You have decided to plan a trip to a place you’ve never been. You can imagine the sights, the smells, the life, the excitement. You can envision the attractions, the thrills, the relaxation, the differences. You may have an idea of how to get there, but in order to prevent any possible anxiety, you open your map, find the best route to take, and keep the final destination in mind. You start to consider all the possibilities, different directions, and alternative paths. In the end, your itinerary becomes a bit broader, but you’ve made it versatile enough to prepare yourself for anything. You are ready to begin your travel because you know where you’re headed.
A Strategic Plan should derive from that same perspective. It drives you to your best potential as an organization, and establishes an essential focus on your endeavors. It allows your expertise and professional strengths to be communicated effectively to your associates and employees. It’s a provoking piece that confirms to your organization the common goals and aspirations that began with the fundamentals of your purpose. It’s a concise measure aimed toward prosperity, and an efficient way of advocating that message to your associates and supporters.
Creating a Strategic Plan, although not an intricate process, has recently received some criticism. A Strategic Plan is a valuable tool for your organization’s potential success, but it must be approached properly. This past month, Associations Now released a commentary on strategic plans by James F. Hollan, CAE, that denounced strategic planning, as it “discourages change” and “narrows a company’s vision.” He continues to assert, “High-speed technology has radically reduced timelines and profoundly changed the way we need to operate…” The article emphasized the ways in which a Strategic Plan impedes flexibility and modification –two major components in today’s business world. However, the article supported its criticism on shortsighted goals and the destructive over-emphasis on strategic planning to demonstrate how they can inevitably crumble organizations. Hollan focused on the specific failures like poor organization planning for an annual jazz dinner cruise because of layers of committees needed for approval requirements—most likely due to a lot of inefficient internal agencies created by their strategic planning. However, the fault should have been allocated to a flaw in creating a lot of unnecessary red tape, not a strategic plan itself. Attention was distributed too generously to the obstruction of change, whereas a strategic plan should provide the means to embrace it.
