Empowering Indigenous Nations through actionable planning

A holistic approach for increased capacity, transparency, and focus.

OUR STORY

In 2011, Zain Nayani, our founder, made a journey from Karachi, Pakistan, to Coast Salish Territory in British Columbia, to pursue a business education.

While his focus was on learning, he witnessed, for the first time, the consequences of colonization and the systemic oppression that Indigenous people had to endure in Canada. Having come from a previously colonized country, Zain was deeply affected by these experiences and set out on a mission to better understand these issues while seeking a solution.

With a strong desire to serve Indigenous people, Zain founded ZN Advisory in 2013. The focus of the firm was to support Indigenous Nations achieve resilience through comprehensive community development and resilience planning. Through its strategy-driven approach, the firm started working closely with Indigenous Nations to create actionable, easy-to-follow, and holistic plans that contribute to increased capacity, transparency, and focus. To date, we have completed over 20 community projects, offered free training content and presented our shared experiences at numerous events and conferences.

At ZN Advisory, we pride ourselves in taking an engaging and empowering approach driven by a commitment to creating positive change for Indigenous people, with their guidance. Our collaborative approach to planning guarantees that Indigenous Nations have access to the resources necessary to achieve their visions. We collaborate with Indigenous communities in a meaningful way as they work towards creating a brighter future through our joint effort in strategic community development and resilience planning.

OUR SERVICES

1. STRATEGIC PLANNING

Our strategic planning service helps you create a long-term game plan for your organization, typically lasting at least five years. During our engagement, we work closely with your people, from bottom to top, to develop a comprehensive plan that builds on all your foundational efforts and lays out your organizational priorities as they stand today while looking out in the future. The strategic planning process involves creating an inventory of ideas through extensive research and engagement, prioritizing such ideas, and developing an implementation schedule with a precise reporting mechanism leading to enhanced accountability.

2. Annual Planning and Budgeting

Our annual planning and budgeting service is closely tied to the strategic plan of your organization and builds on the progress made by you over the years. In other words, it is the tool that we use to bring life to your organization’s strategic plan and long-term vision. During this exercise, we assist you with reviewing your past year’s performance, setting goals, objectives, and activities for the upcoming year, alongside forecasting of revenues and its sources, and budgeting for operational and capital costs. This process ensures that resources are available on an annual basis to support your long-term plans and achieve your visions.

3. Quarterly Reviews and Planning

Our quarterly review and planning services offer a day-to-day outlook and an opportunity for you to make any necessary adjustments to your annual plans. This effort builds on the annual plans and budgets that you set in motion at the start of a given fiscal year and empowers you to understand your actual performance in comparison with planned performance. By doing this exercise, you can see what is working, what is not, and re-prioritize where needed. As such, we take the role of co-pilots of your organization in this process and help you monitor, control, and report on your annual plan and budgets in a quarterly basis, ensuring they stay on track toward their goals.

OUR APPROACH

At ZN Advisory, we believe in cutting through the chase and simplifying processes to create practical, adaptable, and executable plans for you, to call it yours. Our understanding of the importance of nation and community building has modeled our approach, which currently consists of three main phases – we apply these phases to each planning service we offer.

1. DISCOVERY

During this phase, our goal is to seek a mandate from our clients and understand who they really are. We listen to their history and culture while sharing ours and observe both the past and present to come up with a project scope based on their needs. With the information gathered, we then develop a baseline database that helps us inform the community engagements and conversations in the second phase of our journey.

2. COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

We collaborate with community champions, citizens, staff, leaders, and partners to validate our findings of the discovery phase and work towards the client’s future in a collaborative way. During this phase, we evaluate the needs and gaps within the organization, conduct in-depth analysis of the organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and come up with action plans and realistic solutions with input from the people who are on the front lines.

3. Summarizing Results

After completing the two phases above, we analyze all the information received and work towards preparation draft plan, be it strategic, annual, or quarterly. The goal of this phase is to bring all the information together in a meaningful and holistic way, formally present it to key decision-makers for input, incorporate the feedback received and finalize the key deliverables for further advancement.

Our expertise in community development and resilience planning allows us to work with our clients to define their collective vision and to create a thoughtful roadmap to achieve it. With our interconnected services, rest assured your ideas will become reality and your organization will achieve tangible results. Our approach ensures that our clients have the tools and resources they need to build and sustain resilience over time.

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