Ignore The Squirrel

Many of you who own a dog (and even those of you who don’t) will find the clip below easy to relate to.



Can’t see the video? Click here.

In the video above, Dug the Dog is in the process of demonstrating an amazing collar built by his master that allows him to speak to humans. Even in the midst of this profound disclosure, he is distracted by the sight of a squirrel right in the middle of his explanation.

We all know dogs that are easily distracted. I think that if we are being honest with ourselves, we should also admit that sometimes those of us in the field of serving individuals with one or more developmental disabilities can also get easily distracted by many varieties of “squirrels.”

This came to mind last week as I took part in a meeting of Imagine!’s Strategic Planning team. This team, made up of Imagine! employees from across the organization, is charged with identifying where Imagine! wants to be at some point in the future, and determining how we are going to get there.

I feel strongly that our strategic planning process is one of the most important things we do at Imagine!. I think it has helped us keep a steady ship despite the very rough seas that the system for funding and delivering services in Colorado has been sailing in the past several years. I think it has positioned us to be ready and proactive in the face of impending change, rather than being forced into a reactive position when options for responding to change are much more limited, and often less than desirable.

In other words, our strategic planning team has allowed us to stay focused and to ignore the many squirrels that are constantly scampering about. We have been prepared and able to react when facing new barriers and new distractions. We have stayed true to our missions and the needs of those we serve.

This isn’t to say that goals should never change. But in the absence of goals, it is easy to get off track, because no track really exists. Making it up as you go along is not a recipe for success in any field, and certainly not one where the lives of some very vulnerable citizens are at stake. Too many of the decisions made in our field have been made lately not as part of a strategy to meet a defined goal, but instead have been made because there is a vacuum where the goals should be residing.

Then again, what do I know?