Once they experience Strategic Doing, people get excited. Some even write to us about how excited they are. Here are some examples.

1. Testimonials on Strategic Doing
Strategic Doing is a masterful process that makes everybody happy. The reason it’s so
good is that it’s not a long process that takes months and months. It’s a much more
agile process. The strength of the process is to bring people from different parts of
campus together and figure out their common assets. They determine a strategic
outcome based on those assets. Then the group puts together a roadmap for getting
there very quickly.
Tomás Diáz de la Rubia
Director
Purdue Discovery Park
I will never, ever have another meeting in which we do NOT use Strategic Doing.
John Ochs
Director Technical Entrepreneurship Programs
Lehigh University
I’ve worked with other large companies trying to do open innovation, but this process
is unique. This is the most clear and concise open innovation process I’ve seen.
Mark L. Scotland
President and CEO
4.0 Analytics
Strategic Doing is a pragmatic, agile and yet profound method to work with a team
towards their goals and next/first steps.
Filip Fiers
The Academy of Executive Coaching
London, UK
In today's collaborative management culture Strategic Doing is a tool that allows team
members to advance ideas to implementation quickly. The Strategic Doing process
selects ideas to which each member contributes and the results are potentially as
powerful as experienced with Lean Management .
Janyce Fadden
VP/General Manager (retired) Portescap/Danaher Motion
Executive in Residence University of North Alabama
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2. Strategic Doing allows a business to quickly identify an interested ecosystem of local
businesses to solve a defined customer problem.
Todd Tangert
Combat Systems Architect
Lockheed Corporation
(retired)
In this moment of crisis, we need to work together. Being exposed to Strategic Doing
in the past, I can confirm that this training is very important and useful. It really
shaped my views of strategy and networking. I’m very excited for the opportunity this
can bring to our recovery efforts.
Ubaldo Córdova
Interim Vice President
University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez
Strategic Doing gives us the power to change our lives, our neighborhoods and our
communities.
Bob Brown
Associate Director
Center for Community and Economic Development
Michigan State University
The Strategic Doing (SD) approach might be one of the most effective ways of
implementing change on campus. It effectively replaces strategic planning, a
traditional pathway. At UW-Milwaukee, we have been able to move forward ten
projects related to innovation and entrepreneurship transformations of curricula and
institutional culture using SD.
It is outcome driven, but more importantly, it is adaptive. Our diverse team of faculty
and administrators have pivoted many times because of the continuous feedback that
we analyze and plug back in into the decision making process.
Ilya V. Avdeev
Associate Professor
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
from the Pathways program through Stanford/NSF/VentureWell
Strategic Doing is the framework that our system needs. We knew that going into
this. Today proved that to be true. The participants were enlightened and curious
about the possibilities that Strategic Doing will provide to help them with what seem
like “heavy lifting”. This work will lighten the load. I think that State leadership will
want more. We’ll just have to figure out how we can support their efforts going
forward.
Stephan Duval
Region 2
Philadelphia
US Department of Labor
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3. Strategic Doing is fantastic and you will love it. It can be adapted for almost
everything. Honestly, the potential is unlimited. From launching an entrepreneurial
atmosphere to starting a business, to community and/or regional planning. It could
even be massaged to form the foundation for long term collaborative relationships
with the government to secure project funding. And then after she had a chance to
talk with her team: I have everyone so excited here about Strategic Doing.
I think I will be swamped over the next few months so will call on you for help with
framing questions. It was such a pleasure to part of the training…it is life changing. I
will work hard to make it a part of the Saskatchewan fabric. I have used the strategic
doing process twice, and I have one more session booked this month. I love and so do
they; they can see the magic in the process.
Cherylynn Walters
Community Development Professional
Working with Native Communities
Saskatchewan, Canada
Just a quick note of amazement. I was fortunate enough to have attended your
Strategic Doing meeting (at Dr. Borah’s table) in Florence Al a few weeks ago. I’m a
local artist and furniture maker, with a previous life in technology as an Apple VAR in
the late 70’s thru ’90). I’ve avoided groups and meetings like the plague. Have found
(I thought) that I can usually be of much more benefit following my path single
handedly. I’ve never dreamed of a meeting that was so right on. Cutting right thru
the mountain of the inherent problems with meetings with collaboration, laser focus,
and “doing” - wow!
