As a preamble to this blog, I must give credit to the team at Envisio, especially Mark Kachmar and Madison Dias for a lot of the ideas and graphics behind this blog. I recently saw a presentation they did with Ray Gayk, who is the President of the California Fire Chiefs Association, and it resonated with me.
Strategic Plans have long been something that people spend much time creating, and then they claim they are living documents. They often gather dust in council's reception area until they are published on the website and then viewed by interested parties—but they are rarely compared to progress. Many projects that were part of the strategy remained undelivered as they were not planned holistically.
That is why I love the concept of operationalising the strategic plan, and it resonates with Envisio Software's strengths. Many people create their plans in Excel, and Casey Drew recently compared the benefits of a solution such as Envisio with Excel in her blog From Excel to Fit-for-Purpose: Transforming Public Sector Planning and Reporting with Integrated Solutions, so I will not rehash Excel's limitations.
Councils and other public sector organisations are also planning in solutions that do not make it easy to review progress and report on it to all relevant stakeholders, such as Councillors, other staff, and the community. This leaves them with several issues that leave a disconnect between the plan and execution.
These include:
No clearly defined actions to implement strategy
No resource reallocation to support the actions associated with new priorities
No measures of success, or are not built S.M.A.R.T making it difficult to track performance against the vision
No process for reporting progress to their community, staff, or councillors (lack of transparency)
Risks are not identified and communicated
Projects that are budgeted that remain undelivered
Planning must be done holistically and is not based on just money. Council needs the expertise, people, materials, and budget to achieve the strategies they set. At this point most councils base their plans on the budget available. This is why anecdotal evidence shows that most councils only achieve between 60 and 80% of their initiatives each year. The planning needs to also consider the other inputs, and if this is done holistically it will have a greater chance of success.
Strategies and projects that are essential to the strategy must be tracked and visible for stakeholders to understand requirements and progress. The more open and transparent they are, the more likely they will be delivered. That requires progress to be easily tracked and agility in resourcing based on roadblocks to delivery (i.e. supply chain shortages for certain items). Trust and engagement with the councillors and public is increased when there is information available. Associating risks ensures that stakeholders know what could happen with the strategy or project and what the council is doing to mitigate. Casey Drews's blog on The Value of Integrating Risk into Organisational Planning and Reporting describes this integration and its benefits well.
To make data collection easier it requires data to be as automated as possible. There are significant amounts of data that can be sourced through finance, asset management, human resources, procurement, document management, bookings, and council meeting management software that will make collection easier.
The critical factor in planning, though, is ensuring that what is planned is achievable, and that requires operational planning to be incorporated.
Then, it is important to measure the numbers that matter and communicate them.
To achieve the outcomes a council wants to achieve, there needs to be a plan that gives direction, but it needs to be a living document that includes operational planning to ensure that it is achievable and gives confidence. The transparency of the plan and progress ensures it is owned by all stakeholders. This is why proper strategic planning requires the right tools that allow all inputs to be considered rather than just dollars.
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