Ten Tips for Successful Strategic Planning

It’s not the destination – it’s the journey. When done right, the strategic planning process builds a cohesive team, clarifies the organization’s focus and realigns resources with the current priorities. Most importantly, it provides a framework for decision-making throughout the organization.

Here are ten tips to help ensure that your strategic planning process is practical, productive and responsive to the needs of the community you serve:

1. Determine Who Should Participate: When the group involved is larger than 15 members, it may be beneficial to form a sub-committee that drives the process. To give the plan credence, the committee should have the highest-level members of the organization involved, such as the chairman and officers. Be sure to involve members who have an historical perspective, are passionate about the process and will champion the importance of the strategic plan process. You may also want to involve important committee chairs, the entire Board, representatives of the community you serve, and key staff members to ensure that a realistic plan with a common goal is developed.

2. Prepare for the Meeting: Determine the specific purpose of the plan. Are you developing an overall direction for the organization? Or are you focusing on specific issues, such as the need for additional sources of funding, modifying services to better meet the community needs? The meeting will be most effective in a comfortable place free from interruptions and distractions. Often, it’s best to go off-premises. Develop an agenda and hire or appoint someone impartial to facilitate the discussion. Agree upfront that creativity is desirable, so no idea will be judged immediately as impractical or undesirable. Appoint someone to record the essence of what the group discusses and decides.

3. Assess the Current External and Internal Environment: Prior to the meeting, examine the relevant factors outside your organization’s control that can affect performance. This analysis should cover external trends, such as funding, legal and regulatory requirements, the economy, technology, politics, demographics, availability of volunteers and potential collaborators, as well as a review of the competition (competitors for funding, volunteers, etc.) You should also include an internal analysis of relevant areas such as Board operations, programming, marketing, fundraising and staffing. Formulate assumptions about the future and the impact of these assumptions on your organization.

4. Focus on Important Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats: This technique is used to help assess external environments and internal capacity. To plan for the future, ask yourself these questions:

Strengths: What advantages do our organization’s services provide? What do we have that others don’t?
Weaknesses: Where is there room for improvement? How would the community describe our weaknesses? What do others have that we don’t?
Opportunities: What’s happening in our community that we can take advantage of? What new, useful techniques or technologies are coming? Are there demographic changes that could be advantageous? Could we collaborate with other organizations to deliver services or share administrative functions to reduce costs?
Threats: What outside events or competitors are waiting to hit us when we’re not looking? What potentially harmful regulations or policies are on the horizon? Are funding sources drying up?

5. Define (or Redefine) the Organization’s Mission: An organization’s mission statement is its compass. It guides and it inspires. It is a focused statement, usually no more than one or two sentences, that is easily communicated and describes the purpose of the organization to ensure all stakeholders share the same view. Your mission statement should cover:

Purpose of the organization
Community to be served
Needs to be met
Overall method to meet the need

6. Build Consensus Through a Collaborative Process: Working collaboratively will build strong buy-in from the leadership team you put together. With a clear and consistent vision of where the organization is headed, you will be more likely to operate in concert to reach your destination, regardless of the situations encountered.

7. Map Out An Action Plan: Organize the objectives and strategies into key areas to make them easier to process and prioritize, to allocate resources and to coordinate with other departments and functions.

8. Budget For The Strategic Plan: The strategies and tasks you choose will affect funding, expenses and staffing requirements to differing degrees. Consider the potential impact of the strategic plan on each objective, so you can prioritize them and include them in future budgets.

9. Target Completion Dates: Be realistic in setting target dates. It’s important that you resist the temptation to set extremely ambitious timelines. In most cases, the tasks you’ve agreed on will be accomplished by people who already have a full day’s work. Staff members and volunteers must be given sufficient time to achieve their assigned objectives or the plan will be viewed as impossible to accomplish.

10. Coordinate and Monitor the Strategic Plan Process: For maximum sustained results, the coordinator should help execute, monitor and report the progress of the strategic plan. The coordinator should be part of the strategic planning taskforce and the sub-committee driving the process.

There is no way to anticipate every possible contingency, but by staying flexible, you can see the options and opportunities clearly and be more willing to change course if needed.

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