Sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions/clubs must view the cur­rent COVID-19 lock­down pe­ri­od as a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty to strate­gi­cal­ly as­sess the sta­tus of their over­all per­for­mance against their de­vel­op­ment plans in­clu­sive of their prepa­ra­tion plans for the even­tu­al re­turn to sport. A strate­gic ap­proach fo­cus­es on cur­rent op­er­a­tions as well as strate­gies to­ward achiev­ing high lev­els of per­for­mance and growth on and off the field.

A strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan should state clear­ly the goals and ob­jec­tives and be guid­ed by the club's/ sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion's mis­sion and vi­sion. Some of the ben­e­fits of a strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan are:

*It pro­vides a roadmap for growth. The ex­ec­u­tive or man­age­ment team must al­ways be aware of the fac­tors that are af­fect­ing so nec­es­sary changes can take place with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion. The re­sponse or re­ac­tion of sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions to the im­pact of COVID-19 will be de­ter­mined to a large ex­tent by the lev­el of proac­tiv­i­ty and in­no­v­a­tive­ness of their lead­er­ship team. Suc­cess­ful adap­ta­tion to change is very much in­formed by de­sign rather than by ac­ci­dent.

*By pro­vid­ing a clear di­rec­tion, the sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion mem­ber­ship will be able to as­sess the progress of the club as well as par­tic­i­pate in the over­all de­vel­op­ment process. In oth­er words, a clear­ly ex­pressed strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan re­in­forces the prin­ci­ples of trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and good gov­er­nance.

*It pro­vides a ba­sis up­on which mem­ber­ship dri­ves can im­prove across dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ics such as age, eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der, re­li­gion, ge­og­ra­phy and so­cial class. This is crit­i­cal at a time where the is­sue in­clu­siv­i­ty in sport has be­come a glob­al is­sue of dis­cus­sion- such as the Sport In­tegri­ty Glob­al Al­liance (SIGA) “New Gold Stan­dard for Race, Gen­der, Di­ver­si­ty and In­clu­sion in Sport” (Sep­tem­ber 2020).

*It pro­vides a foun­da­tion for man­age­ment to es­tab­lish a path to­ward es­tab­lish­ing strate­gic re­la­tion­ships with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers such as schools, com­mu­ni­ty groups, Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs), the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment (MSCD) and the Sport Com­pa­ny (SPORTT).

*It is a crit­i­cal doc­u­ment to be pre­sent­ed to po­ten­tial spon­sors. Spon­sors pre­fer to part­ner with or­gan­i­sa­tions that are or­ga­nized and com­mit­ted to­ward good gov­er­nance and ef­fi­cien­cy. Giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic hard­ship that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is fac­ing, sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions es­pe­cial­ly the less known have to be very strate­gic in their spon­sor­ship pro­pos­als.

In writ­ing a strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan, there are three (3) im­por­tant ques­tions that must be ad­dressed can­did­ly.

1. Where is the club at the mo­ment?

To ad­dress this ques­tion, the club should en­gage in a SWOT analy­sis, i.e., it should iden­ti­fy its strengths, weak­ness­es, op­por­tu­ni­ties and po­ten­tial threats.

2 .Where would the club like to be in a par­tic­u­lar time frame?

In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, the club man­age­ment should con­sid­er sev­er­al fac­tors such as build­ing mem­ber­ship; im­prov­ing over­all per­for­mance not on­ly in terms of the sport but al­so the over­all man­age­ment of the club; de­vel­op­ing coach­ing and oth­er key sup­port ar­eas for the sport and al­so ad­dress the is­sues of fa­cil­i­ties and equip­ment.

3. What is the road map to achieve where the club will like to be?

In re­spond­ing to this ques­tion, the club's man­age­ment should de­vel­op a com­pre­hen­sive plan based on the in­for­ma­tion from the afore­men­tioned ques­tions. An im­ple­men­ta­tion ac­tion plan must al­so be de­vel­oped and sup­port­ed by a process of mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion. An im­por­tant as­pect of the ac­tion plan is en­sur­ing clear­ly:

*What has to be done and by whom

*Es­tab­lish­ing SMART time frames

*En­sur­ing the nec­es­sary re­sources are avail­able

*Know­ing all costs items

A strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan will not guar­an­tee suc­cess on its own, how­ev­er, when com­bined with the right hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty, it has the po­ten­tial con­tribute to­ward achiev­ing the goals and ob­jec­tives of any sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion.