SOCIETY OF COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY STRATEGIC PLAN 105 – SUMMARY

							        SOCIETY OF COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY STRATEGIC PLAN 1/05 – SUMMARY

Initiated at mid-year meeting chaired by Puncky Heppner; facilitated by Sandy Shullman. (Description
below is based on minutes of the EB meeting.)

Heppner opened the process by delineating challenges for the EB Board to engage in strategic planning. He
listed: the changing membership due to staggered elections, the voluntary nature of SCP involvement, lack
of mechanisms to track our historical intelligence and the difficulty in monitoring and follow through with
any long range strategic planning process.

The EB identified the big issues facing the Society and engaged in a small group process to delineated key
issues:
     1. Identifying core priorities, following through, and communicating the same message to all
        constituencies
     2. Maintaining relevance and influence, guided by our values and research
     3. Maintaining the viability of the Society, e.g., membership, leadership, doctoral training and so on
     4. Identifying clearly our constituencies/communities of interest
     5. Developing a collective, shared understanding of our mission and values

Key process points included:
    1. Need to consciously and systematically prioritize our goals and objectives
    2. Importance of differentiating between the Society’s goals and objectives and those of the field of
        counseling psychology more generally
    3. Need to identify activities that will have a high leverage in terms of positive impact
    4. Importance of being more proactive in reaching our goals rather than reactive
    5. Concern that Society is currently trying to do too much and is, as a result, overtaxed
    6. Need for an efficient and effective process to reach our stated goals (i.e., process for
        accomplishing our goals is a strategic goal in itself).

Shullman asked the EB to imagine SCP in 5 years and identify where we want the Society to be:
    1. A commonly known, shared mission and values statement
    2. All parts of the Society support and further an ongoing set of clear, manageable objectives
    3. The efforts of the four Vice Presidents were better coordinated and integrated into the functioning
        of the Society
    4. A clear sense of our collective and historical knowledge base
    5. A workable, efficient communication infrastructure

Shullman then challenged the EB on shifting from an individual contributor model to a more collectivist
leadership model. The EB discussed a middle ground between the two models

The EB then generated 3 strategic objectives for the Society.