How to Use Your Strategic Plan Every Day of the Year

“I Love My Strategic Organization,

Every day of the Year.”

Is your nonprofit strategic planning a once-per-year event at your organization? Or, like Neil Sedaka’s Calendar Girl song, does your strategy work go on “every day of the year?” Unfortunately, the nonprofit sector has been guilty of misguiding our boards. By offering yearly strategic retreats in lovely settings, we’ve taught them that they only need “to do” strategy once yearly. While long uninterrupted sessions enhance strategic thinking, your organization will not become a strategic organization with one session annually. And, to thrive, you want to be a strategic organization.

Arie de Geus, a former strategic planner at Royal Dutch Shell, explains that the real purpose of strategic planning is to “change the microcosm, the mental models that decision-makers carry in their heads.” Changing models in heads results from ongoing thinking about who you are and which will provide the most forward movement now. Below find a year’s worth of strategic topics suitable for monthly discussions at your board and leadership meetings.

Strategy Tasks By Month

Month 1. Overview

What is our current (default) strategy? What are the top five strategy questions to explore this year?

Month 2. Vision

Does our vision have clarity? Do we all share a common belief about where we are going and what constitutes success? What is success?

Month 3. Competencies

What are our five best skills? Where do we stand out in the market? Where do we almost excel? Are there any activities to downplay?

Month 4. Mission

Does our mission need refreshing—do potential donors readily understand what we do? In light of our competencies, what does our mission tell us about what we need to do next?

Month 5. Ideas

What ideas exist about the future direction of our organization? Collect thoughts from everyone. For 30 days, hold a brief brainstorming season at each of your critical meetings.

Month 6. Core

Stripped of peripherals, what is our core method to reach our mission? What is the crucial thing we must do of all that we might do? Organizing the ideas you collected last month into similar approaches can help you identify different core methods.

Month 7. Values

What values are important to us? Do any of our values conflict? Would prioritizing our values improve decision-making?

Month 8. Fighting Atrophy

Where are we growing, stretching, or exploring new ground? Of all we might focus on, what is the most strategic?

Month 9. Baggage

What, if anything, do we think or do that represents unhealthy or outmoded processes or products? What can we stop doing?

Month 10. Resources

With whom should we seek alliances to increase resources for our mission?

Month 11. What Else?

What other areas of our organization will benefit from a strategic conversation? 

Month 12. Evaluation:

Review this strategy thinking process used this year. Do any tasks or topics need revisions if we elect to use them next year? Any additions? Where do we follow our strategy? How will we think strategically next year?

As you work through these topics, specific questions are less critical than thoughtful conversations about them. For example, you listed your top five strategy questions in month one. An alternative would be to discuss them, one per month, for the next five meetings rather than discussing competencies as suggested in Month 2. Record the main themes from each discussion by inserting a two to three-sentence summary in your minutes. This insertion will keep everyone updated and primed for the next meeting. Help your organization be more strategic, moving from doing strategy once a year to “every day of the year.”

Struggling with putting strategy to work? Don’t hesitate to reach out. Karen is available for a mini-consult or more. Click here to email or here to set a time to chat.