A strategic plan is ultimately no more and no less than a set of decisions about what to do to achieve goals, why to do it, how to do it, and when to do it.

Because there is rarely enough time, money, or energy to address every issue, strategic planning is a process to focus on what is most important to achieve overall success.

Cornerstone Decision Support’s approach encompasses a top-down strategic planning process and a bottom-up operational action planning process. The objective of the top-down components is to: 1) establish a 10-year vision, 2) reveal the most critical issues that will command focus and resources over three years, 3) develop balanced scorecard of strategic goals, and 4) decide upon financial, leadership, and program strategies for achieving the goals. The objective of the bottom-up component is to translate the goals into a detailed and accountable operational action plan to orchestrate implementation of the strategic plan.

We interview club governance and management leadership, conduct member focus group interviews and surveys, work with management to collect internal and external information, provide industry trends, and assemble it into a document for review by the board prior to the half-day planning meeting. We work with the general manager and president to develop an action plan for each strategic goal specifying:

• Actions required
• Expected outcome for each action item
• External resources needed
• Person(s) accountable for completing each action
• Completion dates for each action

The action plan is presented to the board for review and revision before inclusion in the plan document. Cornerstone prepares the final strategic plan document to be published for the membership and staff. A second version of the action plan, formatted in an Excel file and sorted by completion date, is used to monitor progress at each board meeting. The action plan is updated at the completion of each year.

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