On Saturday 21st January the Basketball NI Board of Directors came together to begin the process of the strategic plan for basketball in Northern Ireland for the next few years. The informative and exciting session was facilitated by Marc Scott. We would like to thank Marc for taking the time to complete the session and aiding us in the process.
The session began with the magic stick game. The game involved getting the stick to the ground without dropping it while all resting the stick on one of our fingers. For the team all being competitive sportspeople we were extremely unsuccessful – although it was not easy with two of the tallest men are at either end of the stick!
The magic stick game highlighted that although we all had a common objective (to get the stick on the ground) without leadership, guidance and a structured plan in place it was impossible – the added pressure of our peers watching our every move was also not a big help.
This lead perfectly on to the purpose of getting our strategic plan in place for BNI. Although everyone in involved in basketball has the common goal of ensuring its growth and that as many people can be involved as possible without a structured plan it will be impossible.
The Board then broke off into two groups to discuss and identify the key successes and challenges that BNI have faced in recent years.
Our Governance Officer Darryl demonstrated his presentation skills as he feed back to the board the many successes and challenges basketball has faced. We were delighted to hear from Marc Scott that he was glad to see both groups did not dwell on the challenges and focused on the success that has occurred within our board, clubs, our club members and wider basketball community.
We then broke off into different groups in order to conduct a SWOT analysis on Basketball NI. This allowed the board to identify what opportunities are out there but equally what could threaten the growth of BNI.
BNI were able to identify range of opportunities that with given more resources they want to act upon. However if we go back to the magic stick game we must obtain our strategic plan and common objectives in order to utilise the opportunities and to try and diminish the threats.
The last part of the day was to discuss key steps going froward. The BNI Board will be working behind the scenes beginning to structure our strategic plan.
BNI will be involving the ideas and thoughts from our club forums, our new upcoming youth forum, club members and the wider basketball community to structure our strategic plan. Please keep an eye on our website and follow our social media to see upcoming opportunities to get involved and have your say in this exciting next step for BNI.
It was an extremely exciting and promising day for everyone in Basketball NI and we cannot not wait to see what the future holds.