By Brittany Clark, on July 25, 2014

The big project of the week was developing a schedule to facilitate a planning session for the leadership team. Part of the 5 year renewal grant is to write long and short term goals, a task that should include multiple perspectives across the organization.

We enlisted the Head Start leadership team and reserved a day for them to start the process and help brainstorm and write goals. People involved were initially told it would be a leadership retreat, so after being asked to plan the day, I tried to incorporate some fun activities. I was worried that 7 hours would not be enough time to write goals for the next 5 years, but I knew without some breaks, it would be a very long, and brain-draining day.

The morning followed the schedule quite nicely, but as soon as we moved into the goal-writing portion everything got very confusing. I realized I hadn’t completely thought out a structured way for the group to discuss the goals. We had our themes on the board, but that was it. A process emerged after twenty minutes of fumbling around, but from there the day progressed rather rapidly, with a break for lunch and time for the communication activity.

Early on, a number of topics emerged that had also come up during the self-assessment. Incorporating those areas into the 5 year goals implies the organization will take action to improve those areas.

Apparently with 11 people and a deadline, a seemingly daunting task can be completed with everyone’s approval. It was impressive to watch the ideas form and consensus build to create goals and objectives for the 6 themes we had identified in the morning.