134 – 8 Annual Planning Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

October 31, 2024

Episode #134: 8 Annual Planning Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

 

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi explores the importance of annual planning for volunteer services and shares personal experiences of the challenges faced when a plan is absent. Tobi outlines eight common mistakes made during annual planning, such as building a to-do list of tactics rather than a strategic plan, not articulating a clear vision, failing to involve key stakeholders, and not celebrating wins.  

 She also provides practical advice and remedies for each mistake, emphasizing the need for simplicity, accountability, stakeholder involvement, and sufficient resource allocation! 

Annual Planning – Episode Highlights

• [00:27] – The Importance of Annual Planning 
• [01:29] – The Impact of Not Having a Plan 
• [09:53] – Strategic vs. Tactical Planning 
• [16:07] – Common Annual Planning Mistakes 
• [37:03] – Top Annual Planning Mistakes Recap 

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Membership Community  
• VisionWeek 2025  
• Volunteer Management Progress Report  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #130: How to Build a Volunteer Plan for 2025  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #034: Your Nonprofit Strategic Plan for Volunteers – What to Include 
• Info on the Appreciative Inquiry Process 

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #134 Transcript: 8 Annual Planning Mistakes & How to Avoid Them 

Tobi: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the volunteer nation podcast. Today, I want to talk about. Annual planning. In fact, I’m going to call out eight annual planning mistakes and how you can avoid them. It’s that time of year folks. We’re in quarter four of the year and I like to get my planning done a little bit ahead of time so I can enjoy my holiday season and not have to worry About what I’m going to do come January 1 now; I had a rough year this year. 

We had a flood in our house. We were disrupted. We were living in Airbnb and hotels and family houses and just had a total disruption. And so, my regular planning process was disrupted too. And I got to see firsthand now that I’m out of crisis and been able to look back over the year. I was able to really witness firsthand what happens when you don’t have a plan. 

Here’s what happened. So, I didn’t have an annual plan this year. Usually, I have a full plan with a calendar and dates for my programs and what things I’m going to offer in the year and pretty much goals set for throughout the year. So, I have it pretty much mapped out. That doesn’t mean I don’t change things as we go, new opportunities come up. 

But I have a rough idea of what my goals are for the year. Now, I tend to set ambitious goals, so often I don’t meet every single one of them, and that’s okay. I’m okay with that, because I believe that you should stretch, and the more you stretch, the more you’re going to achieve. But this year I didn’t do that. 

And I was left. to really make up things as I went, and I was planning on the fly pretty much every week and every month. I learned quickly that simply hoping things will take care of themselves didn’t really work out for me. So, for quarter four, once I realized that my plan was adding to stress. 

So, I was worrying that I didn’t have, uh, getting my goals met. I didn’t have a plan in action. It was impacting my business negatively. So not only my emotional health, but also my revenue, just being fully transparent, it was a rough year. And part of it was since I didn’t have a plan. Now I had a good reason why I didn’t have a plan. 

It was a disruptive year, but it’s also interesting to just step back and see. What a difference a plan makes. And so, for quarter four, as I went through the year and started to realize, wow, things are not working out the way I had hoped they would, I got a plan in place for the last quarter of 2024. 

And so, I’m in the midst of my plan now. I’m taking action on it. I’ve got goals and I’m setting those goals and making things happen. And suddenly Revenue went up. I’m getting calmer, I’m not feeling as stressed, not to say all the anxiety is gone, but it’s feeling a little bit more doable right now. 

And so, I really can see the difference between having a plan and not having a plan. And the fact is, you know, we have more control over things than we think we do. So often we think, well, the world is going to do what it’s going to do. And in our case, yes, it did it. Uh, we had a, basically a flood at our house. 

We didn’t control that. And sometimes, you know, things happen, but we can also. Even in a volatile and highly changing world and unexpected world, things can happen. And even in that kind of unexpected environment, we can set a plan and start to achieve inside that plan. So, it’s a way of sort of buffering in some ways against a very volatile and, uh, rapidly changing world. 

