Mark's Blog

If you have been collaborative in your development of the strategic plan, then this final step should be easy.  On the other hand, if you have either chosen or been required to develop the plan alone, it could be more challenging to get others on board with your strategies.

In either case, getting final agreement on the strategic plan is critical to the success of your plan—even more so, the success of your mission!

First, be clear on who must approve the strategic plan.  For our ministry, it is required that the board of directors approves the plan.  Our board asked for the strategic plan and voted to secure the outside coach in order to facilitate the process. They have invested heavily both of themselves and their resources in the ministry, therefore, in the results of the strategic plan.  Their approval is essential for all of the reasons given above.

On the other hand, while it is important for the LST staff to buy into the plan, it is not necessary for them to approve it. The same is true of volunteers or donors or other constituents.  They should have all had input as you collected information, and your plans should serve them well, but their delight should be with the results of the implementation of the plan, not the plan itself.

Second, when you go to get the final approval, be prepared to feel challenged. The tension in this final approval meeting is that you have poured yourself into this strategic plan for weeks or months, but you must present it to people who are highly invested, but not nearly as familiar with it.  Expect to be questioned; expect to explain the most basic rationale for any assumption or any conclusion stated in the strategic plan; expect to feel challenged.  If you expect to feel challenged, then you will better control your natural desire to defend every word on the page!

Third, be prepared for something to be changed.  If you and your approval board are truly not on the same page, then you’ve got a bigger problem that just getting the strategic plan approved. But assuming that you and your approval board are very much in agreement, and assuming that your approval board has had a significant role in the planning process, then you can expect less to be changed . . .however, less is still something, and you can’t allow yourself to think that you have created the perfect document and any change will destroy its perfection.

Upon presentation of our plan to the LST board of directors, they eliminated one major objective of the plan as being redundant.  By the time we had talked it through, I agreed with them, so while it was a significant change to what I had presented, the impact on our common strategic plan was very slight.  Keep your ego out of the way and assume that you and your approval board both are focused on the common mission and suggested changes to the plan are much less threatening.

Finally, call for a vote and bring closure to the process.  If there are changes to be made, then you can offer to revise the document to include the changes and then re-submit it for final approval, but don’t leave the final approval up in the air, or uncertain, or for some undetermined time.  If you cannot get agreement at what you thought was the final meeting, set another date when you will meet again to get the final approval.  What you want to avoid is assuming that the plan was adopted when, in fact, anyone on your board still has serious reservations that might torpedo the whole plan if not addressed and either dismissed or affirmed by the whole board.

As I said at the beginning, the easiest way to avoid tension and conflict at this final stage is to include the decision-makers in meaningful ways early and throughout the process.

The  last installment of this series on strategic planning is what to do next after the strategic plan is approved.