Activities – where the rubber meets the road! What your library does, every day – week – month – year. The kind of action that the customer sees when they come into your library. The actions that your staff do routinely. The individual things that make your library what it is.
The question has to be asked: Why does a Strategic Plan need to be so detailed as to list staff Activities? Because, that is the only way to ensure that EVERYTHING the library DOES – each individual Activity – is contributing to the Mission. ALSO, the only way to ensure that library resources are being applied toward accomplishing the Mission is to ensure that they are applied to the specific Activity that contributes to an Objective to achieve a Goal! Make sense? Trust me, if you haven’t already realized it, your staff and their time is THE LARGEST resource your library has! Just look at your library’s budget. Where does MOST of it go? Personnel! Making sure they are being employed effectively on Activities that relate to the mission IS THE BEST use of your otherwise limited resources!
The consequence of NOT including Activities in the Strategic Plan is that all you have is an Objective and no means to achieve it. Not to mention that people are how the library accomplishes EVERYTHING, and Activities are essentially an allocation of people. What has to be accomplished to achieve an Objective? Who does what? When? How often? With whom? Without the necessary Activity to accomplish the Objective, the library staff will be left to “do their own thing”, so to speak, and not do Actions that contribute to the Mission.
We all know employees (usually ourselves) who prefer to do things they enjoy doing or find rewarding, while they (we) tend to avoid doing those things they don’t enjoy doing or find unrewarding. Allowing employees to determine what they do and don’t accomplish will never lead to accomplishing a specific Activity that contributes to an Objective to achieve a Goal! (Sorry, regardless of how important it is, managing personnel effectively to be happy and productive is another story for another Blog.)
EXAMPLE:
Goal #1 – Improve customer service.
Objective #O1.1 – Open the doors to the library on time every day
Objective #O1.2 – Always greet every customer with a verbal greeting and ask if you may help them.
Objective #O1.3 – Regularly observe customers and offer assistance to any who appear to be lost, undecided or confused, without being intrusive.
Objective #O1.x –
Activities –
Objective #O1.1 – Open the doors to the library on time every day.
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Activity #A1.1.1 – Schedule at least one employee with library opening authority to be on-duty prior to opening time every day.
Activity #A1.1.2 – Develop opening procedures checklist to ensure the library is ready for customers everyday.
Activity #A1.1.3 – Include opening procedures training in supervisory staff training program.
Objective #O1.2 – Always greet every customer with a verbal greeting and ask if you may help them.
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Activity #A1.2.1 – Include “Library Greeting” guidelines in employee handbook.
Activity #A1.2.2 – Include “Library Greeting” training in staff training program.
Objective #O1.3 – Regularly observe customers and offer assistance to any who appear to be lost, undecided or confused, without being intrusive.
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Activity #A1.3.1 – Include customer relations training in staff training program.
Activity #A1.3.2 – Conduct peer training exercises to develop customer assistance skills among staff.
Objective #O1.x –
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Activity #A1.x.1 –
Activity #A1.x.2 –
No doubt you’re reading this (assuming that you are still reading this) and asking yourself – “How in the world can this possibly be worth the time and effort?” and “How can this Plan possibly be that important?”. The answer is simple – it is THE BEST method to ensure that your library accomplishes the Goals it has established to achieve the Mission it has determined is important. It’s all about allocation of resources, and your people are your most abundant and useful resource.
Hopefully, you have recognized by this point in this series that everything contained in the Strategic Plan is designed and oriented toward achieving the library’s Mission – EVERYTHING! Nothing in a Strategic Plan is superfluous! If there is anything in the Plan that is NOT an Activity that contributes to an Objective to achieve a Goal, then it should not be in the Plan!
BTW: The Example is setting up something that will be used as a relevant point in a future Post. Did you notice it?
It would be very helpful to read feedback from others who have had successes, or failures, with a Strategic Plan. Please share!
More to come…………………
Next up: Measures & Outcomes
