Planning for the Future

As CANI's Executive Director, there are a lot of great activities that I get to participate in. But one of my favorite events took place last week - our Board of Directors' strategic planning retreat.(No, I'm serious!) And since my blog actually came up in conversation during the retreat a couple of times, I thought it perfect to talk about it here.

The strategic planning retreat is one of my favorite events because it is the major step of a long and detailed process that sets CANI’s direction for the subsequent three years. Before the retreat we spend time and resources studying the needs of our clients and community and gathering input from those we serve. And after the retreat, we spend time fleshing out ideas and developing steps that will put our ideas into action. But it is at the retreat that our board discusses in detail what our broad strategies for the next three years will be.

It is exciting to me to bring together our group of dedicated, volunteer leaders to determine ways to better meet our mission. Our board already dedicates a great deal of time to CANI throughout the year, and yet they carve out a large chunk of time for this very important retreat. I was really proud to be among this group of people.

I can’t get into any specifics yet, as there is more work to be done over the next three months before we formally adopt a new strategic plan. But I can tell you a few things about the retreat. For one, the consensus of the group was greater than I would have normally expected. Most of the ideas that were put forth were universally agreed upon as key strategies for us to pursue. While every retreat inevitably leads to consensus to a degree, this retreat generated more than I have seen in the past. This level of support for our goals and objectives will invariably help us down the road as we work on implementation.

I can also say with pretty strong confidence that when our new strategic plan is released, you will see CANI continuing to work on goals and objectives that we have initiated in the past, as well as some brand new items that will enhance the work that we do. This has me particularly excited, because for one, we have more work to do on initiatives that we have started, despite making great strides on many of them. And I am also excited about the prospect of exploring new things as we work to become an even more effective organization at accomplishing our mission.

The new plan will be complete in January, 2013. I look forward to sharing it with you then. Now, back to work!