So, there’s a lot of reasons to have a plan in place. In fact, in Volunteer Nation episode 130, How to Build a Volunteer Plan for 2025, I talk about some of the benefits of having a plan. So, check that out. But here’s the deal. The choice is yours. You can either decide to live, you know, in chaos and kind of fly by the seat of your pants like I did earlier this year, or you can create a plan that gives you an exponentially greater chance at success and maybe even includes a little more me time. 

The other thing I like about planning is I can put together an annual calendar. I can set aside time for vacation. I can set as side time for some self-care. So, when we’re developing a plan for our volunteer services, we also can build in a little me time too, which I think is good for us right now.  

It’s been, again, a challenging year and I’ve seen the difference a plan makes. And so for 2025, I’m all in and you know, because I’ve already talked about it on this pod and you’ve heard the promotions that we have a specific workshop for you that if you’re feeling a little bit, you know, up in the air about your planning process, or you’re feeling a little bit Maybe don’t feel confident about what to do around planning. 

Join us and I’ll show you exactly what to do and, and I, I will be sharing the exact process I use for my own business. Let’s talk about annual planning and what does it involve before I get into the mistakes that you might make, so, uh, and you want to avoid. So, strategic planning is a process by which an organization finds its direction and makes decisions on allocating resources such as time, money, and personnel to pursue that direction. Annual planning is sort of a strategic planning process, but in a short term. Now, I’m of a mind that long term strategic planning is great for your organization, but if you’re implementing it on the ground level, it’s pretty hard to stick to that plan. 

You know, there’s so much volatility and I feel like, you know, I’m better off with an annual plan than, you know, a 10-year strategic plan. Your organization probably has a plan like that, but for volunteer services, I think I don’t mind thinking about what’s happening, you know, what are our big goals five years from now, but you have so much to do on a day to day basis and there’s so much change that happens in a year, especially right now, that it makes sense to do an annual plan. 

Strategic planning involves setting goals and objectives. Often, they are long term, but in our case, when we’re talking about annual planning, it’s the goals and objectives for that coming year. In that process of an annual planning process, it’s very similar to strategic planning in that we are in a more traditional sense. 

In that we are analyzing both internal and external environments, and we’re creating actionable steps to achieve a desired future state. It’s not just pie in the sky, you know, a vision of the future without any action steps. So, it really includes action steps and strategic planning helps ensure that an organization’s efforts are aligned with its mission, vision, and external factors, allowing for sustainable growth. 

adaptability and success in a changing environment. And so, when you’re creating an annual plan for volunteer services, you want to make sure that it’s aligned with your organization’s larger goals so that we’re all rowing together. And then finally a strategic planning process can also be used to build annual volunteer plans that have a better chance at success and can spark support for volunteer initiatives. 

When I do annual planning, it is very much like strategic planning, but in the short term. It’s sort of an abbreviated, simplified strategic plan. So don’t get too wrapped up about the differences between an annual plan and a strategic plan. They’re very similar. The only difference is the time frame, in my mind. 

But I like to also have a plan in place, especially when you’re working in volunteer services. that it’s a way of communicating and showing people your work. And, you know, when you’re working in an organization, oftentimes the rest of the organization doesn’t really understand how volunteer services are going about its business, nor Different departments are impacted and impact the results that volunteers can bring about. 

And so, I would like to have an annual plan for volunteer services because it also helps us understand how we are interdependent. It also kind of shows the complexity of what we do. I’m not going to lie. I like that. I like that about it. It makes the hidden transparent. So, we can really see. what exactly we’re up to so that others kind of get it, right? 

I hear volunteer managers complain, well, nobody understands what I do. And I go, well, have you explained to them what you do? Have you shown them what you do? An annual plan is a great thing to brief people on. So, another thing I want to talk about before we get into the common mistakes in annual planning is the differences between strategic and tactical. 

