Joseph Benesh is an architect who got a taste of strategic planning while he was organizing young professional groups and later decided to make it his career.

Why? He likes to listen, to help people dream, and to clear away obstacles. He sees things analytically, he says, and can sidestep internal politics to help people achieve. 

Now president and CEO of the Ingenuity Co., Benesh has worked with medical professionals, nonprofits, schools and others to develop strategic plans. He’s a licensed architect in Iowa, Illinois and Florida who likes to design plans that are fluid but helpful, and don’t end up on a shelf. 

We asked Benesh about his career shift, and lessons that could help you in your organization. 

Why the change from Shive-Hattery to your own operation, Ingenuity?

The amount of work I was doing for nonprofits and other organizations on the strategic planning side had gotten to the point where it was taking as much, if not more, of my time than my day job was, and so I decided to evaluate whether I could make it my full-time job. Ingenuity had been just a consulting thing I was doing on the side of my architecture. 

And there was sort of a natural point where I felt like it had the balance, it shifted a little bit and this needed to kind of be my focus area. I still love doing architecture and design, but my interests and the things that I wanted to pursue were really rooted in the stuff I was doing with the Ingenuity Co. 

How did your consultant business develop?

I had worked in architecture in Miami for six years and in Chicago for six years. I had an opportunity to join RDG for three years, then worked at Shive-Hattery in West Des Moines for three years. I had helped form young architects groups in Chicago and Miami and was involved in the strategic planning for that. In Miami, I was asked to help consult on capacity building, too.  I was getting asked to do quite a bit of referral consulting work where I would work with different groups to build capacity, develop missions and the basics of strategic planning. And then when I moved back to Des Moines, I was sort of integral in developing some of the strategic plan for the Social Capital for Capital Crossroads [a visioning effort looking at developing leadership, diversity, equity and inclusion in Central Iowa]. And from there I started working as a volunteer with a lot of nonprofits, but then it grew into something that there was a revenue associated with, so I started doing a lot more work that way. And the groups I work with are very kind that they refer me to the other groups or groups that are getting started. And the Community Foundation is also very helpful with that. So it turned into sort of a viable business.

But the genesis of that was just really that first meeting I had with an architect who kind of showed me that you can do something different with an architecture degree than design buildings. 

You came to Des Moines from Miami?

Yeah, someone said they were looking for someone at RDG. My friend worked at RDG at the time. I came back and started having some interviews, and I noticed how things had changed. Des Moines had become a completely different place than when I left in 1999. 

And Ingenuity was starting to jell?

I would say it was in 2012 that I wanted to get some walls around it. I didn’t incorporate until 2014.

Do you work out of your house?

Yes.

Will you look to a formal office sometime?

We have a plan for how the business would grow on the strategic planning side. And along with that thus far, and what it looks like in terms of building out, I have a very specific road map that I want to follow in terms of the people I think would be good to plug into, on the strategic planning side, and different skills to kind of build a pot of people that I can continue to build a consultancy around. And then Aaron [Hefly, Benesh’s Ingenuity partner who handles the software duties] definitely needs support from a coding perspective. When we get bigger and  have employees, we will probably outgrow our respective spaces in our houses and look at [an office out of the home].

I think if we look at five years, there would be ideally four people on the strategic planning side, and maybe a team of three or four on the software side.

Are there advantages to keeping the company relatively small?

I like the idea of knowing you’re knowing the people you work with, and getting people who have the same, you know, orientation of values and sort of understand the way that you work. I think also what we do is very specialized, and it’s different than a lot of the strategic planners that are out there. Sometimes I think in bigger companies you can lose some of that intimacy, and that would bother me, I think. 

What types of clients are you serving?

The majority of the work is with different types of nonprofits. We don’t specialize in any specific focus area of the nonprofit world or anything like that. The other portion of the book is comprised of, you know, I do a lot of work for the University of Iowa Health Systems. We’ve done some work with the city of Marshalltown, too.

Are there other arenas where your strategic planning approach would work? 

We’re working now with the insurance side of a financial institution. There’s just a broad range of folks; I think the process we use can be adapted to just about any kind of context.

How do you do a strategic plan?

I think every process starts with a “getting to know you” phase where you are doing focus groups and surveys, and sort of an assessment of what things are important to the organization and kind of map out what the personality and culture of the organization are. And that’s an essential part of getting to know who you’re working with, and work styles and, you know, them getting to know me as well. And then that allows for there to be a design around, you know, what is a strategic planning process going to look like that is going to yield the best results for them? And then how do you frame that out in a sort of iterative way that it goes from strategy, technical analysis and identifying objectives? And then how do they implement that stuff, and ultimately measure it? What are the benchmarking metrics?

How do you go from point A to point B, and build that capacity-building strategy, but do it in sort of a purposeful and intelligent way that takes into account the culture and personality organization you are working with? 

Does the length of time you spend on a strategic plan vary?

I’m very clear with my clients that I stick with them as long as they need me to make sure that the plan is successful. And we try to do that as efficiently as possible. But we also need to make sure that we’re protecting the process and doing that so we aren’t rushing or skipping steps, and that ultimately everyone feels comfortable because the worst thing in the world is writing a strategic plan for somebody and then it’s shining and looks great and goes up on a shelf and nobody touches it because they don’t really understand how to use it. Or it doesn’t make sense to them.

What are the top three mistakes people make on their strategic planning?

I would say that trying to do too much is probably the number one thing.

I think oversimplification is another thing that happens. People think that the stuff that may appear easy is a little bit harder than it is. 

And then the third one, I think it’s just final confirmation bias. We know we’ve always done it this way, so we think we should keep doing it this way. And people really get stuck, because they don’t see how toxic old processes can be. Making small adjustments sometimes is all it takes to kind of move you forward as an organization. Honestly, sometimes it’s just helpful to have an objective third party in the room that you can bounce stuff off of, so that you can kind of continue to move forward because people do worry about feelings and perceptions.

What are the best outcomes?

I think they’re more confident that what they’re doing is the right thing, and that they understand they have a road map on how to move forward. 

I think another thing that comes from their being more confident is engaging board members, volunteers, employees. They can see what they’re doing, they can hear their own voice in the plan, which is a very critical component.

And then the other thing is some of the stuff they may not even know they were capable of. And the rewarding thing is when you get those “aha” moments during that planning process.

My job is to reverse-engineer all the components of that to make sure you can actually do it. First of all, do you have the capacity of people human resources to do that? Do you have the financial resources? 

How do you handle the organization’s politics?

There’s a fine line between being professional and airing grievances. A little of that is helpful, but a lot of that is toxic.