Using the communities thinkers, creatives, visionaries to help find the what/where,
then using the university and education leaders, local politicians and vibrant business
minds to lead the doing. Ẅ Really amazing how simple the right game plan can be -
once you find the recipe (that I believe you have). The entire community seems stirred
up - talking about this group - wanting to know how they can get involved. Ẅ Almost
beginning to feel like a cult following that is dying to know more - and get going and
do. Thank you for your amazing work. I can’t wait to learn more and and begin the
doing in our perfect direction.
Robin Wade
Florence, Alabama
Thank you for yesterday! Your work is powerful - and so needed in organizations of all
types today. Your process is simple and elegant - and most importantly effective. It
build community and at the same time distributes leadership in a very powerful way. I
wanted to shout "amen" over and over again yesterday many, many times!
Kris Taylor
Leadership Consultant
Indianapolis, IN
The CDF Committee met today for the first time since the forum. They were so
pleased with how things went during the gathering and full of optimism about where
things are headed. Thank you so much for the role you played in getting Fields
Forward off the ground. We are keen to run a similar process around child, youth, and
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4. family friendliness, and will be sure to keep in touch on both fronts.The queue of folks
interested in SD training and pro-d in the region is certainly growing!
Laura Hannant
Kootenay Employment Services
British Columbia
The Strategic Doing approach had a significant impact for us in helping us move faster
from having a general idea for a program to its successful implementation. It keeps
the whole team focused on outcomes.
Magda Lagoudas
Executive Director
Industry & Nonprofits
Texas A&M University
From Pathways/Venture Well
The process is well thought-out. The process has a very deliberate, almost agile clock
speed to it, in a 30-day cycle, so what it does is it forces the conversation around
action, and it moves. It moves very, very fast, but I think unless it moved very fast,
institutions could languish, like most institutions - where you try to get everybody
involved, and nothing actually happens. The process provides a team construct where
the team drives everything across campus, and I think that's been very powerful in our
institution.
We've gone through an interesting evolution, because these conversations have
brought more and more faculty involved, they've brought more and more
administrators, and now, as we had hoped, we now have a campus-wide conversation
around innovation and entrepreneurship, and it's not a conversation about what
needs to be done, it's a conversation quite literally of 'How can I get involved?' and
that's very, very exciting...
It's a well-thought out process and it's around action. We have monthly meetings,
where everybody has to report what they've done and what they'll be doing in the
near future, so it keeps you very engaged with your peer institutions and it keeps you
very engaged on campus with actually getting things done.
Mark Mondry
Associate Professor
Colorado School of Mines
From Pathways/Venture Well
Three of the proposals that emerged out of the Strategic Doing workshop were
selected to move forward in the Indiana University Grand Challenges initiative! That is
out of a total of just 5 selected by the committee from 22 submissions university wide.
Strategic Doing clearly paid major dividends for us.
Jeff White, Ph.D., Director
Integrated Program in the Environment
Indiana University
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5. My home county in Kansas is Chautauqua County ẃ population approximately 3,000
and declining. The County Courthouse has aged and in particular, the County Jail
needed improvements. The County Sheriff began discussions with the County
Commissioners regarding the construction of a brand new jail and a consultant study
was commissioned. The consultant study came back and indicated a new jail was
financially feasible and the right course of action.
Complexity ẃ none of the commissioners understood how to analyze a consultant
study and apply due diligence and none of them realized that a consultant never says
“no, don’t do that.” The proposal to bond and build a new county jail was put to a
vote and the impression was given this was an economic development project that
would pay for itself by virtue of housing additional prison populations from nearby
counties. The citizen voted yes.
Complexity ẃ no one did their homework regarding jail space in nearby communities,
what it would cost to operate a new jail (ie utilities, etc) and the public didn’t know
enough to ask informed questions. The jail was built ẃ the county went into debt over
$1M ẃ and in less than a year the county had to ask the state for a œwarrant’ to pay its
bills because operation of the jail was costing more than imagined and prisoner
populations were not at the level to cover costs. Additionally ẃ the jail was built on
the courthouse square right in the middle of a residential neighborhood and half a
block from the K-12 school footprint.
Complexity ẃ no one thought about safety or considered what the new jail would do
to adjacent property values. In all of this ẃ there was no framework for an informed
community discussion that started with the simple question of modernizing the
County Jail.
In short ẃ that is what Strategic Doing can do for rural communities. Provide a
consistent and inclusive framework for public problem solving that brings expertise
and perspective to the discussion - and process and resources to a potential solution.
