By Naomi Atkin, CEO, Lingen Davies Cancer Support
At the start of the new year, Lingen Davies Cancer Support is midway through the latest cycle of strategic planning. We have been through massive growth and change in recent years, and so while our current strategy is in place until 2027, it no longer represents where we are in our development. We’ve also managed to achieve some of our headline goals ahead of time, so we’re refreshing our strategy, setting more ambitious goals and reframing our plans to better reflect the ambitions we have now. Our new plan will be launched this Summer and see us through to 2030.
It takes time and resources to develop a strong strategy, but having a clear, written plan that keeps your team focussed on the key goals of your organisation is priceless. It allows you to focus your time and resources on agreed targets, publicly state your ambitions, and make considered decisions to change or stop activities that are no longer working or viable. It is also a great way to demonstrate your credibility to your stakeholders, funders and community.
All strategic plans are different, but here’s some tips to think about as you think about your vision for the future
Meet people where they are, and get them involved
Not everyone wants to be a change maker, but most people want to at least understand what is going on (and why) in an organisation they care about, whether as a staff member, trustee, service user, or other stakeholder. No strategic plan will be a success if it is not owned by the team that need to deliver it. Neither will it work if it does not represent the views of those that your organization aims to support or serve.
Ask your team what their vision is; they won’t buy in to a plan that is imposed upon them. A simple exercise asking “By the time we reach the end of this strategic plan period, what will we have/do/be as a charity?” is a great starting point. Once you’ve got some key ideas that sit well within your inner circle, take it to your external stakeholders, see how it sits with them. Listen to them and take their contributions seriously, especially if they tell you that you’re wrong.
Talk about the why, not just the what
What do you want your plan to say about you as an organisation? This is a key document that presents you to the world, and it should be a clear signal of who you are, and why you want to achieve the headlines that you have laid out.
Do you want to just increase the volume of people benefiting from your services? Or do you want to improve equity of access, be more representative of your community, or be able to better measure the impact that you are having? Why is what you are doing important?
Make your strategy a statement of your values, not just your activities.
Great idea, can you actually deliver it?
Your board might expect miracles, but this is your opportunity to make it clear what you will need to make these exciting ambitions a reality. Want to double your income? You probably need a plan to recruit some more fundraisers. Want to roll out services to another region? You need to commit time and resources to embedding them within a new community or statutory partners.
Being realistic with the operational demands of your plan is not the most exciting thing, and it’s probably not front and centre of your shiny strategy document, but if resources are not mentioned as an enabler of your strategic plan, you risk setting unrealistic expectations, and being denied the operational support you need further down the line.
Your plan should be ambitious, but targets that are too far out of reach can alienate, rather than motivate, your team. Make sure your goals are stretching and engage your people but are not so high that your team (and you) are set up to fail.
Make it real
A strategic plan should not contain lots of details about specific pieces of work and is likely to run across three to five years. Backing it up with an annual Operational Plan, with clear links to your strategic themes and enablers, gives your team a clear line of sight between their operational work and the charity’s overall goals.
At Lingen Davies, we review the Operational Plan as a team every quarter, with each team providing an update to the areas that they are responsible for. It is a great way to keep on track in a busy charity, and an opportunity for teams to share their successes and challenges with each other.
Adding individual objectives and specifying where each of these supports the Operational Plan and Strategy, embeds this further. If you can’t make a link between a piece of work and your strategic plan, you should question why this work is being done at all.
Get people excited about it
Your strategic plan should be focussed on your big-picture aims and objectives, and encourage your team and supporters to have a vision for the future of what your charity could be. By all means, ground it in reality, and acknowledge the challenges you might face, but your strategy should engage people and get them excited about what your organisation can achieve (with their support!).
Produce your plan in an accessible, attractive format that people want to look at. This could be written, but could also be in video or graphic format if that’s better for you and your audience.
As charity CEOs, we know that our organisations are not about us; they are about our service users and beneficiaries first. However, you need to be inspired by your strategic plan. It will be with you for several years, and you need to be its biggest cheerleader. You have a far better chance of creating something you want to shout about if you get people involved early, value their input, and manage challenges as you go.
Good luck!