Strategic and tactical. Tactics and strategy are very different and yet often people call a tactic a strategy. So, let’s talk about what the differences are. So, strategy is really in the big picture. And your annual plan is going to be a combination of tactics and strategies. So, let’s make sure we understand what these two things are. 

So, one thing is a strategy is the big picture, right? Strategy is a long-term overarching plan designed to achieve a broad goal or vision. It outlines what an organization wants to achieve and why it is pursuing those goals. So, In, when we’re doing short term annual planning, we can still include the strategic direction and the vision and the big why. 

Why are we pursuing these goals? The purpose of the strategy is to set the direction and provide a framework for decision making. So, once you have your strategy, you can use it as a litmus test to decide what tactics you’re going to take on or what projects you’re going to take on. Also having a plan in place helps you set better boundaries. 

So let me give you an example of what a strategic goal might look like in an annual plan. A nonprofit might have a strategic goal to expand its services to five underserved communities across the state, and in this case, over the next five years. Okay, that’s a strategic direction. Now, keep that in mind. 

I’m going to talk about tactics next, and I’m going to give you an example of what might support that. So, tactics are as opposed to strategy, they’re specific actions. So, there are actions, tools and steps that are used to execute the strategy. They describe how the goals outlined in the strategy will be achieved. 

So, the strategy is what and why. And the tactics are the how that makes sense The purpose is to implement the strategy by taking action to reach those broader goals So let’s get we had the example of a nonprofit strategic goal might be to expand its services to five underserved communities Okay, great. 

What’s the tactic? Well, the tactic to achieve that strategy of expanding services might be tactical goals might be You participating in 10 local community events, recruiting 250 local volunteers, or launching a telefriend social media campaign. So those are all tactics that roll up into the strategy. 

When it comes down to it, both strategy and tactics are crucial, but strategy provides the overall direction, while tactics will handle the day-to-day efforts that lead to achieving strategic goals. Well, both can have, both strategy and tactics can have goals associated with them. Strategy dictates the what and why, while tactics dictate the how. 

The reason I’m talking about this in this podcast today is because people often mistake tactics for strategy. I’ll give an example for, in the volunteer world. Folks will ask me; we’ll be talking about volunteer recruitment strategy. In a tactical sense, I’ll often have folks ask me, what should I include on my volunteer recruitment flyer? 

And that’s a very tactical approach to recruitment. And I will often respond with a strategic question. So, who are you trying to reach? That’s a better question. And, and who’s going to hand out that flyer? And what are they going to say when they hand it out? Because it’s not the flyer that converts people, it’s the people to contact people that really converts people and encourages people to join your good cause. 

And so, I will often ask people to think strategically before they go to tactics. So that’s just an example of strategy versus tactics. I wanted to just talk about that because it’s such an issue, such a challenge for folks to really think through. So, as you build out your annual plan and do your annual planning process for volunteer services and volunteer engagement at your organization, I want you to think about how you can come up with three to five strategies that are supported by maybe three to five, that each is supported by three to five tactics. And that’s how you can create a very simple plan during vision week. We’re going to do this and process together and walk through it day by day. But you really do want to keep it tight. focused, but also to include a mix of strategy and tactics. 

It’s not that one is better than the other. If you don’t have any tactics, your strategy is going nowhere, right? It’s going nowhere fast. It’s just big ideas. Nothing’s happening. But if you have a bunch of tactics, you may not get to the direction you’re headed if you don’t have a strategy because you really don’t have a direction. 

You’re just doing a never ending to do list. And so, you really need a combination of both. So, one of the first things we want to think about as we think about our annual planning for volunteer engagement is to make sure that we have a mix of strategies and tactics in our plan. Alright, if you want to learn more on strategy versus tactics, check out Volunteer Nation episode 34, your nonprofit strategic plan for volunteers, what to include, and I talk about this in a little bit more detail, if you want a different way of looking at it. 