All the while ẃ tracking progress through assignment of tasks and follow-up.
Patty Clark
USDA Kansas
Rural Development
Why Strategic Doing is So Important!
Once everyone understood the structure that Strategic Doing can provide for: 1)
gathering interested parties quickly around an issue to see what available assets exist
2) helping this group to figure out what they could do 3) providing a structure to do
this work (on a voluntary basis) after the conference they jumped on board.
Shannon Reed
Rural Development
Dover, Delaware
Now that we have had time to reflect a lot and hopefully not forget too much about
our recent journey into Agile Strategy, I know we are not yet totally ready to take on
the nationals, but I believe we are certainly primed for the regionals and for creating
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6. effective collaborative strategies. It is what we can do.I just wanted to add that it was
a wonderful experience to work with all of you in this process and I look forward to a
very positive future in what we will do in shaping the future our Strategic Doing
Academy, among many other endeavors.
Many thanks to Nelida for her partnership, patience, hard work and sheer
awesomeness. And to Ed and Scott as well. They are game-changers and I’m grateful
to learn from their experience and success.
Victor Klymenko - City of Paterson, NJ,
Joanne Cimiluca - County of Bergen, NJ
œOne of the big lessons we learned was the strategic doing: how to attack a problem
in small pieces and in small steps. Once you start doing it, after a while you turn back
and see you’ve come a long way without realizing you’ve taken on something
mammoth.
Joseph Barba
Director Student Entrepreneurship
Director NY STEM Institute
Professor
Grove School of Engineering
Department of Electrical Engineering
City College of New York
I’ve been involved in strategic planning committees, and produced strategic plans
that got filed on the shelf. If you use the tool, it focuses you on getting something
done immediately or in the very near term - not just coming up with grandiose plans
of things to do, none of which ever get started...I have recommended the process to
the provost and upper echelon [leadership] as a way to do the overall planning for our
new school of entrepreneurship.
Mike Devine
Entrepreneur in Residence and Professor
FAMU-FSU College of Engineering
Florida State University
I came from that meeting with excitement for the impact we will have as we "do more
together", because...we truly are more effective and better together, just as the
exercise of the wooden dowel revealed to us (I loved that exercise…btw:)
Audra Blaschko
Social Services Supervisor
The Salvation Army - WMNI Division
Strategic Doing has been truly transformational for us - not only literally transforming
our organization's structure to better articulate our mission and engage students, but
also creating the most energized, productive, and dedicated executive team by far
that I've seen in my four years with the organization. "I spent the past two years
trying to organize us better as a group before finding Ed and Scott. What we've
accomplished now through Strategic Doing is leaps and bounds above my wildest
dreams - all within the course of one month. It just works.
Andrew Zeller
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7. Graduate Student Government
Purdue University
In 2013 a group of community stakeholders in east central Indiana heard about a new
approach to working together to recognize opportunities and create a shared vision
and system to develop skills to meet them. Manufacturers, elected officials,
educators, agencies ẃ all were ready to lock arms and march in the same direction,
recognizing that through using real resources they had immediate access to, they
could move the needle in their communities. To formalize the effort, Purdue provided
a Strategic Doing workshop with this key stakeholder group, and from that one day in
2013, an initiative was born that remains in motion today, ever evolving and industry
driven, community supported. That initiative is Manufacturing Matters.
Through the SD process, a clear, shared vision was realized and many barriers were
broken down. The model has evolved from a one track training program to a more
comprehensive interactive model that now has features that demonstrate the success
of this shared collaboration. These features include continually engaged partners,
public recognition and promotion of the model, additional training tracks, an Academy
model, expansion of the model to the local schools and Adult Education programs,
replication in other regions, and the evolution of work-based learning platforms to
increase engagement.
About a year and a half in we engaged a facilitator again to provide another SD
session to further refine at that point the direction of the program. From that effort
came new tools to enhance its impact, like the building of career pathways with
partners and the expansion of recruitment to the emerging workforce. Those who
have participated in the sessions consistently report how the process is so different,
so immediate, so tangible ẃ compared to traditional Strategic Planning.
Kim Thurlow
Ivy Tech
Richmond, IN
Manufacturing Matters
This is a very strong start to this exciting process. The Shop Local discussions were full
of enthusiasm, and I was struck by the new participants who were at the table.
