By Danielle Rocheleau
You’ve done it!
After engaging your communities and bringing together the board and senior leadership for deep brainstorming and discussion sessions – supported by copious amounts of coffee – your non-profit has finalized its strategic plan.
Your new plan is a roadmap to your organization’s future – a torch lighting the way forward. But the journey doesn’t end here. In fact, it’s just begun.
Now, the question is: How do we continue to breathe life into this plan, integrate it through the organization, and ensure it bends gracefully through inevitable changes?
In this article, I’m going to take a look at:
- How to move from planning to action
- How to integrate your plan into your internal communications
- How to use your plan as a guide through change, challenge and opportunity
Keep the momentum: moving from planning to action
The ink is dry, the excitement is high – now what?
It’s time to translate the strategic plan into action across every level of the organization. This task isn’t solely for leadership; it’s similar to a symphony, where every instrument plays a crucial role.
- What will the board focus on this year?
- What’s on senior leadership’s agenda?
- How do we support buy-in from frontline staff?
Each person should see a piece of themselves within the plan.
Annual operational planning
Annual operational planning is your conductor here, ensuring the music doesn’t stop.
Using your strategic plan as a guide, create an annual operational plan that adapts your strategic directions to that year’s particular circumstances:
- What SMART goals do you want set? What are your milestones toward achieving them?
- Who is going to be responsible? Accountable? Consulted? Informed?
- How will you measure success? Key performance indicators (KPIs)?
Each annual plan is an opportunity to renew your commitments, to be clear with staff about your key priorities, to review the past year, and to look ahead to the horizon – a chance to ensure your actions align with the aspirations of your strategic plan, year after year.
Communicating the vision: speak it, show it, share it
A strategic plan is only as good as the understanding and enthusiasm behind it. Launch it – not just once, but continuously. Make the plan a regular guest at your meetings, a recurring character in your success stories, and a highlight in your annual reporting.
Remind everyone, loudly and often, of what’s been accomplished and what’s on the docket.
This isn’t just a document – it’s a living narrative of where you’ve been and where you’re headed. Let it be the steady drumbeat that synchronizes your organization’s efforts.
Use it to set expectations and frame feedback
One way to reinforce the plan is to use it as a framework for setting expectations and providing feedback.
- Goal setting: Use the strategic plan to help organize and orient the goals your teams set.
- Feedback: Provide feedback that ties into how each person helps enact the plan.
This helps everyone understand that they are in the same boat, rowing in the same direction. It engenders buy-in, reinforcing that everyone has an impact on the success of the strategic plan.
Your plan: a guide in challenging times
Finally, remember that a strategic plan is organic, a living document – not something to be filed away and forgotten. It’s a guide that can help you evaluate and respond to sudden shifts, new challenges, and golden opportunities. When the unexpected knocks on your door, your strategic plan should be the lens through which you examine potential paths forward.
As I often say in our governance training, it is a sounding board for leadership and the board of directors to evaluate emerging opportunities and challenges:
- It inspires meaningful discussion.
- It tests our assumptions as to how valuable the opportunity or how large the obstacle is.
- It ensures that if we are going to shift our strategic direction and priorities, that this is an intentional decision.
Help avoid mission drift
Your strategic plan is there to help anchor your decision making and ensure your organization stays on track. Some of the ways we’ve seen non-profit organizations go off course include:
- Chasing funding or capital opportunities
- Leadership changes without sufficient support for succession
- Responding to inordinate pressure from lower-priority interest-holders
- Overestimating the risks related to policy changes or environmental shifts
Let your strategic plan be your organization’s heartbeat – strong, steady, and responsive to the needs of the body it sustains. With it, you’re not just moving; you’re growing, adapting, and thriving. Here’s to your nonprofit’s journey ahead – may it be as dynamic and inspired as the vision that guides it!
Thinking about your next plan? We can help.
If you’re starting to think about your next strategic plan – and how to make sure that you end up with a living, breathing plan that guides your organization – get in touch.
We can work with your organization directly, or you can join your peers in our next Strategy Academy cohort.
Either way, we’re always happy to connect!