Fish Creek Comments by Past President Kent Fraser – June 2009
The written plan is one thing.Getting action is more difficult.Our club produced a plan that is fairly short and easy to follow, but to bring it to life and action we put significant emphasis on getting all members on-side:
- Weboiledthe plandown to 8 one-line bullet points that could more accurately be referred to as "Strategic Directions".
- Wefocused on 2 or 3 of those items that were the highest priority that year.
- The high priority strategies were repeatedoften in meetings.At most meetings there was reason to refer to at least one of those as in "As we decided in our strategic plan, we are seeking an international project that ...... ". Whenever it was relevant the same references were made in the newsletter.
- The strategieshelpedcommitteesto stayon track,as in"the membership decided in the strategic plan that we should be....."
- A couple of timeslater inthe yearwe reviewed our progress against the list of 8 items, so we knew where we had succeeded, but also what else needed to be done.
To me, all of that is summarized as FOCUS and COMMUNICATION. People do not read a document andautomatically internalize its contents. The frequent use of the same simple one-line ideas, intentionally using even the same words, enabled everyone in the club to understand exactly where we were going.Within a few months, avisitor toour club who asked about our activities from different members would hear the same items, often using many of the same phrases -Members had absorbed and embraced thekeystrategies.
It is now 22 months since the Strategic Planning session.Just last week theplans forCommunity Service and International Service were presented to the club - Both presentations began with a restatement of the strategiesthat the membership built almost two years ago.
Kent