Okay, everybody, we’ve talked about the differences between tactics and strategy. Now I want to see it. I’m going to switch gears and talk about those eight annual planning mistakes that I see many nonprofits make. But I’m not going to leave you hanging. I also want to give you some remedies for these and what you can do instead. 

So, let’s get started with annual planning mistake number one, and that is building a to do list of tactics versus a truly strategic annual plan. And as I mentioned earlier, we want to have three to five strategies and then have three to five tactics that roll up to each strategy. So, in the end, you’re going to have anywhere from, from nine to 15 different tactics and three to five strategies. 

Okay. So how do you move from a tactical frame of mind to a strategic frame of mind? My favorite way Is to really look at your internal and external context. So, your internal context is what’s going on in your organization. So, are you going through labor cuts? Are budget cuts? Are you planning an expansion? 

Do you have new programs that are coming on board? Are you, uh, merging with another nonprofit? There are all kinds of things that are happening within an organization. And you can look at your organization’s strategic plan to get a sense of what’s happening on the inside of the organization. Now, in the external context, you want to look at what’s happening in your community or in your region or in the catchment area for your services. 

What’s affecting your work right now as volunteer services and the work of volunteers? What’s impacting it? What might impact it in the future? For example, Is there some out migration of people in your community? Maybe you live in a rural community and there’s a lot of people who are moving away and it’s creating a labor shortage of volunteers. 

Or maybe there’s a new corporation that’s moving into town and building a plant and you’re going to want to partner with them and see if you can do some corporate volunteer partnerships. There are all kinds of things that might be, there’s economics that might be happening. There’s labor that might be happening. 

So, you want to think about the context of your community and what is evolving and changing. So that will help you move from just a to do list of tactics to really thinking strategically about how you need to respond to that context. So that’s, that’s my number one way of moving from a tactical mindset to a strategic mindset. 

All right, annual planning mistake number two, not articulating a clear vision for the future. Now, when we think about a clear vision, it must be compelling. It must be something that people want to get behind. It’s a big vision. So, I’ll give you an example. I worked with an organization and one of their goals for our project was to make every volunteer feel like a million bucks. 

You can imagine it. A bunch of people smiling, having a good time and excited to contribute their time. So, you’ve got to articulate that clear vision. Again, often we’re in the tactical, we’re thinking about all the nuts and bolts types of things, the compliance issues, the risk management, all of the things, the HR, all the parts of volunteers and the paperwork side. 

But we’re not spending time. explaining what the big why is. What’s the vision for the future? What is it that top line that volunteerism can achieve through your organization? And so, to remedy this or what to do instead of not articulating that clear vision is to take time to really create a clear vision. 

And design a clear, compelling vision or purpose and make sure it aligns with your organization’s overarching goals. You really want to make sure, and you know, one of the things I like to do when I’m thinking of my vision. First, make sure you have some time to do it. You might want to go on a walk or spend some quiet time really thinking through, but you can also do this as a collective with a group and you can ask fantastic questions when you develop this vision. 

There’s a process called appreciative inquiry that is, I’m not sure if I have any content on this. I know. I’ll have to look, but if you look it up online, I’ll see if I can link to it in the show notes. Appreciative inquiry is a way of visioning. It’s a four-step process where you’re going through and you’re asking specific questions. 

Like what is the best that is here? What is the best that could be? What would need to be in place? for us to realize that vision. And so, it takes people out of the day to day and encourages them to dream big. And often, you know, we kind of hold back from dreaming big because we’re afraid we’re not going to get there. 

Well, you know, maybe we won’t, maybe we will. We don’t predict the future. But if we don’t have a compelling vision, we sure as shooting are not going to get there. So, we’ve got to have something that is something people can get behind. So, our strategic plan or our annual plan needs to have a section early in the document that describes what that vision is in a couple of sentences. 

It doesn’t need to be long. All right, let’s talk about annual planning mistake number three, not keeping it simple. People want to overthink these plans. While it is awesome to have a monster document that a consultant comes in and helps you develop over multiple months. But we’re in the volunteer space, and we’ve got to get things going quickly. 

