Strategic Planning Facilitation
Frank has facilitated two planning meetings for the Association of Woodworking & Furnishings Suppliers. In my opinion, the last meeting was the best we have ever held during my 17+ years with the association. He does an exceptional job keeping our meetings focused and productive, while determining the goals that are most critical to our organization through a collaborative effort between our board members and our staff, and then helping us formulate a realistic strategic plan to reach those goals. Frank has also proven himself to be a great asset when it comes to conducting research on behalf of our association and trade show. He is an expert in ensuring that we ask the right questions in order to obtain the information that will help us most, and is a highly-skilled interviewer, whether working with a focus group or conducting one on one interviews. We already plan to invite him back to facilitate our next planning meeting, in 2023.
We are a non-profit joint powers authority that serves the scholastic community in Southern California. Frank Scarpaci, VIANOVA, was selected as our strategic planning facilitator after an exhaustive search for someone that would be a good fit to work with two unique Boards. His approach was fresh and engaging, his references were stellar and his adaptable leadership style meant that he truly heard all voices and acted as a guide to facilitate discussion to ensure we reached targeted objectives. Frank does his research to understand his clients and their needs and includes accountability, benchmarking and tracking tools to make the job easier to keep updated. I was most impressed that he personally speaks to each stakeholder involved in the strategic planning process to hear firsthand their perspective. He avails himself to answer questions or even provide assistance once the planning session has concluded. During COVID-19, we had a choice to either cancel our standing strategic planning dates or move them to a virtual format. Frank didn’t blink an eye and instead took the challenge to engage our two boards virtually to review prior year plans and develop the strategies that will see us through the next cycle. Our organization has truly benefited by having Frank on board as our strategic planning facilitator to meet its goals and strategic initiatives and he comes once again, highly recommended.
We have held numerous off-site strategic planning meetings over the years, and hands-down our experience with Frank’s leadership and meeting facilitation has been by far the most thorough, focused and dare I say enjoyable. Frank has a way of keeping everyone on agenda, while allowing the time necessary for relevant discussion that leads to positive and achievable outcomes. We all left with long to-do lists, but with confidence that our senior team is aligned and our goals for the coming year are completely achievable. Highly recommended!
Frank Scarpaci was recommended by a colleague to work with our professional association, the California Council for Adult Education, to develop a three-year strategic plan. We were so grateful to have the opportunity to work with Frank! He is a gifted communicator, very organized, and does what he says he’s going to do.
We found the process to be an easy one to follow that included perspectives from a wide array of stakeholders. As a result, the end product was authentic and truly resulted in an actionable and useful plan to help guide the organization over the next several years. As a matter of fact, we liked Frank and his process and templates so well that we’re now calling him back to help take us into the next three years.
In addition, I so appreciated Frank’s work that I have recommended him for strategic planning work in numerous other organizations. Thank you, Frank!
We found the process to be an easy one to follow that included perspectives from a wide array of stakeholders. As a result, the end product was authentic and truly resulted in an actionable and useful plan to help guide the organization over the next several years. As a matter of fact, we liked Frank and his process and templates so well that we’re now calling him back to help take us into the next three years.
In addition, I so appreciated Frank’s work that I have recommended him for strategic planning work in numerous other organizations. Thank you, Frank!
We hired Frank Scarpaci from Vianova to facilitate our annual Board of Directors Strategic Planning Session.
We could not be happier with the results of our session. Frank met with our leadership and interviewed each of our board members prior to our scheduled meeting. He had great insight and ideas to help us determine what our goals were and how to focus on steps to obtain those goals.
Frank provided a workshop that kept us on task and at the end provided us with a living document to ensure we stay on track for the year. His input was invaluable and obviously comes from years of experience.
Meeting & Retreat Facilitation
Frank was a pleasure to work with. He helped us from the onset by partnering with us to develop a bespoke agenda for our leadership meeting. Frank was flexible and insightful in working with us before and after the retreat to ensure success.
He took the time to guide us on best practices for a leadership meeting, as well as recommend ideas to achieve our objectives. During our meeting, Frank drew on his years of experience to keep us on track, on time and focused. His expertise, coupled with the software he utilized, made him stand apart from other facilitators we have engaged. Frank provided reports with actionable insights and key takeaways from our leadership meeting. His activities were highly valuable, educational, and fun. I would highly recommend Frank and plan to use him next year.
Frank is top-notch. From our initial phone call to discuss moderating our one-day brainstorming session, he was spot on. Frank asked intuitive and insightful questions and was genuinely interested in our mission. He worked to understand our goals for the day and brought up ideas and awareness in areas we hadn’t considered. Our event was a huge success and extremely well-received by even the skeptics in attendance. This is in large part because of Frank’s ability to run a crowd. He made sure everyone was included and had a chance to speak. He made the day productive, but also fun for the group. They left feeling accomplished, and as if they’d just had a great day away from the grind. Can’t wait for our next event where Frank can help.
We have had the pleasure of working with Frank on numerous projects including utilizing his facilitation services at two events. Our Strategic Planning Brainstorming event and Values event were a huge success and credit is certainly due to Frank. He was professional, organized, strategic and best of all, he presented material in a dynamic and personable way. He is great to work with and I look forward to his support for our future events.
I have had the pleasure of working with Frank on a number of occasions and always with great results. Thoughtful, smart, organized, and task-driven, Frank is a wonderful mentor and coach. His training to my team resulted in immediate results that translated into improved collaboration, reduced barriers, smarter planning, and organizing skills, and a higher quality product. Highly Recommended!
Sustainable Business Consulting
Frank’s considerable knowledge of CSR was extremely helpful in shaping our overall program and the publishing our first annual CSR report. He is strategic in his approach, thorough and a pleasure to work with. In addition, he always made time to respond to my questions. Having no prior experience in CSR, Frank provided additional support to me personally outside of his scope of work. His overall assessment and recommendations helped define our approach and lay the foundation for our CSR program.
I am pleased to recommend Frank to support your efforts in developing your own CSR program. He will be a valuable and great partner.
I am pleased to recommend Frank to support your efforts in developing your own CSR program. He will be a valuable and great partner.
We worked with Frank Scarpaci to develop a strategy and tactics for a CSR program from scratch. All of the work was done virtually and he successfully brought together a team from across our business units who didn’t know each other and who had very different experiences to agree on the vision and long and short-term priorities. He was pragmatic and helped us view this as a journey that we can take over time—something really important in our medium-sized but growing business. We could never have accomplished so much without his guidance and support.
Frank assisted us with our application to become a certified B Corporation. Frank kept us organized and focused every step of the way. He always had a good attitude, even when we weren’t holding up our part of the project. We achieved our goal of becoming certified and I don’t think we could have done it without him.
I think he would make a great project manager for any detailed project where you need help. And, of course, he’s especially experienced in the application for becoming a B Corp.