Here are a few guiding principles on how to approach business planning with the strategic, transformation-focused mindset that digital leaders need.

1. Anchor Digital in Your Organisation’s Strategy

• Start with your goals: Digital planning only works if it’s part of your organisation’s bigger strategy. What’s your focus next year? Growth? Improved services? Innovation in fundraising? Digital should enable those priorities, not distract from them .

• Be selective: Choose a few key priorities that will make a real difference. Real strategic decisions mean saying no to most opportunities; the clearer your priorities, the better your digital strategy can serve them.

• Integration: Take time to understand the priorities of other teams and aim to develop the digital strategies for fundraising, policy, campaigns and other key charity objectives together, rather than being a ‘service delivery’ function.

2. Take Time to Review

• User Research: Understanding your audience’s needs is critical. Look at feedback from user research, surveys, social media conversations and analytics. Use these insights to equip yourself - and your organisation - to make informed choices, not assumptions.

• Run a Retro: Get your team together to review the successes and challenges from the past year. Where did things work? What needs improving? Honest reflection can be surprisingly powerful for planning. This is also be a great way to involve your team in an organisational process that can otherwise feel very ‘top down’.

3. Focus on People, Processes, and Tools—Not Just Projects

• Think transformation, not projects: Transformation is about your team’s mindset, skills, and processes, not a list of projects. Are your people equipped to work in a digital-first way? Are you fostering a learning culture? Are systems in place that enable innovation?

• Develop Digital Skills: Audit the skills and capabilities in your team (and organisation!) and invest in upskilling so that your people are equipped to manage the ambitions of your new digital strategy. Run this process in line with your HR appraisals to align with individuals’ motivations for professional development.

• Create Communities of Practice: Build spaces where team members can exchange knowledge, troubleshoot, and explore new ideas. This type of shared learning drives improvement and innovation.

4. Test agile ways of working

• Experiment with Agile: Try an agile approach, breaking down large projects into smaller, more manageable stages. It’s a more flexible way to work, giving you the chance to learn, adjust, and keep pace with shifting priorities.

• Adopt a Product Mindset: Treat your initiatives like products rather than one-off projects. This means establishing clear requirements and milestones from the outset, along with setting realistic expectations with stakeholders. A product mindset helps you keep evolving in response to user needs and shifting priorities, rather than seeing completion as the end.

• Learn as You Go: Taking it step-by-step doesn’t just reduce risk—it keeps you open to feedback and ready to pivot. Agile lets you refine along the way, responding to what actually works rather than what you thought would work six months ago

5. Establish OKRs and a Culture of Measurement

• Set OKRs (Objectives and Key Results): OKRs help break down high-level goals into measurable outcomes and are much more flexible than traditional KPI targets. Try using OKRs as a cornerstone of your digital strategy to stay on course.

• Commit to measuring: When you build measurement in from the start, it’s easier to understand what’s working and what’s not. A measurement-first approach creates accountability and keeps your team focused.

6. Be Realistic And Don’t Forget The Day-To-Day

• Set achievable goals: Overly ambitious plans are rarely sustainable. Set realistic projects that your team can deliver well within the year, and create a rolling roadmap for future years.

• Team capacity: Does your budget match your ambitions? Can your team handle the workload? Burnout is real, and an overstretched team is rarely a successful one.

• Balance BAU with transformation: While you’re planning ambitious digital projects, don’t neglect the fundamentals that keep things running smoothly. Cross-organisationally, and especially for senior leadership, it’s important that people understand that growth and innovation cannot be at the expense of BAU flourishing.

7. Look Beyond Your Own Organisation

• Explore sector and digital trends: AI, new social channels like BlueSky and Threads, and content-focused platforms like Substack are all shaping how organisations engage and communicate. Keeping an eye on these developments can provide context, inspiration, and even a competitive edge to drive your own strategy forward.

• Talk to others in similar roles: Don’t underestimate the value of sharing experiences and ideas with peers in similar positions. They’re often facing the same challenges and may offer insights that help you avoid pitfalls and spot opportunities. Our latest digital leaders retro covered some really interesting shared experiences and challenges on AI, user research and aligning projects to organisational goals.

Effective digital planning is about aligning with your strategy, focusing on measurable goals, and keeping both people and processes at the centre. When done right, it’s not only a roadmap for the year but a framework for meaningful, sustainable transformation.

We’d love to chat more about these principles and hear how you’re approaching digital planning in your organisation, and if this people-centred approach works for you - get in touch!