Strategic planning can focus the credit union's mission, clarify goals and provide a roadmap for achieving desired outcomes. However, unless the plan has support from staff, it becomes almost impossible to reach objectives; and unless the plan is used as a tool to engage and retain talented employees, you are missing an opportunity. To successfully create and implement a strategic plan, we need engage and empower our staff from the beginning of our planning process.

Think about your current strategic planning process: where it takes place, who is in attendance, how you choose topics, what shapes your goals, and, finally, how you get staff to support and implement the plan. These are all things to keep in mind as we look at the strategic planning process.

Strategic plans are designed to affect all areas of the credit union and they require cooperation between departments. In your current planning process, are all departments, ages and levels of staff being represented? We ask our staff to implement the plan in their daily role, so we need to give them a reason to not only support it, but to want to see it succeed.