And so, we’ve got to create plans that are simple, that we can explain to other people, and we can enlist their support quickly. And so, the more complicated it is, the less people are going to want to support it because they don’t understand it. What to do instead of creating something really onerous and long and complicated? 

As I said before, choose only three to five strategic goals and then build in those objectives. So, you don’t want to create a huge monster document because folks just will have a hard time getting behind it. So, keep things simple. We tend to overthink. We tend to think this is going to be super complicated. 

The complicated work or the challenging work is simplifying. That is the challenge and that takes skill. I’m not saying it doesn’t, but we don’t, you know, have a complex plan. Does it not mean if a plan is overly complex, it does not mean it’s good necessarily. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but our goal in addition to planning and streamlining is also being able to enlist other support. 

So, we’ve got to keep it simple. All right, let’s talk about annual planning mistake number four, which is failing to involve key stakeholders. And if you’ve listened to my podcast at all, you know that I’m a big fan of involving volunteers in almost everything you do. Every decision that impacts them, they should have a say around, or at least a representative group of people. 

If you don’t involve key stakeholders in your plan, you are bound to not get as much buy in as you could if you involved people. People are down on what they’re not up on. And if folks are part of the process, they’re going to want to get behind it. In fact, often the people that are involved in the planning process will volunteer to take on and implement parts of the plan. 

So, it’s a way to bake and buy in. You’re also wanting to gather insights from people that have different perspectives than you. So, you know, if we build our plan, our annual plan in the dark by ourselves, we are limiting the potential of our plan to only our perspective. Only our understanding, only our lived experience, and you know, nobody’s superhuman, nobody’s superhuman. 

We do better together when we’re working together. So instead, include your boss. Coworkers, volunteers, and any external partners that make sense in your planning process. Now, it doesn’t mean they’re sitting down around the room with you and doing the whole plan. You can ask for their input ahead of time. 

You can do surveying, you can do interviews, you can just chitchat with folks. You can include folks in the planning process itself. Or you can create the plan, a draft plan, and then run it by people and ask them for their feedback and their input. But if you wait till the very end, make sure that it is very drafty, that it doesn’t look all polished, because then folks will say, well, looks fine. 

Thanks for asking. They’ll feel like they’re rubber stamps and so it’s better to include people earlier in the process if you can, but just make sure you’re involving other people in your planning process. Alright, let’s take a quick pause from my top. annual planning mistakes. And when we get back, I’ve got an annual planning mistake, five, six, seven, and eight. So don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.  

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Okay. We’re back with my top strategic planning mistakes and what you don’t want to avoid and what to do instead. And so, let’s get to it. So annual planning mistake number five, and this is a big one. You do all that work, and you get a plan in writing, and you run it by your boss and it’s all approved and you keep that plan a secret. 

You don’t share it with anybody. Nobody knows what you’re up to. You’re treating it as your own personal plan. Now, you may be responsible for implementing a lot of your plan. However, usually, especially with volunteer services and working with volunteers and a volunteer strategy, we need other people’s support in our plan. 

And so, we’ve got to be able to share it with other people. So instead of keeping it a secret, brief all levels of your organization on your plan’s key elements, if they have any roles and responsibilities in executing or supporting this strategy, what those are, and how you will track and report progress. 

That third piece is important because if you need people to support you, they need to know that there’s going to be accountability. And that if the plan isn’t moving according to plan, then you may be checking back with people, adjusting, etc. And so, you want to make sure that everyone is in on what you’re doing. 

These don’t have, these briefings don’t have to be super complicated. Again, we’re keeping our plan simple. So, you know, you may ask, hey, can I have 10 minutes at the board meeting or 15 minutes at the board meeting? You can brief your volunteers. Maybe you will do a webinar, and brief everybody on it. You ask for, ask if anybody has some questions, those kinds of things, but don’t keep it a secret because again, I think people underestimate the challenge or what is really goes into engaging volunteers. 

