Participation planning should strongly align with your whole-of-sport national strategic plan. Make sure you have a good understanding of your sport’s participation related strategic priorities before you start the participation planning process. Regularly revisit your strategic priorities to ensure plans continue to align.

A participation plan should:

• cascade from a national strategic plan
• be consistent in its ambition, focus, look and feel
• be co-designed by key stakeholders then tailored for local adoption
• be fully supported and resourced by boards, management, participation teams and the community
• anchor key decision making for the duration of the plan.

Unified behaviours are an enabling driver of participation and should be implemented to create a whole-of-sport approach to participation. Collaboration around a planning process and consensus on where a sport is heading and what it is trying to achieve has many benefits and builds mutual trust.

Tips

• Establish a nationally agreed team of individuals from different levels of your organisation and stakeholder representatives that have a complementary skill set who will be responsible for driving the planning process. An identified lead, timelines and governance should also be established.
• This team, or similar, should continue past the development of a plan and assist to implement, monitor and evaluate your sports progress on an ongoing basis.

Successful participation planning and implementation is impacted by a wide range of stakeholders. Don't underestimate the importance of meaningful, early and ongoing engagement to ensure your participation plan has the best chance of sustainable success.

Tips

• Consider the impact of both internal and external stakeholders.
• Create a Stakeholder map to understand relationships and the impact stakeholders can have on the success of your plan.
• Involve your stakeholders through the decision-making process to create buy-in. Use the Stakeholder engagement plan template to plan and track engagement.
• Value the unique insights into issues, challenges and opportunities that your stakeholders bring. Understand that at times stakeholder consultation can be challenging but is extremely beneficial for effective planning.
• Get creative with your engagement. Use online surveys, file-sharing platforms, workshopping activities etc. You can find cost-effective methods for collecting stakeholder views and engaging them in the process.
• Commit to genuine engagement and co-design. Don't circulate draft plans before commencing the engagement process as it undermines the process and trust.

• Who does your sport primarily exist to benefit and what benefit do they expect?
• What attitudes and behaviours do you require to make the vision a reality?
• How can you align your participation planning with your sports strategic plan, purpose, vision and values?

• Desktop review: Gather and analyse information on your sports purpose, vision, values and strategic priorities. This is an important step in understanding the context for your participation planning.
• Purpose, vision and value board: List each of these statements and brainstorm the ways to bring each to life through your sport's participation approach. Use different colours to identify current and future ideas and use the future ideas in step 2 of the planning process.
• Fishbowl Activity: This activity will help ensure different opinions and viewpoints are heard and considered during group planning discussions.

• What are your sports achievements and challenges in the past year?
• What is the current state of your sport internally and externally? Consider in the context of your sports agreed purpose:
  • Who are your customers?
  • What are their wants and needs?
  • What are the market trends?
  • Who are your competitors and how do you compare?
• How does your sports current state compare to the desired state? This will help form your participation objectives.
• Review thinking against Sport Australia's drivers of participation to ensure all factors have been considered.

• SWOT analysis by drivers of participation template: SWOT analysis is a situational analysis technique you can use to identify your sport’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external opportunities and threats.
• Gap analysis by drivers of participation template: Gap analysis is a method of assessing the differences between current situation and desired performance.
• Participation plan template: Use this template to detail your participation objectives.
• Market trends: Key sport market and consumer trends impacting participation.
• Participation across life stages: Sport and physical activity data and insights.
• Inclusive Sport: Creating positive, inclusive experiences.
• Start, Stop and Continue: Use this method to reflect on recent experiences and decide what to change as your organisation moves forward.

• What is business as usual and what are the key shifts your sport needs to make to achieve its participation objectives?
• Now your sport has highlighted the key participation objectives to focus on and has articulated the needs of participants, what actions is your sport going to take to achieve them?
• What actions have the greatest impact on successful outcomes?
• Consult with your stakeholders to identify any potential risks or issues that may impact your ability to take action and achieve your objectives.
• Review your plan against Sport Australia's drivers of participation to ensure you have considered all factors.

• Participation plan template: Document the actions needed to achieve your objectives.
• Anchors and engines: Identify the factors that make actions move faster and those holding them back. Discuss how can you take advantage of or overcome these factors.
• Impact vs effort: On a matrix, plot tasks based on their impact and the effort needed to complete them. This will help identify major projects, quick wins and thankless tasks. This may help prioritise appropriately or eliminate low-impact activities.
• Agreed prioritisation: Identify your sport's priorities through group decision making. Prioritisation increases project success rate, increases alignment and assists decision making processes throughout the duration of the plan.

• What human, financial, physical and intellectual resources does your sport require to achieve its objectives?
• How will your sport prioritise its participation objectives? What objectives are critical, important or desirable and how can the variables (e.g. actions, resources or timing) be adjusted to achieve your participation objectives?
• Does your sport have enough of the right people, in the right environment with enough financial and other resources and systems to get the job done?
• Who must do what by when to accomplish and drive the participation objectives? What are their roles and responsibilities?
• Do you have support from your CEOs/Boards? Don't create an unattainable wish list.

• Participation plan template: Detail the resources needed, responsible people, timelines and priorities.
• Budgeting methods: To help manage your plan efficiently you will need to develop a budget and monitor progress against it.
• Estimating activity duration: To help understand the time required to complete individual activities, start by considering your resources eg people/budget and then use work breakdowns, past examples or expert judgement to best estimate activity duration and timelines.

• What does success look like?
• Are your measures SMART?  
  • Specific:  Keep it simple and describe exactly what will be accomplished when each objective is achieved
  • Measurable: The KPI needs to be measurable so it can be determined when it has been achieved
  • Attainable: Expect to achieve the KPI, it should be realistic but provide some ‘stretch’ (challenge)
  • Relevant: The KPI must relate to specific objectives
  • Time bound: Each KPI must have an ‘achieve by’ date (deadline)
• What measure is appropriate to achieve your objectives?
  • Outcome measures: Impact the result
  • Quality measures: Demonstrate improvement (e.g. accuracy, responsiveness, reliability)
  • Efficiency measures: Measures of productivity (e.g. time taken or cost management)
  • Project measures: Progress against a deadline (e.g. percentage complete)
• How are you going to monitor and evaluate your sports progress on an ongoing basis?
• How will you communicate your sports progress to partners and stakeholders?

• Participation plan template: Use this template to detail performance measures against your objectives.
• SMART: Develop specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound goals
• After Action Review: Seek continuous improvement through this reflective exercise.
• Retrospect: Reflect on your experiences to improve results.