Strategies 195
Presenting Actions in Reports
We should also keep in mind several cautions concerning the use of lists of action
steps in strategic plans. Sometimes one finds reports that are filled with a potpourri
of tactics and proposed actions, including everything from repainting the faculty
lounge to adding new part-time staff. The source of these loosely related proposed
actions is usually the reports of subcommittees or task forces and suggestions that
people have offered at some point during the group’s deliberations. Committee
chairs are often reluctant to drop them for the sake of political goodwill, even
though they may represent the special interests of those who proposed them. The
SPC should carefully winnow down proposed lists of actions in any reports that
it intends to circulate widely, scrutinizing and systematizing but not eliminating
them. In doing so, its aim should be to find tactics and actions that test, illustrate,
and give concreteness to the main themes and content of the strategic vision and
of the plan’s major initiatives. The reports that include detailed action steps can
be circulated among those who will be responsible for implementing the strategy,
for they are an important source of ideas at the operational level, and they are
a useful control mechanism.
If strategic initiatives and imperatives, strategies, goals, and actions are each
developed carefully and artfully, they provide reinforcement to one another. They
build a case for action through the construction of a disciplined and affecting
argument. Each of the facets of the strategy speaks to the mind’s need and the
person’s desire for direction, purpose, coherence, and definition. A good strategy
contains an inner logic of sense making and sense giving that draws its audience
of participants and interested parties into a coherent and intelligible pattern of
analysis, reflection, judgment, and choice. It communicates credibility and invites
commitment, and it does so through the ways its strategies, goals, and actions
convey a compelling narrative of challenge and opportunity.