Strategic Direction: The Heart of the Matter
Capacity Partners has a unique and successful approach to strategic planning with four key phases:
- FOUNDATION: Mission, Vision, Values
- CURRENT SITUATION: External trends, opportunities and threats; internal strengths and weaknesses; understanding of constituent needs
- STRATEGIC DIRECTION: Short-term vision, goals, strategies and timeframe
- IMPLEMENTATION: Annual objectives, budget, work plan
The heart of strategic planning is strategic direction, but what is strategic direction? More than just another planning term, it paints a compelling vision of the future and addresses the key questions “where are we going and how are we going to get there?” Incorporating your mission, vision, and culture, ideology and values, it is an essential part of reaching your grand and important goals.
Strategic direction includes:
- A one to two-year strategic plan statement (i.e., strategic vision) that describes where the organization wants to go and what it will look like at the end of the plan period and how stakeholders will be affected. It is a word picture that energizes your stakeholders and describes what you expect to achieve.
- Five to seven broad goals that articulates the top critical priorities and what needs to be accomplished to realize the vision.
- Strategies, to explain how the organization will achieve each goal.
Together, these components form the strategic direction that will guide your organization for the upcoming 3 years.
For example, in its recent strategic plan, the Montgomery Coalition for Adult English Literacy (MCAEL) set a bold goal of “21,000 by 2021” with this strategic vision statement: “While the coalition of adult ESOL providers remains committed to maintain the quality of programs and instruction and the number of adult learners it serves has increased over the past 6 years, there continue to be tens of thousands of learners who are limited in their English proficiency. By 2021, MCAEL will increase the number of learners who are on a pathway to proficiency from 15,000 to 21,000.”
This ambitious three-year vision drove goals related to increasing numbers of new highly-trained instructors, training new staff, expanding partnerships to enable access to a range of new workplace programs, and enhancing other types of instructional opportunities for English learners.
MCAEL Executive Director Kathy Stevens said, “Capacity Partners is key to our planning and implementation process since the expert help we receive helps us translate the big strategic direction into tangible action steps.”
