Your Strategic Plan Isn't Failing. Your Calendar Is.
Your Strategic Plan Isn't Failing.
Your Calendar Is.
Show me your board calendar, and I'll tell you how serious you are about your strategic plan. That may sound a little harsh, but after years of facilitating strategic planning sessions, I've seen the pattern repeatedly.
An organization spends months developing a thoughtful strategic plan. The board debates priorities, leadership builds goals, everyone leaves energized—and six months later, the board agenda looks almost exactly like it did before the plan existed.
Finance report. Committee reports. CEO update. Old business. New business. Adjourn. Meanwhile, those three strategic priorities everyone declared absolutely essential are sitting patiently in a document somewhere, waiting to become important again.
Your strategic plan may not be failing. Your calendar may be.
Priorities Need Time, Not Applause
At the end of a strategic planning session, there is often tremendous enthusiasm. People like the priorities. They believe in the direction. They may even unanimously approve the plan. That's nice. But applause isn't implementation.
A priority becomes real when an organization begins allocating scarce resources to it. Money is one. Staff capacity is another. But one of the most overlooked resources—especially at the board level—is time.
If something is supposedly one of your organization's three most important strategic priorities but the board spends 15 minutes discussing it twice a year, I have some bad news: It's probably not a priority. It's an aspiration.
Your Calendar Tells the Truth
Organizations say all kinds of things are important. The calendar reveals what actually is.
Suppose a nonprofit says expanding major-gift fundraising is a top strategic priority. Great. Now show me where the board is discussing donor development, reviewing prospect activity, opening doors, building relationships, and tracking progress. Nowhere? Interesting.
Or perhaps developing a leadership succession plan is supposedly critical. Yet nine months after the strategic planning session, nobody has been assigned responsibility for it, it hasn't appeared on a board agenda, and the executive committee hasn't discussed it.
That's not a succession strategy. That's a succession hope.
Calendars are brutally honest.
What I See After Strategic Planning Sessions
As a strategic planning facilitator, I've learned that one of the most dangerous moments in the entire process occurs immediately after the planning session. Everyone goes home, Monday arrives, and the gravitational pull of normal operations takes over.
Emails need answers. Budgets need attention. Programs need running. A donor needs something. A board member has a question. And somewhere, a copier has decided this is the perfect moment to threaten civilization.
Urgent work starts crowding out important work.
That's why implementation can't depend on people simply "remembering" the strategic plan. The priorities need to be built into the organization's operating rhythm. If they aren't on the calendar, urgency will eventually eat them for lunch.
The Best Strategic Planning Sessions Change What Happens Next
The best strategic planning sessions don't simply produce clarity about the future. They change what happens on Tuesday morning.
When I facilitate strategic planning sessions, I want leaders thinking beyond what they want to accomplish. We also need to determine who owns it, what happens next, when it happens, and how progress will be monitored.
That last piece matters enormously. A strategic priority without scheduled follow-up is remarkably easy to neglect. Everyone assumes someone is working on it until six months later, when everyone discovers that everyone assumed someone else was working on it.
I've seen that movie. The ending isn't great.
Put Strategy on Every Board Agenda
One of the simplest changes a board can make is to create a permanent strategic-priorities section on every board agenda. Not once a year. Every meeting.
If you have three major strategic priorities, rotate them. Spend 20 or 30 meaningful minutes on one at each meeting. Ask what has changed, what progress has occurred, where the barriers are, and whether the assumptions behind the strategy still hold.
That immediately changes the board's relationship with the strategic plan. Instead of periodically reviewing strategy, the board begins governing through strategy.
That's a significant difference.
Stop Letting Reports Eat the Meeting
Here's another problem I've seen in boardrooms for years: Boards routinely give their lowest-value activities their highest-value time.
The meeting starts at 4:00. Everyone is fresh. And what happens? Reports. Committee reports. Financial reports. Staff reports. CEO reports. Reports about reports.
By the time the board reaches the strategic discussion at 5:35, three people need to leave, everyone else is hungry, and someone is already stacking papers—the universal boardroom signal for, Can we please wrap this up?
