15 Steps to Creating a Strategic Plan

How do I create a Strategic Plan? This is a question many organizations ask themselves to make sure they are being intentional with how they use the resources they have, and to work towards specific outcomes in line with their mission and vision. Strategic Plans are designed to set out guidelines for how the organization will operate over a certain period of time. The key to a successful Strategic Plan is to have stakeholder buy-in, realistic goals and expectations for the time frame the plan is for, and exciting outcomes that the whole organization can get behind. Below are the 15 steps you need to create a Strategic Plan! Need help with this process? Natalie can help you!

1) Understand Your Mission and Vision

It sounds simple, but it is easy to look at shiny opportunities in the present rather than focusing on the north star of your organization; the reason all of the people you engage with in this space are around you, your mission and vision. Making sure mission and vision are front and center to all you do is critical. If you cannot answer the question of whether or not an action your organization is taking is leading you towards your vision, you should not be doing it. If you feel like your mission no longer fits to reach your vision, it may be better to reevaluate that first before starting a strategic plan. Everyone should be on the same page for what the ultimate goal is for your organization as a whole.

2) Identify the Time Frame You Want to Work In

How long do you want the plan to go on? This can be influenced by many factors, including external factors such as the implementation of new laws, what science is indicating for what needs to happen in the next 10 years to prevent damage to the environment, or election cycles in your community. It should also be influenced by the future outcomes you want to create in a certain time period. External factors are important, but your organization also creates what is possible based on its actions. This is why you exist. So if you want to have a specific impact or grow your organization in a particular way by a certain time, then that should be paramount in your decision making. You can also create longer term plans, such as 15-20 year plans, and then have sub plans that put you on a trajectory to get to that outcome.

3) Make a List of Stakeholders

Individuals throughout the organization, and those impacted by the organization need to feel like their opinions have been heard and incorporated so that they feel ownership over what the organization is doing. Stakeholder engagement takes time, but is critical so everyone believes in the goals they are working towards. Make a list of the key departments, groups, beneficiaries, funders, board members, senior staff, and any other individuals that you think would offer an important perspective in designing your strategic plan.

4) Develop Engagement Activities

Create mechanisms to get feedback on the plan through surveys, but also in-person workshops with your stakeholders. Where do they see the organization in 10 years? Why? How do they see their stakeholder group contributing to the implementation of the plan? This will give upper level management and the board a more wholistic perspective from the entire organization for better decision making.

5) Strategic Plan Retreat

After the data from stakeholders has been collected and information about external factors has been compiled, it is time to sit down with organizational leadership and begin to solidify what the organization will try to achieve. Doing this in a retreat setting where leadership can really dive into conversations together is ideal. Start by reviewing key take-aways from the stakeholder engagement process. Then review external factors that may need to be considered. Finally, together, make a list of 3-5 outcomes the organization would like to see by the end of the strategic plan. Having more than 3-5 outcomes can be overwhelming. Also consider that to achieve these outcomes, it typically comes with a lot more work and programming to make it happen. I promise it will be enough.

6) Bring it Back to Stakeholders

If you have the time, bring the outcomes developed back to stakeholders to see if the outcomes resonate with them based on their input. This will make sure you are on the right track, allow for buy-in, and will allow you the opportunity to refine goals as needed. It is important that if stakeholders have significant feedback, and the goals are not aligned with their original thinking to a) make sure you actually listen and incorporate their feedback, and b) ask them what would make this goal work for them. Have them propose what feels right to them so they feel empowered to implement it.

7) Refine Goals and Finalize Them

Once stakeholder feedback has been incorporated and it appears most people in the organization or those impacted agree with the general outcomes of the plan, it is time to finalize the goals. As always, goals should follow SMARTIE (Specific, Measurable, Realistic, Timely, Inclusive, and Equitable) principles. If one of these criteria is not met, the goal must be refined. An example of a goal/outcome could be that food insecurity is reduced by 25% in a particular food desert in a city that has higher than normal poverty rates through urban gardens by 2035.

