How To Have Or Understand The Annual Strategic Plan
If you are trying to think of your strategic plan for your team or business this year, or even try to understand your boss’s plans, I’ll share with you how and why we do this at the start of every year.
It actually starts from the year before. I take notes every month about what’s working and why and what’s not before I forget for the following year. (Don’t worry if you don’t do this, you can start this year!) Then around October, I start to really map out the next year and think about the big goals and the direction we want to go based on long term goals. This is all done with my boss and our big CEO, God, and where He wants to take the business.
Then once I know what He wants to do, I try to plan out and prep to present the intention, focus, the word, the big picture for the year and the why with clarity and excitement to motivate the team. Some things that we cover are:
Word of the year
Reflection of the prior year & what we did well
Company mission, org chart, & other important info to review
Our strengths
Ideas
Year at a glance w/ quarterly focuses
Next steps & accountability
After this, the managers then take the quarterly focus goals, and break them down with me to tasks to delegate with deadlines and hash out the details.
There are two things that made this year’s strategic plan even better than prior years. One, I found someone on my team with the talent to make my strategic plan presentations for our meeting more beautiful and visual so the information was organized and easy to follow. This cut down our meeting time to just 30 minutes to go over and then each of them got a copy to review. Plus, it is posted up as a daily visual reminder for us all!
Secondly, this was created of course with the feedback from the customers and from the crew. More about the value of feedback HERE. Taking the time to do this and thoroughly review ALL of the feedback, is so worth it! When you serve a boss above you and you serve people around you, don’t do this alone. Listen to what they all have to say, then organize it in a way that focuses on the themes you see throughout from the boss, the customers, and the crew!
finding peace by piece:
Don’t worry about getting it perfect. As the leader, your job is to point everyone in the direction you’re going and provide focus so we all don’t let distractions derail us from progress. I review our strategic plan monthly and have reminders of it daily, and set a mid-year review to actually see if we need to change course at half time. It’s okay to do that too and it takes a lot of work. It’s just better to have a plan than no plan, and one that others can get on board with too!