Flip the model. Put consequential strategic issues earlier on the agenda. Move routine informational items into a consent agenda whenever appropriate. Send reports in advance and expect board members to read them.
Don't spend 70% of your meeting reviewing the past and then wonder why the board isn't helping shape the future.
Give Your Strategic Plan Some Appointments
The same principle applies beyond individual board meetings. Take your strategic priorities and map them across the entire year. If board development is a priority, when will recruitment criteria be established? When will prospects be identified? When will nominations occur?
If fundraising is a priority, when will the board review major-donor strategy? When will members receive training? When will campaign readiness be assessed?
If program expansion is a priority, when will leadership bring the business case to the board? When will financial assumptions be tested? When will a go/no-go decision occur?
Now the strategic plan has appointments. And appointments are much harder to ignore than paragraphs in a document.
Measure Progress Before the Year Is Over
There's another benefit to putting strategy on the calendar: You discover problems earlier.
Without scheduled checkpoints, organizations often evaluate progress near the end of the year. At that point, learning that a major initiative is six months behind isn't particularly useful. It's a little like checking the map after you've driven 300 miles in the wrong direction.
Regular strategic reviews create opportunities to adjust. Maybe the original timeline was unrealistic. Maybe funding didn't materialize. Maybe the person responsible needs help. Maybe circumstances changed and the original priority no longer makes sense.
That's not strategic failure. That's strategic management. A good plan shouldn't handcuff an organization to assumptions that stopped being true nine months ago.
Strategy Needs Ownership
Calendaring also exposes another uncomfortable problem: priorities without owners.
"We need to improve community awareness." Who's we?
"We need to diversify revenue." Who owns that?
"
We need to strengthen the board." Excellent. Who is doing what by when?
One thing I've learned from the best strategic planning sessions is that collective enthusiasm can disguise individual ambiguity. Twenty people can agree passionately that something should happen without a single person becoming responsible for making it happen.
Every major strategic initiative needs an owner, milestones, and scheduled review dates. Otherwise, "we" often means nobody.
Your Budget and Calendar Should Tell the Same Story
There's an even bigger test. Put your strategic plan, annual budget, and organizational calendar next to each other. Do they tell the same story?
If your strategic plan says leadership development is critical but the budget contains virtually nothing for it, there's a disconnect. If fundraising growth is a top priority but senior leadership devotes almost no time to major donors, there's another one.
Strategy isn't what you say matters. Strategy is what receives resources. Money and time are two of the clearest evidence points you've got.
Takeaways
A strategic priority becomes real only when time and resources are allocated to it.
Put strategic priorities on every board agenda—not just at the annual retreat or planning session.
Don't allow routine reports to consume the best part of your board meetings.
Map major strategic initiatives onto the annual board and organizational calendar.
Give every strategic priority a clear owner, milestones, and scheduled review dates.
Use regular checkpoints to adjust strategy when assumptions or circumstances change.
Compare your strategic plan, budget, and calendar. They should tell the same story.
The best strategic planning sessions don't simply identify priorities; they establish what happens next.
Final Thoughts
I've facilitated enough strategic planning sessions to know that organizations rarely struggle because they can't come up with good priorities. The harder part is protecting those priorities from the relentless pull of everything else.
So if your strategic plan seems to be gathering dust, don't immediately blame the plan. Pull out your board agendas and organizational calendar from the last six months and take a hard look. Show me where you spend your time, and I'll show you what your real priorities are.
If your calendar doesn't reflect your strategy, change the calendar. Because eventually, your calendar becomes your future.
Tom Iselin
Rated One of America’s Best Board Retreat
and Strategic Planning Facilitators
About the Author
Tom Iselin is recognized as one of America’s leading authorities on high-performance nonprofits. He has built nine sector-leading nonprofits and two software companies, written six books, sits on multiple boards, and has been rated one of America’s Best Board Retreat and Strategic Planning Facilitators. His work on nonprofit strategy, board leadership, and culture has been featured on CNN, Nightline, and in Newsweek.
Tom is the president of First Things First, a firm specializing in board retreats, strategic planning services, fundraising strategy, and executive coaching for nonprofit CEOs.
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