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Social leaders need to be master planners. Strategic plans, action plans, operational plans, lesson plans, treatment plans, development plans…social leaders do them all. What many don’t realize is that these plans should be interlocking, complementing each other. Today, we break down the planning cycle.

What is the Planning Cycle?

The planning cycle describes your planning process and the relationship between your different plans. This post presents a standard planning cycle, which you can tailor to suit your needs.

#1 in the Cycle: Strategic Planning

The strategic plan outlines the organization’s collective dream and a 3-5 year road map towards it. It includes:

• Time frame – period our strategic plan covers, usually between 3 to 5 years
• Vision – the dream (why we do what we do)
• Mission – what we do to achieve the dream
• Organization and Programs – how we organize ourselves to execute our mission
• Goals – less than 5 qualitative/quantitative things you want to achieve within the set time frame to progress towards the dream
• Strategies – general initiatives to accomplish each goal, with year of implementation

#2 in the Cycle: Operational Planning

The organization creates an annual Operational Plan to describe the strategies and processes for that 1 year period. It includes:

• Tasks to accomplish each strategy marked in the Strategic Plan for that year (what, who, when, metric)
• Recurrent tasks related to the mission of the organization (for example, if you run a school, these would be related to the school calendar. Things like preparations for standardized tests, giving out grades, enrollment, ordering books, etc.)
• Budget for the year

#3 in the Cycle: Action Planning

Every task in the Operational Plan is made up of smaller steps carried out by one person or a small team. These teams break down the task in an individual action plan. These action plans are typically lists of steps with their due dates, person responsible and other details.

Want to Learn More?

Want to learn more about the planning cycle? You can check out the book “How to Conduct an Effective Strategic Planning Process with Minimal Effort” or Open University’s free course on project planning .

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