Sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions/clubs must view plan­ning pe­ri­ods as a key op­por­tu­ni­ty to as­sess their over­all per­for­mance against de­vel­op­ment plans, in­clud­ing prepa­ra­tion for on­go­ing com­pe­ti­tion and train­ing. A strate­gic ap­proach fo­cus­es on cur­rent op­er­a­tions and strate­gies for achiev­ing high lev­els of per­for­mance and growth on and off the field. A strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan should clear­ly state goals and ob­jec­tives and be guid­ed by the club’s/sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion’s mis­sion and vi­sion. Some ben­e­fits of a strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan are:

Roadmap for growth: The ex­ec­u­tive or man­age­ment team must stay aware of the in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal fac­tors af­fect­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion so nec­es­sary changes can oc­cur with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion. The re­sponse of sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions to chang­ing en­vi­ron­ments will large­ly be de­ter­mined by the proac­tiv­i­ty and in­no­v­a­tive­ness of their lead­er­ship team. Suc­cess­ful adap­ta­tion to change is very much in­formed by de­sign rather than ac­ci­dent.

Di­rec­tion and trans­paren­cy: By pro­vid­ing clear di­rec­tion, the sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion’s mem­ber­ship can as­sess the club’s progress and par­tic­i­pate in the over­all de­vel­op­ment process. In oth­er words, a clear­ly ex­pressed strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan re­in­forces trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and good gov­er­nance.

In­clu­siv­i­ty and de­mo­graph­ic ex­pan­sion: It pro­vides a ba­sis for mem­ber­ship dri­ves to im­prove across de­mo­graph­ics such as age, eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der, re­li­gion, ge­og­ra­phy, and so­cial class. This is crit­i­cal at a time when in­clu­siv­i­ty in sport has be­come a glob­al top­ic of dis­cus­sion—such as the Sport In­tegri­ty Glob­al Al­liance (SIGA) “New Gold Stan­dard for Race, Gen­der, Di­ver­si­ty and In­clu­sion in Sport” (Sep­tem­ber 2020).

Stake­hold­er en­gage­ment: It pro­vides a foun­da­tion for man­age­ment to build strate­gic re­la­tion­ships with stake­hold­ers such as schools, com­mu­ni­ty groups, Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs), the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs (MSYA), the Sport Com­pa­ny (SporTT) and the Fac­ul­ty of Sport, The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

Spon­sor­ship at­trac­tion: This is a crit­i­cal doc­u­ment to present to po­ten­tial spon­sors. Spon­sors pre­fer to part­ner with or­gan­i­sa­tions that are or­gan­ised and com­mit­ted to good gov­er­nance and ef­fi­cien­cy. Giv­en eco­nom­ic chal­lenges in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions—es­pe­cial­ly those that are less known—must be strate­gic in their spon­sor­ship pro­pos­als.

In writ­ing a strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan, three fun­da­men­tal ques­tions are:

• Where is the sta­tus of the or­gan­i­sa­tion? To an­swer this ques­tion, the club should con­duct a SWOT analy­sis—iden­ti­fy­ing its strengths, weak­ness­es, op­por­tu­ni­ties, and po­ten­tial threats.

• What is the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s vi­sion? To an­swer this ques­tion, club man­age­ment should con­sid­er fac­tors such as build­ing mem­ber­ship, im­prov­ing over­all per­for­mance in both sport and ad­min­is­tra­tive op­er­a­tions, de­vel­op­ing coach­ing and key sup­port ar­eas, and ad­dress­ing fa­cil­i­ties and equip­ment needs.

• What is the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s roadmap to achieve its vi­sion? To an­swer this ques­tion, the club’s man­age­ment should de­vel­op a com­pre­hen­sive plan based on the in­for­ma­tion from the afore­men­tioned ques­tions. The club must al­so de­vel­op an im­ple­men­ta­tion ac­tion plan and sup­port it with a mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion process. An im­por­tant as­pect of the ac­tion plan is clear­ly iden­ti­fy­ing:

i. Who has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for each spe­cif­ic task?

ii. When will the tar­gets be met us­ing SMART time­frames?

iii. What phys­i­cal, hu­man, and tech­no­log­i­cal re­sources will be re­quired?

iv. What is the bud­get to achieve the goals and tar­gets?

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