As the new multi-year council strategic plan is being developed, there can be some trepidation as to its contents. While you, the CAO/CEO were instrumental in shaping the document, you know that your leadership team also had influence, but without the experience necessary to successfully balance the final document. Your staff know this and are prepared for at least a few wishy-washy goals and a couple of ambiguous, intangible objectives.
“How am I supposed to foster a warm and welcoming community?” one of your staffers might ask. Quite frankly – do you know? Does anyone? Even the person who wrote that goal might not know the answer, but they know they like the look of it in their council’s strategic plan.
These types of goals and council objectives were one of the driving forces behind the development and evolution of the GovernmentFrameworks.com Local Government Framework©. This framework takes into consideration the fact that there is a big world outside the sphere of the council’s strategic plan.
It’s time to capture it within your overall planning. Our framework ensures planning, tracking, measurement and reporting across not just your council strategic plan, but every operational/departmental plan, every master and governance plan, and a plan to cover all corporate objectives.
It does not matter if your organization lacks any of these at the moment, our team of implementation specialists will help you to develop plans that will tell the story of your organization, avoiding ambiguous and intangible goals.
At the strategic and operational planning level, the GovernmentFrameworks.com Local Government Framework© includes framework elements capturing business as usual services, capital and non-capital projects, regulatory and compliance requirements, financial measures and budgets, policies and bylaws, and operational risk. Therefore, your staff can plan, measure, track, and report against the whole range of their undertakings, as well as against the council strategic plan.
The beauty of our framework is the ability to link goals between the plans. Your recreation officer could be facilitating several ‘welcome to town’ functions, Christmas and Labor Day events, and a summer pool party that could contribute to the completion of the aforementioned ‘warm and welcoming community’ goal. With the click of a button these business-as-usual services conducted by your recreational manager and captured within her operational plan can be made sub-goals of the warm/welcoming goal – and illustrate the execution of goal completion.
Despite each sub-goal itself being linked to several plans, a few clicks and one written progress update can update each goal in all areas, and with one more click you have the ability to generate a report for either the strategic or operational plan that shows the status and progress of every goal within each area. (or both areas if required)
With such ease to develop, update and maintain planning across your entire organization the efficiencies you are creating and resources you are saving are invaluable. You will see skill development within your staff as their business intelligence increases. Visibility and transparency will translate into efficiency and allow them more time to be productive.
The cumulative effect of group knowledge is evident as years two, three and four see the increased effectiveness of operational plans and streamlining of processes. Even council’s planning will improve, and if it doesn’t, we can provide a seminar to help it along the way.
We can help you use the framework to ensure your goals are targeted to your needs, and to help measure how you are achieving them. For a streamlined approach that takes your whole business objectives into consideration, please Contact Us to find out how we can help you show exactly how the work that has been done, reflects the plans you made.
