Why strategic plans go unread, and how to write one that doesn’t

When did someone last open your strategic plan at a committee meeting? For plenty of boards, the honest answer is the night it was approved.

It’s rarely anyone’s fault. Plans go unread for ordinary reasons:

It’s too long. Nobody can hold 40 pages in their head, so nobody uses it to make a decision.
It’s too vague. “Strengthen community engagement” doesn’t tell anyone what to do on Monday, or when they’ve finished.
Nobody owns it. If every priority belongs to “the board”, none of them belongs to anyone.
It doesn’t match the budget. When the plan says one thing and the budget says another, the budget wins.
It never comes back to the table. It’s approved, filed and left off every agenda after that.

What a plan people use looks like

A few pages at most, answering six questions:

Why do we exist? One or two sentences on who you help and what changes for them.
Where are we now? Money, people, what’s going well and what’s stretched.
What are our three to five priorities for the next year? More than five and none of them will get done.
What are we not doing this year? Naming those things is half the value of a plan.
Who owns each priority, and what’s the first step and date? One named person, one next action, one date.
How will we know it’s working? Something you already count, or a yes/no question the board can answer at a meeting.

If a question takes more than a couple of sentences to answer, that tells you where the work is. It’s better to find that out in a planning session than in the middle of a grant application.

Keeping it in use

Give it a standing agenda item: one priority, one update, ten minutes, rotating through the list.
When you set the budget, check which priority each big cost supports. If a priority has no money behind it, either fund it or take it off the plan.
Review it twice a year, at the halfway point and before you plan the next one. Cross things off and change things. A plan that never changes probably isn’t being used.

A quick test

Ask a committee member, a staff member or volunteer, and a long-time supporter to name your top priorities from memory. If you get three different answers, the plan needs work.

If you want help

We run planning sessions and write plans of a few pages that committees can work from. A focused session and written plan starts at $1,800, and the full process with consultation is up to $5,500, GST included. Read more about strategic planning, or book a free 30-minute call and tell us what you have now.

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