Why did our last strategic plan end up in a drawer?
Your last strategic plan may have ended up in a drawer for one of several reasons, and the right fix depends on which one applies. Common reasons include:
- Too many priorities: a plan with a dozen goals gives people no way to determine what comes first.
- Nobody was responsible: priorities were agreed in the room, but no person or team was named to carry each one out.
- No first steps: the plan described where the organization wanted to be in three or five years without saying what would happen in the next three months.
- The people doing the work weren't involved: staff were asked to carry out priorities they didn't help shape and may not have considered realistic.
- It wasn't connected to resources: the budget, staff time, and job responsibilities stayed the same while the plan asked for new work.
- Nobody revisited it: circumstances changed, and the plan wasn't updated to reflect what the organization had learned.
Your plan may have stalled for more than one of these reasons, or for one that isn't listed. A short conversation with the people who were supposed to carry it out can tell you which applied, and what this plan needs to do differently.
How do we turn each priority into work someone owns?
You turn each priority into work someone owns by deciding, before the planning ends, who is responsible for it, what the first steps are, what progress should look like in the next few months, and what resources it will need. An action map puts those decisions in one place. The row below is a made-up example of what one priority might look like for a nonprofit; your own priorities, roles, and timelines will differ.
| Priority | Who is responsible | First steps | Near-term milestone | What it needs |
|---|
| Keep more of our volunteers | The volunteer coordinator, with the program director | Ask current and former volunteers why they stay or leave | A summary of what volunteers said, shared with staff by the end of the quarter | Protected time on the coordinator's calendar each month |
Naming a responsible person doesn't mean that person does all the work alone. It means someone is accountable for moving the priority forward, reporting on its progress, and raising problems early. Involve the staff who will carry out each priority in building its row of the action map, because they understand what the work will realistically take and where it competes with what they're already doing.
How do we keep the plan alive after the planning session?
You keep a strategic plan alive after the planning session by building it into the meetings where your organization already makes decisions, and by reviewing it often enough that it can change when circumstances do. In practice, that can mean a standing item on leadership or board agendas, a regular check on each priority's milestones, and a set time, perhaps each quarter, to determine whether a priority needs more support, a different approach, or to be set aside.
A plan written today describes what you intend to do, and what happens over the next three to five years will differ from it. Staff change, funding changes, and an approach that seemed promising may need to be redesigned once you try it. Adjusting a priority because you learned something can be a sign that the organization is learning from its own work.
Evidence helps with those reviews. If a priority is meant to change something, decide at the start how you'll know whether it did, so the review is based on what's happening as well as on how people feel about it. How do we know whether the change we made actually helped? looks at how to find out. If the meetings where the plan should be reviewed tend to go in circles, Our meetings go in circles and nothing gets decided. What are we doing wrong? covers that problem.
The Grantibly perspective
Angelika's perspective
A plan has limited value if it sits in a binder, in the same way that data has limited value if it sits in a report. Useful progress is the goal of strategic planning, and the document is one step toward it.
For us, a plan becomes real when it shows up in how decisions are made, how time and money are spent, and how leaders lead. That requires leaders who are willing to listen, question their own assumptions, acknowledge when part of the plan isn't working, and take responsibility for changing it. It also requires the people throughout the organization to be part of it. Our clients are experts in their work, their people, and their context, and better plans come from combining what they know with a process designed to turn it into priorities, responsibility, and action.