And if you get a lot of people coming to you thinking you just produce volunteers with fairy dust, then this is going to be a great foil to that because they’ll realize no, takes up quite a bit of work and strategy. All right, annual planning mistake number six is lack of accountability for implementation, just not including that accountability piece in your plan. 

And we can create all kinds of strategies and tactics and all kinds of creative ways to engage our volunteers. But if no one is assigned the work and, and no one’s following up and there are no deadlines, then the work just doesn’t get done. You get a plan that collects dust. So, we’ll want to make sure that we have accountability. 

So, what you can do instead is, you know, in your plan, name who is ultimately responsible for each aspect of the plan and include these assignments in the plan document itself. I would also include an implementation schedule and due dates. You don’t have to do it in micro detail. You might create a project plan online somewhere that’s a little bit more detailed, but in broad brushstrokes, what’s going to get done by when and by whom. 

And sometimes it’s a team, but they, that team is going to have a team leader. Now, if you’re a small department of one, much of this may fall on your shoulders, but certainly if you are placing volunteers in other departments, if other people are helping you with marketing or recruitment, if you have other people helping you with training, if you’re If you’re partnering or collaborating with your fundraising folks, whatever it is, make sure you include a little bit of that in your plan. 

Wherever those collaborations are happening, make sure you include some goals. So that’s not, again, your personal plan. It is the annual plan for volunteer engagement for your organization. Okay, there’s a difference there. It’s not your personal plan. It’s the organization’s plan. You just happen to put it together because you’re the person in charge. 

Okay, so make sure that there’s some accountability across the board for implementation. And your name cannot be next to each one. Okay. Annual planning mistake number seven, not allocating sufficient resources to the plan’s success. This is important. Often, we have such great ideas, and we want to do so many things, but there’s absolutely no budget associated with those things that may cost something. There may be, you know, we’re in the training business. So maybe you don’t know how to implement something, and you need implementation support and training around that and some resources. Then that needs to be budgeted for. And you know, we often call at, at VolunteerPro and our VolunteerPro membership community, folks often see it as professional development. 

But I always remind people that what we’re up to is implementation support. So what we really do is we help people learn frameworks and systems so that when they’re ready to improve or bring on a specific aspect of their volunteer recruitment for Experience or training or data collection or whatever it is that they already have a ready made framework and they have training and tools so they can hit the ground running much more quickly. 

And so, when you think about your plan, think about if there’s something in your plan that you don’t know how to do. You feel like you’re going to need support around? Have you budgeted for that? Now, I’m not saying you necessarily must join Volunteer Pro. We would love to have you, of course, but maybe there are other ways you can get support. 

There are also tools – let’s say you’re bringing on new volunteer management software or a new communications email system or a new online community. Any of that software, if they’re not budgeted for, they’re not going to happen. And so, you need to really look at, making sure that there are sufficient resources. 

So, you want to make sure there, you are not creating your own unfunded mandate. We hate that when people give us unfunded mandates. So don’t create your own internal unfunded mandates. Make sure to align your resources, both time, money, people, with your plans, goals, and objectives. You want to make sure that you have enough time. You have enough money, and you have enough people, uh, and resources and expertise to get it done. 

Otherwise, it’s not going to happen on a wing and a prayer. It’s got to be resourced sufficiently. Now, a lot of times your plan is not going to require, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement. It may be a very small budget that you need. You also need to communicate the amount of time it will take to implement some of the things. 

Now, sometimes your estimated time for certain projects or tactics may be, you’re giving your best guesstimate. That’s okay. But if you are indicating that, hey, this just doesn’t happen out of thin air, it’s going to take, it’s going to require our time. All right, annual planning mistake number eight. 

This is the final one that I want to share. And this one’s super important and it’s so easy to forget. It’s so easy to forget. And it’s so helpful to keep our momentum going. Even when. We stumble, because I’m going to tell you guys right now, not everything in your plan, no matter how exceptional your planning process is, we cannot predict the future. 

