ones where an organization has talked those trade-offs through, openly, before the plan is written.

I recently facilitated a strategic planning session with a gender-based violence organization. The environmental scan had surfaced three real tensions, and we built part of the day around them.

I opened the exercise this way: "These are not problems to solve. They are tensions to manage."

Where the idea comes from

Working with tensions this way isn't new. Barry Johnson's work on polarity management gave facilitators a way to map two sides of an ongoing tension and look at the upside and downside of each. More recently, Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis's research on "both/and" thinking has shown why this matters: when leaders treat a lasting tension as an either/or choice, organizations can swing from one extreme to the other.

Naming the tension gives the Board a way to decide where to lean, on purpose, and to notice when it has leaned too far.

Three tensions, three conversations

In the recent strategic planning retreat, we split into three groups, one tension each. Every group worked through the same three steps:

1. ground the tension in what it looks like today,
2. explore the risks of leaning too far either way, and
3. decide where the organization should position itself over the next five years.

Each group wrote a position statement and placed it on a scale from 0 to 10.

TENSION #1: Compensation vs. capability

For this tension, the engagement stage had noted that staff wellbeing and retention were of real concern to staff, management and the Board. Raising pay could attract more experienced candidates and ease burnout. But the folks also noted there were some real capability gaps. Hiring, training and performance management rested with a small leadership team without dedicated HR support. They felt out of their depth. Further, staff talked about trust and team building, which is a wider frame than pay alone.

**The risks on both sides: **Lean too far into compensation, and pay goes up while the structural causes of burnout stay in place. Lean too far into capability, and good systems don't stop people from leaving for comparable roles that simply pay more.

TENSION #2: Focus vs. influence

For this tension, the organization had just come off some really difficult times which required them to focus inward, moving from one pressure to the next, with little time for system-building work outside its walls. Yet it had a sturdy reputation in the community which persisted which left room for a stronger public voice on housing and prevention.

**The risks on both sides: **Too much continued focus inward would risk losing the credibility and funding that can come with a system leadership role. Too much influence risks spending leadership time on advocacy the organization can't yet back up operationally.

TENSION #3: Depth vs breadth

This was the trickiest of the three. We spoke to a diverse group of clients and they all said they felt a sense of belonging and inclusion accessing services. And its core services are at or over capacity already. However, an external scan of the community showed real gaps of any community services for some groups including: 2SLGBTQ+ survivors, people in rural areas, Indigenous trust and service uptake, and men and boys as survivors, and larger families. The scan also noted that funding was following breadth of services, not the depth of core operations.

**The risks on both sides: **Too much focus on deepening core services, would mean the organization would continue to provide excellent services to folks who found their way to them, but visible service gaps would remain unaddressed and partners and funders might view them as too narrowly focused. If they focused on stretching their services into new populations or services without the capacity to do them well, it could impact quality of their services and undermine trust for everyone they are serve.

Naming the risks on both sides changed the conversation

What struck me in the depth vs. breadth group was how the conversation shifted once the risks on both sides were on the table. Nobody had to argue that the gaps didn't matter, or that core services could absorb more. Both were true.

The question became more practical: which gaps should the organization close itself, and which could it move forward through referral, partnership and its voice in the community?

The participants landed somewhere thoughtful. In this plan, it will focus on Indigenous survivors and communities, building trust and service uptake. At the same time, it will advocate in the community for better responses to the other gaps the scan identified.

That isn't splitting the difference. It is a clear position, with advocacy named as a real strategy for the rest rather than a consolation prize.

A plan that says where it's leaning

Each group's position then fed directly into the afternoon, where the participants drafted goals and actions for its strategic priorities. The tensions weren't a side exercise. They shaped the plan.

It also gives staff something useful: a shared starting point for the moments when priorities collide, like a new funding opportunity that pulls in a different direction.

Surfacing tensions is one of the parts of strategic planning I value most. It starts with an environmental scan that is honest about the gaps, and it depends on facilitation that lets participants hold two true things at once without rushing to resolve them.

At Connor Claire Group, we design planning processes around the decisions that matter most. Sometimes that's a full plan. Sometimes it's one hard conversation, done well.