Planning is Nothing Without Execution

Many nonprofit organizations approach strategic planning the way some people train for their first marathon.  They go out and buy new running shoes and they go out and run every day the first week.  By the third week they run twice a week and soon their good intentions turn into distant memories.  


Why do so many strategic planning efforts turn out this way? Most often it's because we approach the plan the way we try to run our first marathon. We just grab our shoes and start running without committing to a strategy for reaching our goals.

Here are 5 tips on how prevent this from happening to your plan. 


1. Start with the end in mind.  What do you want to achieve for your organization? Talk about what success will look like with staff, board, volunteers and stakeholders.  The more you talk about it, the more everyone buys into it. 


2. Baby step it all the way.  You know the saying, "Rome wasn't built in a day"? Well, your plan won't be achieved in 6 months either.  Your strategic plan should include baby steps or milestones to reaching your goals.  


3. Make it a team effort.  Your plan should designate who will lead each of the baby steps and make sure they are accomplished on time. The more people are involved the more likely things will get done. 


4. Revisit your plan, often! The goals of the strategic plan should be the focus of your board meetings.  Switch your board meetings to a consent agenda at  so you can spend time focusing on the execution of the plan. The consent agenda allows the organization to focus on the future as opposed to what happened last month. 


5. Tweak if necessary.  Sometimes, strategic plans need to be adjusted.  This doesn't mean we failed and we shouldn't get discouraged.  If you don't meet 100% of each of your goals... at least you tried and you're further along than you would have been, had you not tried at all.   


Has your organization fallen short of execution?