Give yourself a big, big round of applause. You and your team have invested the time and energy in mapping a strategic plan with SMART goals that fully support your organization’s mission, vision, and values.
The only thing left to do now is to implement your strategy—and that means you need an action plan. Without it, your superb plan will simply be a document that finds its way to the back of a file cabinet. Follow these tips to ensure that your strategy sees the light of day.
1. Prioritize your efforts.
If your plan includes myriad goals with multiple objectives across several domains, it may feel overwhelming. That’s okay. You can take a deep breath and prioritize the work ahead of you. In this way, your plan will remain realistic and achievable.
Ask yourself what needs to happen first? What about the next six to twelve months? What should you be looking at in two years, or four?
Another way to prioritize goals is to identify the “low-hanging fruit” in your plan—those goals or objectives that are most easily reached. Pursuing these easy wins can help build momentum for accomplishing slightly tougher tasks.
Create a timeline or Gantt chart to help you visualize your priorities and track your progress.
2. Define the unique action steps that need to be accomplished for each goal.
Let’s say your goal is to expand your community-based mentoring program for at-risk middle school youth. A few of the action steps that might be required could include:
- Gather an assess data that demonstrates program success to date (e.g., number of youth served, surveys of mentors and youth).
- Identify zip codes in which you wish to expand.
- Identify potential partners in the expansion area (e.g., businesses whose employees might become mentors).
- Create audience-specific messages and print/digital materials to support your “ask” (e.g. success stories from your program, relevant data on how mentoring is a worthwhile investment, or digital stories from youth who’ve been mentored).
- Schedule and deliver a presentation to your local Chamber of Commerce.
- Hold one-on-one meetings with potential program partners/mentors.
Break the work down into as many steps as necessary. As each task is completed, put a big, juicy check mark next to it. It feels good knowing you’re closer to achieving your goal. You’ll also be able to make mid-course adjustments as you witness the results of your work.
3. Pull out the calendar.
There’s nothing like a deadline to get the job done. It’s a critical accountability measure. Choose your due date for each action step and work backwards from there.
4. Assign one person to be accountable for completion of each task.
Delegating responsibility to an individual is frequently far more effective than assigning accountability to a team of people. This way, there will always be one person who can offer a progress report, identify barriers, and point to successes.
5. Put your action plan in writing.
It can be as simple or complex as you need it to be, in any software program that makes sense to you—or even on a dedicated white board in your office. At a minimum, however, it should include the items listed above: a list of prioritized goals, action steps, persons responsible, and due dates.
Make time for you and your team to review your plan regularly. You may come to realize that your original goals, timeline, or metrics need to be adjusted, and that’s okay. A strategic plan should be a living document, not set in stone. As long as you’re making consistent and measurable progress toward your goals, you’re on the right track.
Contact Jean for a conversation about your organization’s needs.
Synodinos Consulting 