Strategic planning for busy people
For some, the words “strategic planning process” bring comforting assurances of sequenced steps that lead you measurably closer to your happy place. For others, it’s just another way to spell “anxiety attack.”
If you’re in the anxiety attack camp, you may be recovering from a not-so-great strategic planning process. Maybe your team’s efforts produced an attractive doorstop. Or the tons of background data you compiled resulted in an ounce of planning. Or the earnest good intentions untested by community engagement fell flat early in Year 1.
NNSAHC’s national partners have created and curated numerous tools and examples to help guide you through a good strategic planning process, one that elevates your vision for adolescent and young adult health through realistic, sequenced, inclusive best practices, clear deadlines, and accountability. Like spiral math for third graders – a constant cycle of learning new skills by incorporating them into skills they’ve already mastered – it’s more of a practice than a product.
Gathering community members around the table who share our passion for adolescent health is the best and most humbling part of a strategic planning process. When we do it well, we also scoot over, pass the resources, listen, share decision-making power, and are willing to reckon with scientific best practices’ long history of centering Whiteness.
We’re proud to be at the table with you, the NNSAHC community, and share our collective examples of inclusive processes.
Featured Resources
If your program is in the “planning to plan” stage, the State Adolescent Health Resource Center’s overview of foundational tips and tools for SAHCs and MCH programs can orient you.
The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine’s (SAHM) Diversity Committee created this Anti-Racism Toolkit to help adolescent health professionals combat racism, promote racial justice, reduce health disparities, and advance health equity for youth.
NNSAHC Insights
This space features diverse perspectives on what’s happening in adolescent health. Articles are submitted by guest writers from the Network and our national resource partners.
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