John Thurber
Trenton Business Week
For me it was about behavior change. The reality of our innovation-driven world is that
companies need to collaborate to compete. This as not a natural orientation for
Lockheed or the companies in the NJ defense supply chain. Strategic Doing gave us a
roadmap - a set of protocols to start forming the behaviors companies need to
compete in the 21st Century.
Michael van Ter Sluis
Executive Director
Innovation Services
New Jersey Innovation Institute
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8. Strategic Doing's core principle of linking and leveraging assets for greater impact is
at the heart of the success of the Rockford Area Aerospace Network (RAAN).
Aerospace leaders are working together to enhance the supply chain and market the
region's advanced manufacturing capacity. The collaborative success of RAAN set the
stage for a community-based, industry-integrated engineering degree program that is
now addressing a looming engineering shortage. Strategic Doing has helped regional
leaders understand that they need only to look to one another for solutions.
Rena Cotsones, Ph.D.
Associate Vice President,
Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development
Northern Illinois University
I attended a session recently here in Canada. I was totally intrigued with the Principles
of Strategic Doing and have applied the little bit I know to our organization. Its
working!!
Glenda Janes, CEO,
St. John Ambulance
Newfoundland and New Brunswick Council
Boy, I gotta tell ya… The response to the SD301 training last NOV in Easton, MD has
been outstanding! I can already point to several different examples of how the
trainees have been putting the principles into practice. Our Delaware Sea Grant SD-
trained staff (me, Jame and Chris) conducted a mini-SD exercise (just rules 3 & 4) at
our advisory council meeting in early-DEC and according to one of our state senators
who participated, it was the œbest meeting this group has put on in the past 18 years!
Ed Lewandowski
University of Delaware (Sea Grant)
In this moment of crisis, we need to work together. Being exposed to Strategic Doing
in the past, I can confirm that this training is very important and useful. It really
shaped my views of strategy and networking. I’m very excited for the opportunity this
can bring to our recovery efforts.
Ubaldo Córdova
Vice President
University of Puerto Rico
Strategic Doing is hands down the most effective framework I have crossed paths with
when it comes to turning conversations into action. Needless to say, I am a fully
converted believer.
Titus Tomlinson
Community Service Center
University of Oregon
A challenge with I-Corps is maintaining momentum after the conclusion of the
program. I-Corps is very intense and participants learn a lot. Insights gained through I-
Corps inform and direct future business strategy. There is also a lot of structure that
goes away after I-Corps. We are interested in helping teams develop a sound path
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9. forward following the structure of the I-Corps program. Strategic Doing offers a
systematic approach to digest insights and create actionable strategy to maintain
momentum following an I-Corps program.
Dr. Kramer Winingham, Director of Aggie I-Corps
Arrowhead Center at New Mexico State University,
Director of Studio G, NMSU’s student business accelerator
What makes this process different from anything that I have seen in the past is that
with Strategic Doing, we allow our collection of assets to drive us to an outcome, as
opposed to our outcome driving the need for assets, which we may or may not
possess.
Student
Purdue Masters of Science in Engineering Technology
I had a strange urge to drop everything, and follow! This is very clearly a game
changing way to approach a critical business function. It was just so clear to me why
people get held up with planning and the pain of strategy meetings (yuk). I can’t wait
to hear and learn more.
Bruce Goad
Director of Foodservice Operations &
Foodservice Labs Instructor
School of Hospitality Tourism Management
Purdue University
Strategic Doing allows a business to quickly identify an interested ecosystem of local
businesses to solve a defined customer problem.
Todd Tangert
Former Combat Systems Architect
Lockheed Corporation
The best methodology I have seen in 20 years.
Paul Collits, PhD
Former President
Australia New Zealand
Regional Science Association
Videos
Crista Shaw, FL
https://vimeo.com/99481677
Jim Woodell, APLU
https://youtu.be/DnWi2yOuiho
Darek Hunt, UNC
https://youtu.be/Khr0idZDzz0
Dion Jackson, USC
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10. https://youtu.be/Lr7hj8lPdIk
Carmel Ruffolo, Marquette University
https://youtu.be/dhZCFL9YJHs
Scott Hutcheson, Purdue
https://youtu.be/P2lsTeBvt0g
Titus Tomlinson
https://vimeo.com/290149711
Bob Brown
https://vimeo.com/290151029
University of North Alabama
https://vimeo.com/130017067
Flint Core Team
https://vimeo.com/128275392
Tom Banta
https://vimeo.com/290182456
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