Introduction

A Strategic Plan is an important blueprint for accomplishing your organization’s mission within the context of external factors like the political, social, and economic context that impacts your organization’s work. The basic components include goals and outcomes informed by data collected from surveying stakeholder groups who use, benefit, interact with, and influence your organization’s work. Strategic Plans also include guidelines for the implementation of those goals in order to measure whether and how outcomes are met across the duration of years that the Plan covers, typically three years.

Tip 1

Assess your staff and management team’s understanding of, and interaction with, the Strategic Plan.

Tip 2

Include the full staff team in evaluating which Strategic Planning outcomes are accomplished so far and which are to be accomplished in the future.

What About…

Assuming that the current Strategic Plan includes the HOW of implementing the Plan and that the document is easy to read, below you can access a two simple tools that help you with the Two Tips: 1.) Check out the survey Assessing Your Team’s Take on the Strategic Plan and the 2.) worksheet Evaluate Progress on the Strategic Plan

If the current Strategic Plan is short on the HOW, full of jargon, and is not a focal point in your organization, consider Tom Okarma’s list of 15 big and small actions that you and your team can take to support a revolution. Tom’s list is compatible with the two simple tools provided by Anchoring Success below.

For Assessing Your Team’s Take on the Strategic Plan, enter your email address here:

For Evaluate Progress on the Strategic Plan, enter your email address here:

Hang It

Ultimately, place the Strategic Plan in a frame. Hang it on the wall. Hang it in the lobby and the conference room. This symbolically communicates the value placed on the Plan.

Print it for planning meetings for staff to mark-up and interact with. Continue to be creative with embedding the Strategic Plan into the fiber of your organization; at the annual staff and Board retreats, play a game that incorporates the Strategic Plan content. And, return annually as a full staff team to directly evaluate which outcomes are reached and which are central to the year ahead.

Why did we develop “2 Tips” videos?

The Anchoring Success team trusts the talent and sophistication of professionals in Human Services and Education organizations. We know that many professionals and organizational leaders do not have the funds to partner with specialists (like us) and/or the time to strategize on what might seem like extra projects.

Therefore, we launched these “2 Tips” videos to support you with making tweaks, adjustments, and refinements in programs and operations — doable for busy professionals in these organizations!