So, we are creating our best guesstimate of the future based on our consideration of our external and internal factors, our vision for the future, our capacity, our resources, all that stuff. We’ve created strategic and tactical goals, but you know what? Something’s not going to go right. And so, to really foster our momentum and support and spark and continue our momentum forward, we’ve got to take action to keep ourselves going. 

You know, we as humans have a negativity bias. So, whenever anything goes wrong, we tend to blow it. It tends, it gets blown up. It has more. significance than something, when something goes right. It’s just how our brains are hardwired. It’s how we survived the millennia. You know, we’re very, in some ways, critical people, right? 

We’re, we’re suspicious. Like, well, you know, something goes bad, it must be significant. So, the way to counteract this and, um, you know, so the planning mistake is not celebrating your wins. both small and large. So, to counteract that, you want to celebrate. So, the way to do this is to review and adjust your plan periodically. 

Inside the VolunteerPro community, we do quarterly planning intensives, where we reflect on everybody’s annual plans. and we set goals for the next 90-day sprint. And so during this time, we walk through a process and part of that process is celebrating your wins. Like what went well, not just what went wrong, but also what went well. 

Make sure you review your plan periodically. Making adjustments when you need to, but also pinpointing where things are going well. And then make sure you celebrate. And celebrate, call people out who are helping the plan move forward and helping the plan find success. Small celebrations, large celebrations, celebrating key learnings. 

It’s celebrating that you’re evolving in some way. There are all kinds of ways to celebrate, but make sure you include that in your planning process. Also, give yourself grace if you don’t reach all your goals, you’re probably not going to. Not, I don’t know very many people who reach 100 percent of their goals in their plan. 

If you are, maybe your planning, you know, is too small. Maybe you need to think bigger if you’re not reaching 100 percent of your plan goals. Maybe you need to think bigger, right? Very important to celebrate every big and small win you can. So those are our eight mistakes. I’ll review them again. 

One is building a to do list of tactics versus a truly strategic plan. The second mistake is not articulating a clear vision for the future. The third mistake is not keeping it simple. The fourth mistake is failing to involve key stakeholders. This fifth mistake is keeping the plan a secret. The sixth mistake is lack of accountability for implementation. 

The seventh mistake is not allocating sufficient resources to the plan’s success. And the eighth mistake is not celebrating your wins, small and large. So that’s what I got for you today. I really encourage you to join us for vision week. If you’re not confident about strategic planning, if you want to build an annual plan and have it ready to go, you can join us for our five-day workshop. 

I’m going to be going to live once a day. for about an hour and then you’re going to have time to do your work and we’re going to be sharing our work inside the pop-up community. It is a lot of fun. This is the third year we’re doing Vision Week, and we have folks who have participated every year, and they get more and more out of it every year and they get better and better at it every year. 

And so, it’s a lot of fun. It’s not something. You get taught. It’s not something we learn easily. I don’t, in fact, I don’t even know how I learned strategic planning. I can’t think of a single training course I ever went on, but it is something that I have integrated into my work and has become so essential. And as I shared at the top of the hour, when I don’t do my annual planning, it has a big impact and it’s not a good one. 

And so, from here on out, I’m in it to win it. I’m going to be developing my plan along with everybody else during vision week and we’re going to have a lot of fun doing it. So, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I will be back next week. Same time, same place. We’ve got some exceptional interviews coming up and some other solo shows and topics that are sure to give you some things to think about. 

All right. If you liked what we had to share today, make sure you share it with a friend and don’t forget to like and subscribe and rate us. We have enjoyed on. iTunes, I just looked at a five-star average rating. I can’t believe it. It is amazing. So, thank you. If you’re listening and you gave us one of those five-star ratings, thank you so much. 

I appreciate you. And if you haven’t yet, jump on over into your favorite podcast player and give us that five-star rating. All right. So, take care, everybody. We’ll see you next week. Same time, same place here on the Volunteer Nation.