The Power of Planning: Turning Vision into Action for Your City’s Future
Whether you’re a small rural town, a mid-sized city, or a quickly growing metropolitan region, strategic planning can feel like an impossible challenge. You and your team are wearing all the hats (every shape, color, and style you can squeeze on!) with a mile long to-do list. How are you supposed to pause to take the time to dream big and think critically about years into the future? What’s more, circumstances around resources and priorities are constantly changing, so what’s the point of trying to come up with a long-term plan?
Although that all may feel true, a strong (well-executed) strategic plan can save you time and build sustainable capacity by creating a clear roadmap that guides decision-making, mitigates risks, and encourages intentional collaboration.
Strategic planning is an investment – and with our experience partnering with small and growing municipalities in their strategic planning process, we’ve found that these four things help you make the most of it:
Focus on an Inclusive and Transparent Process
You can’t get the whole team (not to mention the community!) in on the direct drafting of a strategic plan, but it is critical that your process creates champions of your cause by:
Providing opportunities for early input and feedback to the broader team and communities the plan impacts.
Creating transparency on how data is collected and decisions are made.
Including representative leaders across all departments, teams and communitiesfrom the beginning.
A successful strategic plan needs to be comprehensive and inclusive of those doing the work and those impacted by the work at every level. If they don’t have the chance to be in the room, they need to be able to trust that the process was completed logically and in everyone’s best interest.
In developing the City of Camas’ strategic plan, an advisory committee made up of City Council, City Boards & Commissions, City staff, City leadership, community members, local agency partners and community based organizations was an integral part of the planning process.
Think Big, Then Localize
Whether you choose to start with goals or challenges, it’s easier (and more fun) to begin the planning process with the greater mission and vision: the big “why” behind all of your daily efforts. These strategic planning objectives orient “up” to the overarching direction your city wants to grow, but it is critical that your strategic plan also aligns “down” and “side-to-side” so everybody who will be involved with or affected by the plan understands how to engage with it.
By the end of the strategic planning process, any person – ideally both inside the company and in the larger community – should be able to draw a direct line connecting their individual goals and needs to the organizational strategic objectives. Internal teams should also be able to look to their counterparts in other divisions and understand how both of their efforts connect to empower the greater vision. Community members should understand how the plan affects them, specifically, and how the organization plans to address their needs.
Be Realistic, Not Pessimistic
By allowing yourself to start big and forward with your “why” before outlining the “how” and “when,” you may find your perspective on what’s reasonable to accomplish shifts. After all, it’s much easier to think bigger when you’re focusing on a “why” rather than concerns like “How will we do this?” or “When will we have the time?”
Although it's important to not get in your own way with doubts and concerns, you have to stay focused on a concise list of core, data-driven priorities rather than an overly lengthy plan. The team should walk away from the process confident that the strategic plan is achievable.
Take the time to map out the desired goals and identify what resource gaps exist, along with the cause of those gaps, that may prevent these goals from being achieved. Use this evaluation to prioritize your tasks.
Make Sure You’re Speaking the Same Language
When bringing together representative leaders from different teams in the strategic planning process, there may be value in upfront training to ensure everyone shares a common language to discuss priorities.
When working with the City of Tacoma to stand up a new internal team, we brought together engineers, planning and development professionals and communications and engagement professionals to help form the strategic action plan for the new team. After conducting initial interviews, we recognized a disconnect around what communications and engagement work entails and how that would both overlap and support the work these team members already do.
With continued conversations and context, the division leads are now able to confidently deliberate on the impact and effort of strategic priorities for this new team. The foundational understanding gained through the strategic planning process will continue to foster and empower continued collaboration, understanding and success between the divisions.
A strategic plan doesn’t have to be overwhelming. When done thoughtfully and intentionally, it can be a tool for building clarity, alignment, and momentum. And we’re always here to help! Find out more about how we can support you with strategic planning here.