Basic Ingredients for Your Five Year Plan

The following list contains elements that should be included in your library’s Five Year Plan (or Strategic Plan):

• Vision (defines where you want to be in the future)
• Core Values (a frank self-assessment of how you want your organization to behave as it goes about delivering against its vision and mission/focus areas)
• Clearly Defined Outcomes (articulate what steps you are going to take to get there, and what success looks like for each of those steps)
• Accountability (state one person/position who will have primary accountability for each outcome)
• Key Performance Indicators (a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key objectives)
• Name of library system
• Dates/Years the plan covers
• When the plan was approved OR when the plan was updated
• Contact information for questions about the plan
• Language indicating that the plan will be updated annually or bi-annually
• Specific plans for branches (if applicable) if the plan is not the same for the entire library system
• Page numbers
• Headers and/or footers