The devotee’s business is he’s always thinking of how to do good to the people in general, how they will accept Krishna consciousness. Simply twenty-four hours thinking, making plan. …They want to see that everyone becomes a devotee of Krishna.
“So I went in U.S.A… One gentleman sponsored for one month, one month only. Not even one month. I remained there only three weeks, and then I chalked out my plan.” Conversation, Bombay, November 7th, 1970
“If whatever we do… whatever we think and whatever we plan is for the advancement of the Krsna consciousness movement, this is oneness… There is no difference between chanting for Krsna consciousness and working for Krsna consciousness. On the transcendental platform they are one. But we must be guided by the spiritual master…” SB 8.22.23 Purport
Srila Prabhupada the strategic thinker His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada Founder Acharya of The International Society for Krishna Consciousness
Devotees throughout the world are striving to fulfill the mission of Srila Prabhupada to help people find happiness. Your success in serving Srila Prabhupada can be multiplied by the simple methods of strategic planning. This website explains how easy it is to plan strategically. And through this website you can get personal help from the Strategic Planning Team.
What is strategic planning?
Strategic planning is a simple and spiritually powerful tool for realizing Srila Prabhupada’s mission and vision for ISKCON. Strategic planning is the method by which an organization defines how it will move into the future.
GBC Strategic Planning Journey
Srila Prabhupada wanted the GBC to lead ISKCON through good governance and to establish global policies. He also wanted ISKCON to expand,thrive, be well rooted, and toserve the needs of its devotees and the public alike.
But like many organizations, ISKCON has spent a fair amount of time over the years reacting to rather than anticipating the demands of its own growth. This has created a cycle of mild to severe crisis management, which has left us, as a global movement, in survival mode, with little energy to do much more than cope with our day to day needs and problems. In many areas of the world we have lost the dynamic energy the movement had during the 1970s and much of the '80s. It's easy to give reasons for the decline –and they'd likely all be true from one angle or another. But there's something else that's true, too: All the ups and downs ISKCON has experienced since Srila Prabhupada's departure have been pretty much inevitable –normal, even –for organizations, spiritual or otherwise, that are growing up.
For the past eight years, the GBC Strategic Planning Team (SPT) has been helping the GBC explore the ways in which ISKCON needs to grow up into the vibrant movement Srila Prabhupada wanted it to be, and then developing strategies to support that growth. Our theme? "More devotees, happier devotees".
Systematically Changing ISKCON's Future
Bhaktivijnana Swami, a GBC leader and preacher in Russia and Israel, also serves on the SPN’s Succession Committee. Maharaja expresses his appreciation of the strategic planning process, personally witnessing how the culture of strategic planning has dramatically changed the work of the GBC, allowing it to put energy into addressing important issues relevant for the whole Society and its direction for the future, particularly in the area of succession.
“There is need for intelligent young men to train them up as future leaders and preachers to go all over the world for spreading the message of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu.”
We need your help. If you have suggestions, comments, questions, if you’ve found errors or have ideas, please tell us! We want to make this website useful and easy to use and we need all the help we can get. Thank you!
Please send us an email at: iskcon.strategic.planning@gmail.com