For New (And not so New) Chapters: Forming and Implementing Your First Action Plan

Feb 27, 2001

First, a distinction. As successful organizations mature, most periodically form long-range strategic plans that provide a set of goals and a general "road map" to guide the organization from where it is now to where it needs to be over a period of several years. Once a long-term strategic plan is in place, short-term action plans should regularly and logically spin from it.

Your organization should strive to get itself into a position to form a good strategic plan before long. First, however, you should allow some time for your new group to grow in size and diversity, to develop some key ideas, and to give these ideas some time to incubate and evolve. In the meantime, to steer you through the first several months, you will need a clear short-term action plan.

Getting started: establishing key short-term goals The first step to putting together your first action plan is to think carefully about what your key short-term goals should be. Try to make these expressions of desired outcomes, as opposed to statements of various worthy activities. There is seldom any shortage in an organization of ideas about good things to do. It is easy to make a list of them; it is much harder to get even a few of them done with the time, money and people you have. Agreeing first on your desired outcomes will help you choose the best actions to take -- and, just as importantly, focus your group’s thinking on what worthy ideas must be left out and why.

Keep the number of key goals manageable. These will represent your organization’s priorities. For a young organization’s first action plan, 3-5 key goals is usually plenty, and more than 7-8 is usually too many. In fact, even the largest organizations are usually well advised to limit their key organizational—as opposed to departmental or individual—goals to fewer than ten. Remember: when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Discipline in priority setting is always important, and is never more so than in an organization’s first year.

Articulate your key goals in such a way so that they can serve several different purposes without modification. In addition to providing the framework for your action plan, they can serve as the centerpiece of your public relations, board recruitment, membership development, and fundraising work. When the public, your funding prospects, and your potential members know precisely what it is that you intend to accomplish, all aspects of your work will become easier.

The important work of determining key goals should involve as many of those who are forming your new group as possible. (Later work should probably be assigned to smaller groups, as discussed further below.) The discussion of key goals should be moderated by someone who can remain neutral. You should probably therefore delegate this responsibility to someone else, so that you can play as active a role in the process as you would like.

It is good to begin this discussion at the very first meeting of your group, but it is usually best not to try to settle on a final list of key short-term goals until at least one or two more meetings have been held. Rushing it more than this usually fails to allow adequate time for enough people to become sufficiently involved for the best ideas to emerge. It also fails to allow ample time for enough people to become invested enough in the process for it to yield the "organizational buy-in" you need. On the other hand, dragging the goal-setting process on longer risks loss of enthusiasm of your members and subsequent loss of momentum of your group. Get the process started early, keep it moving steadily along, and if at all possible, try to conclude it by your third or fourth planning meeting at the latest.

Establishing action steps The key goals lend themselves well to the formation of some of your first committees. Getting people involved at the committee level builds enthusiasm, puts people in places that match their interests and expertise, and gets things done. It also spares the group as a whole the agony of immersion in minutia.

Some of the committees that form around your first short-term goals will evolve into standing committees, such as membership, fundraising and nominating committees, and those devoted to various types of activities. Others will probably be short-term committees whose jobs (such as forming bylaws, incorporating the organization, filing tax-exempt status, and other jobs specifically related to start-up of a new organization) will be done within a few months, after which time they can dissolve.

The overall action plan that will be developed from the committees’ input should be in a consistent format so that it can be read, used, and implemented. It is therefore in everyone's best interest to charge each committee with the responsibility of returning its recommendations in a form that provides some basic information about each proposed action, including:

• What should be done;
• Who should do it (who is principally responsible for doing it, or seeing that it’s done;)
• Who should help (the individuals or committees who should support the above person in getting it done;) and
• When the action should be done (can be expressed as a beginning date, a deadline, or an interval of time)

Other categories of information that are included in some action plans include how much the action will cost and methods for evaluating completion and/or success of the task.

The committees should make certain that timelines and individual workloads are reasonable, keeping in mind that these people are volunteers with other professional and personal obligations. They should "assign" tasks to people only with their full understanding and consent. Finally, they should develop the task lists with the recognition that the things that the committee can foresee needing to be done will almost certainly not be everything that winds up needing to be done over the course of the planning period. It is thus important to make sure that the actions in your plan will not be all-consuming tasks in and of themselves for any one individual or group.

It is equally important for the committee to ask itself this question: If all the proposed actions are completed properly and on time, will the overall goal (the desired outcome agreed upon first) probably be realized? If the committee’s proposed actions cannot be said to do this, they should be re-evaluated and revised until they can. If no set of actions the committee can come up with can reasonably and confidently be expected to yield the desired outcome, the committee should re-evaluate the goal itself. It should then recommend to the group as a whole a revised goal, and an appropriate set of actions to support it.

Forming a budget Most organizational plans, even early ones like this one, require at least some money to implement. In order to give your new plan a good chance to succeed, you should develop a simple budget to support it. (See the resource on "Financial Management".) Even though it may be easy enough to cover most initial small expenses yourself, it is good to try to project about how much money it will take to do the job right. This helps ensure that you will do things right, not skimping too much on important matters like the quality of your first mailing or the printing of your first newsletter. It also gives you something specific to go to people with when you approach them for contributions. Finally, it provides a reality check at an important step in the planning process.

Whether your action plan is likely to cost $100 or $100,000, take the time to support it with a good budget.

Implementing the plan The world’s shelves are full of good plans that were never implemented. In order to make sure that yours does not join them, you need to decide, as a group, on a system for its implementation.

If you have formed a plan along the lines recommended above, one of the most important secrets of successful implementation—assigning clear responsibility for each and every task to a single person—has already been taken care of. Even if that person is supported by a number of other people, s/he should be the one who takes personal responsibility for it.

The next step is to determine who will be the coordinator of the plan. Someone needs to review the progress toward implementation of the plan as a whole on a regular basis. If the plan is short and sweet, that should probably be the responsibility of your new group’s chairperson. If your plan is lengthy and complex, it is probably best to divide the responsibility for coordination among committee chairs, who should in turn report regularly on their committees’ progress to the chairperson.

Each of your group’s board meetings should include a brief update on plan implementation. At least for a while, until your group grows considerably, this should probably be done by your chairperson, or his/her designee. The reports should be general in nature to give the group an overview of progress. They need not, and should not, be in such detail as to bog the meeting down. If the group is falling behind in an area in general, it is good to mention that and discuss it. However, it is usually not good to become more specific, as individuals who for one reason or another may be behind on doing their part can become embarrassed or defensive.

People will sometimes fall behind. Count on it. When they do, it should be the job of someone (probably the committee chair) to check in and discuss the situation. Sometimes a simple reminder is all that is needed. At other times it is important to determine if the goals were too ambitious; if the actions that were chosen have proven not to be the best ones to take to pursue the goals; if unforeseen circumstances (individual or organizational) have arisen that make certain actions difficult, impossible, or no longer advisable; or if the people who took particular responsibilities turn out not to be the best suited for the tasks as your organization has grown. Adjustments can and should be made.

Remember: your action plan is a road map, a set a guidelines, and, most of all, a tool. Be as faithful to it as possible while respecting people’s obligations, limitations, and feelings. Keep focused on the goals, not just the actions, and remain flexible about how the goals can best be achieved. Maintain enough freedom to recognize and take advantage of new opportunities when they arise. If you do these things, your first action plan will put your new organization on the road to success.

By Don Elder of the River Network