ANNUAL STRATEGIC PLANNING
Well, it’s getting to that time of year. It’s time to do the annual budgets! BUT, before you do the budgets, you should take some time to do some strategic planning. Whether you’ve been around since the beginning of time, or budgeting for a new church just getting started. It’s a simple process that we’ve been doing for 15 years, but it’s super effective.
By the end of this process, the goal is to have 3 or 4 things, in 5 different categories that you and your team decide are going to be your strategic initiatives for next year. Encourage your leadership team to follow the process below as well.
First, get away. Go somewhere to be alone and give yourself some space to think and write. I frequently do this for 2 or 3 days at a time. It’s just amazing if you are completely alone for 3 days! Also, encourage your leadership team to do the same and to follow this same process.
Second, organize your thinking and your time into categories. For me, I divide my thinking into Operations, Finance & Accounting, Leadership, Sales & Marketing and wildcard.
Third, make 3 lists for each category. (1) Strengths (what’s working) (2) Growth Areas (what’s not working) (3) Action Items (what do we need to do). Answer these 3 questions for each of your categories above. For example, What’s working in Leadership? what’s not working in Leadership? What do we need to do in Leadership. If you start with what you do well, and then what you don’t do well, it’ll become very clear what you need to do.
Fourth, once each of you have completed the exercise, schedule an offsite meeting for you and your team. The goal of this meeting is for everyone to get their answers to the 3 questions out for everyone to see.
Fifth, you and your team votes on each of the items in the “what do we need to do” list to conclude 3 or 4 things that you’re going to work on. Keep in mind, you really can only accomplish 3 maybe 4 things per year that’s outside of your daily work routine. Do your best to limit your initiatives to 3 or 4 in each category.
Finally, assign the action items out to each of the team members. This gives clear direction on the initiatives and who’s responsible for carrying them forward.
In case you want to see it, here is the workbook I made many years ago to help myself facilitate this process. I used to go to a cabin with a small group of guys to work on this, so you’ll see that some of the language relates more specifically to that meeting. It’s a framework nonetheless.
Let us know how it goes!
PS. If you get stuck or need a sounding board, we can help.