8) Develop Indicators to Monitor Success

Key elements of the SMARTIE principles are to make the goal specific and measurable. How will you know if you have been successful in your work? At the end of the day you should know if you are meeting your goal. So identify what the target measurement is, and any submeasurements you may need to see if you are on track. For example, if in 5 years you want to have 100 families cultivating their own gardens to fight food insecurity in a food desert, the goal is clearly to have 100 families that did not have food gardens previously to install one as a result of your organization’s work. However, there may be more measurements you want to monitor. For example, does the family spend less days missing meals? You could also investigate what they are doing with the produce. Maybe they are not directly consuming it, but they are choosing to sell it to the community around them. Does this impact food insecurity for other families? Is that something you need or want to track? Maybe it is not only lessening food insecurity for these families, but it is also about limiting or removing the food desert in the area overall. How would you track that? All of these questions are critical, and each outcome should have indicators you will track throughout time to see if you are having the impact you intended to have. Some of these can be key performance indicators for the whole organization, or they can be indicators programs can track to see if their interventions are successful.

9) Create a Strategic Framework

Now that you have your goals and how you are going to measure them, it is time to consider how you will design an organization that can implement these goals. Maybe you need to consider restructuring your organization or altering your programming to make this strategic shift. It will be important to come into this conversation with your leadership team with a blank slate. Current work or activities should not influence the outcomes of how you will think of your organization moving into the future. You will need to consider what you will need now in order to reach the goals your organization has now established.

10) Work Backwards

You know the timeline behind your strategic plan, so it is time to assess where you should be every few years in order to stay on track. What should your indicators look like at those times? What should your funding look like? How should your programs operate? Identifying check-in points and what you expect to have accomplished by those times will make sure you are achieving what you set out to do. This also means that if you are missing targets during implementation, then you can make adjustments as needed to make sure you reach your goals. Alternatively, you can assess whether the goal is still realistic given the progress you have made on that goal. Give yourself time to check in and evaluate your planning explicitly in the Strategic Plan.

11) Write the Plan

Begin to tell the story of what your mission and vision is, and how in the next few years you are going to take steps to implementing your mission in order to realize your vision. Outline your outcomes, why they are important, and why they were decided upon. Create your basic timeline to show how you will be building up to those outcomes as an organization. Explain how your organizational structure and programming will provide the platform to execute on this timeline. Finally, discuss how you will measure success and report it to the organization at large over time with your indicators or critical moments on your timeline. Graphics explaining these processes, or philosophies behind the design of the plan can be extremely helpful. Show why and how you came to these conclusions.

12) Create an Executive Summary

Your plan will likely be a longer document. Create an Executive Summary (2-5 visually engaging pages) to tell a high level story. What change are you looking to make in the world? Why your organization? How are you going to do this? What will the world look like after your Strategic Plan is complete?

13) Collect Baseline Data

Knowing where you are starting on your indicators is critical. How will you know what impact you have had if you do not know where you started? Using the food insecurity example from above, how many families are currently gardening with you? What defines food insecurity for you, and when would you work with a family to install a garden? How would you know if they were no longer food insecure? How many families in the area are facing food insecurity? It is important to have these questions answered so as you implement your strategic plan you can see where you started from and know how you will measure it by measuring it.

14) Sharing the Plan

This can be done while collecting the baseline data for your plan. You can begin to share the finalized plan with your stakeholders. If you are doing significant organizational shifts, it will be important to talk to those individuals and departments before releasing the plan so they can be prepared. Remember to explain the “why” behind changes as much as possible so people understand how they fit into the new picture of the organization. Make sure people understand their role in the plan, and how they can contribute their skills and talents to making the plan come to fruition.

15) Manage Your Plan

Although a 5-20 year plan can be helpful for an organization in order to provide guidance to everyone about the expectations around outcomes for the organization as a whole, it is hard for individuals to think about long timeframes in their day-to-day work and to make sure it is being fulfilled. You planned for milestones for when to check-in on key moments and indicators, but it can also be helpful to see if you are on track quarterly. People have a much easier time thinking about what they can achieve in three months as opposed to years in the future. At this point each team should have an understanding of what they are responsible for in the plan. Have the team make three month goals each quarter for what it will achieve to make progress towards the strategic plan. Then have individuals on the team identify how they will contribute to those overall team goals in the next three months. Review each quarter to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed.

Strategic Planning can be fun and an incredible opportunity for your organization. It is a chance to imagine the future and create it together. It is not a simple process and it takes time, but the results are worth it. If you are starting a strategic planning process, be open, be committed, and willing to see where the journey takes you.