ARL is a member-driven organization and this plan is fundamentally shaped by that fact. The distribution of the responsibility for assuring that it is executed with the intentions of members in mind is defined through the governance structure.
The Board of Directors is responsible for ongoing oversight to assure that various projects advanced from the committee and working group structure and the efforts of the ARL staff fall within the boundaries set by the plan and remain focused on the core directions, avoiding any drift in execution of the mission.
The principal work of the strategic plan is carried out by staff in partnership with member representatives and through the committee and working group structure. Normally, the formal governance structure is the instrument through which work gets done. However, on occasion groups of interested members may be convened to take on specialized work ad hoc.
ARL staff work through these mechanisms to generate the ongoing agenda that results in outcomes of the Plan. In particular, staff must assure orderly progress and efficiency in executing the agenda developed through the governance structure. In addition, staff support the activities during membership and board meetings and assure that there is progress on agendas between meetings, thus guaranteeing agility of the Association. Equally important, the staff work closely across strategic directions and enabling capabilities to achieve close coordination of agendas when, for example, the same issue needs to be addressed simultaneously but in different contexts and/or different fronts or, when issues transition from policy implementation. Similarly, staff work closely with SPARC and CNI to minimize redundancy of effort and maximize the synergy that leads to success in advancing common goals with modest resources.