Strategic Plan - Alpaca Association New Zealand

Our purpose is to provide governance and advocacy for the alpaca industry in New Zealand

Our mission is to inspire New Zealanders to actively engage in the alpaca industry

The aims and objectives of the AANZ Strategic Plan are to…….

∙ To inspire the growth of the industry and the improvement of the breed.

∙ To be the custodian of the pedigree registry and breed standards.

∙ To responsibly manage AANZ finances.

∙ To research, develop and make easily available, education and technical support tools for our members, and the media and government policy makers.

∙ To make available the information necessary to ensure the welfare of alpacas in New Zealand.

∙ To promote the breed both nationally and internationally.

∙ To communicate the benefits of alpacas, their value as a farmed animal and provider of high-quality fleece.

∙ To communicate their other benefits, such as land use change, conservation, and environmental protection.

Strategic planning

A strategy is simply a high level plan. Its purpose is to help a business/organisation to understand three basic questions as follows: :

What are we here for?. In other words, what is the reason for the organisation to exist?
What are the long term aspirations of the organisation? In other words, what are the objectives of the organisation?
How will the organisation achieve those objectives? This is where the organisation should establish a series of plans, Usually 3 to 5 year plans on what needs to be done, in what order and by who, if they are going to achieve those objectives.

It is only once these high level plans are established, that the organisation can establish the plans for each objective in finer detail. This is also where we work out who will do what, by when and how much it will cost. This is also where we prepare the budgets etc.

The National Council, Board or leadership team of any organisation is there to:

Provide governance and direction. That means they are there to establish and agree on the answers to the three questions above and
To enable the business or organisation to achieve those objectives and
Must always act in the best interest of the owners of the organisation. For the AANZ, the owners are clearly the paid up members, and
Must always act in a lawful manner.

But it is equally important for the owners of the organisation to know that the Council or leadership team of the organisation can't do everything. The workforce (in our case we are all volunteers) need to get in behind the leadership team and the intended direction to help achieve the objectives. If we each do a little, together we will achieve a lot.

When developing any strategic plan, if your leadership team gets the first two questions wrong, then the plans that follow will lead the organisation in the wrong direction. This can be as bad as not planning at all.

What the current Council/leadership team has done is used section 2, "Object" of the current Constitution and distilled this rather wordy section into some clear and concise direction for the organisation. Then we have developed the first 90 and first 180 day plans on what needs to be in place to start us on that journey to achieve the objectives.

One of the first questions that then needs to be asked is whether the current structure of the organisation will enable us to be successful. It was clear to us that if we keep doing the same thing the same way, we will get the same result. We know this is not what our members want. So in order for us to change the way we do things, we need a different structure (for now) that may change over time, but for now, we need a subtle change to help us achieve more, faster.

The Council/leadership team have intentionally tried to break the working groups and roles into smaller bite size roles so that more volunteers can engage and contribute a little bit of time and effort without their effort impacting or taking over their lives. We have seen many great volunteers burn out because they were doing too much and feeling unappreciated. We have also seen some working groups or committees acting alone and without direction or approval from National Council. That behaviour would not be tolerated in any business and can't be tolerated in this organisation either. To be successful, each part of our organisation needs to be working collectively towards the same objectives.

If our members don't like the current objectives, then the AGM is where this should be debated and agreed for the coming years. This Council/Leadership team commit to bringing the following to the next AGM for our members to debate and agree on our future direction.

The Strategic plan, and
The next 12 month operational plan, and
The budget to achieve that plan,

We strongly encourage members to attend the AGM and to help set our future direction.