Planning is a critical part of almost every successful endeavor. Though it may sound daunting, each commissioner should be actively engaged in multiple planning processes with the goal of strengthening yourself, the organization, and the units you serve. Thankfully, work in one area frequently has a positive impact in the others.

• Personal Development plans—How are you going to improve your skills?
• Organizational plans—How are you going to help make your team (district, council, service territory, or national) more effective? This should be a team effort that includes everyone, not just the designated leaders.
• Unit plans—How can you help the units you serve be more successful? Commissioners need to be engaged directly with the unit leaders to provide resources and support their efforts.

A key element of annual planning is to know where your team is today and to create a vision of where you want to be in 12 months. You need to understand your strengths and weaknesses. You need to understand how things outside of your control may affect your plans. You need to create specific goals to achieve the vision.

Wood Badge uses the concept of a “ticket” to articulate, document, and track your goals. One of the key concepts in this process is that goals are SMART:

           Specific
           Measurable
           Attainable
           Relevant
           Timely

Commissioners can use these concepts to ensure that they are spending their time on important items. They can also help guide unit leaders to use SMART to evaluate their own goals.

Of course, having a good plan doesn’t guarantee that everything will go smoothly. Commissioners should therefore invest some planning time to address contingencies and be prepared to continue toward the goal. You will face obstacles; a well thought-out plan can help you deal with that. It is difficult to plan for every possible obstacle, but by focusing on big challenges you will be able to deal with the smaller challenges that appear.