Your Plan to Change the World Needs a Plan

Strategic planning is simpler than it sounds and more essential than you think.

Listen to this post:

Let me ask you a personal question.

When do you see yourself retiring? Do you imagine yourself somewhere warm, or perhaps near family? Any plans to travel? Or maybe you’ll take up that hobby you love?

If an image forms in your mind as to what retirement looks like for you, I have news for you:

You have a strategic plan.

Strategic planning has reached almost mythical proportions. The very phrase makes people think of an expensive, foolproof, detailed, immutable document carved into something like the Rosetta Stone. Not only is it locked for posterity, but it supposedly holds the key to understanding everything about your organization and its future.

As a result, too many organizations avoid strategic planning altogether. It feels too hard, takes too long, or seems like a futile exercise in trying to predict the future.

Others go through the motions because they think they are supposed to. They complete a strategic plan, then leave it to gather dust on the shelf.

That’s a shame, because a good strategic plan is one of the most important management tools you have. Done well, it becomes a unifying guide used by all managers to make decisions, allocate resources, and prioritize effort. It’s your compass. It keeps everyone headed in the same direction.

So what keeps people from strategic planning? Here are five common excuses:

1. We don’t need one

2. We don’t want to hire a consultant

3. It doesn’t affect day-to-day operations

4. Long-term planning is for fortune tellers

5. I’m not even sure what strategy is

Let’s unpack each one.

1. “We don’t need one.”
   Guess what? You have a strategic plan whether you’ve written it down or not. Just like that mental image you have of your retirement, your organization has an implicit direction. Maybe no one has named it out loud, but it guides every decision your leaders make. Preferences and priorities shape your plan.

   Cynics suggest that some so-called leaders operate with no clear direction, jumping from one idea to the next. But even improv is a strategy. It’s just not a good one.

   At its core, a strategic plan has three components: purpose, priorities, and plan. You likely already know your purpose and have some sense of priorities. If you feel like you are “winging it,” you’re still making choices. A written plan simply turns the motivation behind those choices into a tool you can share, test, and improve.

2. “We don’t want to hire a consultant.”
   You don’t have to. Many consultants offer valuable expertise and objective facilitation, but you absolutely can lead a strategic planning process on your own.

   The strategic planning process is an assessment of where you are, where you want to be, and how you will get there. Done properly, it includes an analysis of external conditions, an honest assessment of the organization itself, a reaffirmation of purpose, and a debate about future priorities. If you have the capacity to do that internally, then by all means, go for it.

   Consultants provide expertise, objectivity, research capabilities, and frameworks. They are especially helpful if your board and leadership team have not done a strategic plan before or if there is disagreement among leadership about where your organization should be headed.

   But you most certainly can do it yourself.

3. “It doesn’t affect day-to-day operations.”
   Maybe not in obvious ways. But that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. If I want to retire when I am fifty, that may not change the fact that I have to go to work today. But it probably changes how I spend and save. Consciously or subconsciously, my choices are shaped by that long-term goal.

   Strategic planning isn't about building a task list. It’s about aligning direction toward long-term goals. Your daily inbox may never stop overflowing with emails. But your strategic plan helps you sort what matters from what doesn’t.

   Organizations that complain the strategic plan is too high level are using it incorrectly. They want a project plan, not a strategy. Strategy won’t tell you what to do next Tuesday. But it will help you decide which opportunities to chase, which programs to fund, and how to measure success over time.

4. “Long-term planning is for fortune tellers.”
   This is the argument from those who say, “We can’t predict the future,” or “We have no idea where we’ll be in five years.” Ironically, future uncertainty is exactly why you need a strategic plan.

   You don’t need a plan because you can predict the future. You need one because you can’t. Strategic planning is not about locking in a rigid course of action. At its best, it’s a tool for defining what matters most so that, when the unexpected happens, you can adapt with purpose.

   If your last strategic plan fell apart after a crisis, it might be because it focused too much on tactics—tactics made moot when the world changed. A good strategic plan focuses on direction. It grounds you so that you can make the best decision possible not if, but when everything changes.

5. “I’m not even sure what strategy is.”
   That’s fair. For smaller nonprofits and startups, strategy can feel like an abstract concept that applies only to large corporations. You’re busy. You’re under-resourced. You’re just trying to get through the week.

   But let’s get back to that plan to change the world—the reason you got into this in the first place. That’s step one in the strategic plan you don’t think you need (but probably already have). Remember your image of retirement. What are you hoping to accomplish? What direction do you need to go in? What will you do to get there?

   That’s strategy.

   And when you put it all together in the form of a plan, you can share that vision with everyone on your team. That way, everyone is headed in the same direction. Everyone knows what success looks like. Everyone is on the same page.

A good strategic plan doesn’t need to be a hard pivot. In fact, unless your sector or organization is in tumult, it probably shouldn’t be. A good strategic plan affirms your direction, clarifies your route, and makes sure your team is equipped for the journey.

It’s easy to forget, amidst all the busyness, that clarity is a gift—one to be shared with everyone on the team.

A simple, shared plan empowers everyone to act with purpose. To say no to the wrong things and yes to the right ones. To stay focused on the end goal in a world filled with distractions.

Your plan to change the world is already inside you. Strategic planning allows you to share it and pursue it with confidence.

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