Don't Leave Your Future Up To A Game Of Candy Land

“We’re just a small organization.”

"We’re not that formal — we just go with the flow.”

“It’s not like we’re trying to become some sort of Fortune 500 company.”

“That sounds complicated and time-consuming — I’m too busy just getting through the day-to-day.”

“What would we even do with it?”

These are all reasons leaders give for skipping strategic planning. And yet here’s the reality: if you’re too busy for a strategic plan, you’re too busy not to have one.

Picture yourself three years down the road. What do you want your organization, or even just your team, to look like? Even if the answer is, “pretty much like it does right now,” you still need to figure out how you’ll make that happen. If you want your membership base to stay steady, how will you ensure their needs are met and that they continue to see value in sticking around? If you want your staff to keep thriving, how will you invest in them, or in your own leadership skills?

Here’s where the game comes in. Remember playing Candy Land as a kid? You knew the destination — Candy Castle — but you had zero control over how to get there. Each turn, you pulled a random card and hoped for the best. Sometimes you moved forward, sometimes you slid backward, sometimes you got stuck.

That’s what running an organization without a strategic plan looks like. You may know where you want to go, but you’re leaving your path up to chance.

A strategic plan changes that.

• It doesn’t have to be complicated or an inch thick.
  

• It doesn’t have to take forever or be set in stone.
  

• It does have to be visible, practical and help you decide whether today’s busy work is actually moving you toward your goals — or keeping you stuck in place, taking you in a different direction or even holding you back.

Instead of pulling random cards and hoping for the best, a plan helps you chart the moves that matter most. You may need to adjust along the way (because unexpected cards will always show up), but at least you’re playing with intention.

Every organization, no matter its size, deserves more than survival mode. Rather than drifting along the board and hoping you land in the right place, you can set the course yourself.

Here at Leading Out Loud, we’ll be sharing more about how to create a plan that works for you and how to actually use it. For now, just remember this: your future is too important to leave up to a game of random chance.