A plan lists actions that can be taken. A “strategic” plan is one that identifies the actions that will lead to the most progress being made towards the vision.

Below is a simple process for prioritizing possible actions in a plan, so that the actions that are most likely to result in the most progress are given the highest priority.

1. Agree what your key goal is for the organization from your strategic direction on the previous sheet. You will use this in Step 5 below.
2. Identify your most limited resource. It is the thing that most constrains how much you can do. This is usually either money or availability of people or quantity of key materials available. You will use this in Step 4 below.
3. List the possible actions that have been identified. These possible actions will have come from all constituents and staff.
4. Estimate the amount of your most limited resource that each possible action would use. This might be, for example, the cost of the action, or the number of people that the action would occupy.
5. For each possible action, estimate the size of the contribution made towards the key goal. This might be, for example, the expected number of multiplying disciples to result from the action, or the number of movements started, or the expected increase in staff support to be raised.
6. For each possible action, calculate the contribution towards the goal per unit key resource used. This is calculated by dividing the result of Step 4 by the result of Step 5.
7. Determine the priority (1, 2, 3, 4 etc.) for each possible action, with the highest priority actions being those actions with the lowest amount of key resources used per unit contribution towards the goal. In other words, the lower the number determined in Step 6 the higher the priority.
8. Flesh out the details of the highest priority steps for action.