Defining Your Goals & Building Your Tactics
As my mother would say, it is time to put on your thinking cap. Building goals is the hardest part because you can’t have too many or you won’t get anything done, but everything feels important. The key here is to stay focused on the biggest priorities you discovered in your organizational assessment. I like to remind myself that I am not trying to reach the vision in this strategic plan. I am simply trying to unlock my next level of impact. That helps me keep things achievable and actionable.
Speaking of actionable... A goal is not a tactic. When you write your goals, make sure you use outcomes based language and not activities. You’ll want to move from need to desired outcome to the goal. This will make sure you can also measure those outcomes and evaluate your work over the next few years, keeping you on track.
We start by setting the goals. Then you can explore the tactics that will help you reach them. Building goals is a two step process:
Step 1:
Review the needs with the highest level of priority. Those should help you to clearly see where you want to focus your energy. What needs are blocking your mission the most or would have the greatest impact if solved. You will have 3-5 years with this plan, so can you solve for part of a need if it is too big to solve for entirely? That is success!
Step 2:
Aim for 1-2 strategic goals for the year in each of these the same 7 areas we reviewed in our organizational assessment:
Programs – effectiveness, quality, alignment with mission
People – staff skills, leadership, capacity, burnout
Systems – technology, data, processes, infrastructure
Funding – sustainability, diversification, fundraising capacity
Partnerships – strength and alignment of collaborations
Strategy – clarity, focus, and execution
Awareness: marketing, communications, external and internal relationships
As the leader(s) of the organization, it is your job to set the goals. Tactics are not yours to set. They are yours to approve.
That means that we must really empower the people who will write them. By allowing your team to write their own tactics (with guidance) you will get their buy-in and help them navigate the changes that will be inevitable.
But that means that you need to be able to guide them. You’ll want to make sure that the people who are going to set the tactics understand the goal and where they came from.
Share a wrap-up from your discovery phase.
Help them understand the priorities.
Give them the goals.
Ask for their feedback.
When you receive the tactics and resources, you will need to review them and determine what fits into the resources you have available or can make available. Being clear about this from the beginning is important to ensuring your staff’s buy-in.
For each tactic you will want to know:
How will it align with your goals
What will the measure of success be
When can the tactic be implemented
What resources are required
Consider inputting your tactics into a gantt chart, allowing you to visualize how realistic they are.
There is a reason we call this a strategic action plan. The goal is to have clear action items in the form of tactics that you will be able to deliver, measure and adjust over the next few years.
