Note: This post is from Train Your Board partner Laurel McCombs. Thanks, Laurel!

Are you planning for an incredible 2023? I hope you’re developing a board plan as well as a plan for your broader organization.

More importantly, are you looking beyond the next year?

Here are three reasons for clearly defining your multi-year board vision and plan.

1. Vision ensures organization-wide alignment, including board alignment

Vision is a compelling picture of what your organization wants to achieve over the next three to five years. This vision should be aspirational and accompanied by a well-thought-out strategic plan that describes how you will get there.

Your board is a core part of creating your organizational vision and plan. However, they also need to determine how to best support achieving the big goals they help to create.

To do this, they need their own plan that addresses:

• Board goals and priorities
• The composition of the board required to accomplish those goals
• How (and to whom) they will hold themselves accountable

2. Vision inspires follow-through

A bold vision engages and motivates people in a way that the mission may not.

What you’re doing about the problems and opportunities you seek to address – your mission – is crucial to your story. However, when you combine mission with a clear declaration of what will be different in the future because of your work – in other words, your vision – that’s powerful!

When your board is inspired by your broader organizational vision, they will be more compelled to support accomplishing that vision. What is their role, collectively and individually, as changemakers? How can they use their time, energy, resources, and expertise in the most effective and efficient ways?

You might feel frustrated about a lack of board follow-through, which is a complex challenge. Motivating board members with a powerful vision can help.

When board members are inspired by their potential impact – again, collectively and individually – board work becomes less about obligation and more about passion.

3. Vision addresses big challenges and big opportunities

Boards are often tasked with setting an ambitious vision that requires complex change. However, faced with these big changes, they continue to function as they always have. We talk about doing things differently, but often find ourselves staring at the same agendas, doing the same retreats, and having the same conversations.

By taking a longer-term view, the board can identify core roadblocks getting in their way. Many of the biggest challenges facing boards are not things that can be fixed in one or two meetings but require consistent and intentional effort over time.

A great example is board diversification: a priority for many organizations, and with good reason. However, if you only act over the short term, you may end up doing things that are tokenizing or performative.

Doing this work effectively – with both positive intention and impact – means rethinking your entire board structure, from recruitment to onboarding and then ongoing board engagement and retention. This is an example of culture change, which takes time and concerted effort.

If your board goals and plans only address the next fiscal year, then you probably won’t realize your long-term vision of what your board could be.

What to do next

If you have an organizational vision and long-range plan in place, make sure your board has integrated and aligned goals that support the plan.

If you are in the middle of a strategic planning process, make sure your board is not just involved in setting a broad vision, but also having conversations about their own vision and priorities for the future.

If you don’t have a vision and strategic plan – and don’t have plans to create one – try this exercise. At your next board meeting, ask your board where they want to see organization in the next three to five years. What’s their vision of success? Followed by: What’s the board’s role in getting the organization from here to there? (Warning: this conversation could take a while, so budget the time you need.)

Regardless of where you are, take a next step. By doing so, you can begin to establish a compelling vision of what your board can be to best help your organization achieve its goals.