Stategic Planning

On Wednesday November 28th the City Council, department heads, city staff members and I met to begin our strategic planning process for 2008. This was the first phase of a process that will develop a link between our strategy and our budget. In the second phase I will be working with the department heads and their staff to develop department plans that will focus the department resources toward our desired outcomes. In the third phase the department heads will link the performance appraisal process to the departmental plan. We accomplish this by creating a direct relationship between the performance evaluations and the employee's job description. The employees then are evaluated on what they are actually doing on a day to day basis. Instead of some ambiguous rating system like satisfactory, or above average, we will create objective and subjective measurements that fit their particular job. All of this takes time because we must involve the staff and we must make sure that our metrics are measuring what we want them to measure.

This is one thing that I like about our strategic planning process, from the very beginning everyone from council members to front line staff members are involved in the process. Everyone at all levels of city government have to own this strategy or it will not work. In my experience "strategic plans" tend to be documents that sit on a shelf and never get used. Strategic planning processes tend to be met with a "here we go again" response from city councils and staff. The approach I am taking is intended to avoid these pitfalls.

The point at which most city strategic plans fall apart is when it comes to the budget. Regardless of the level of rationality we bring to the budgetary process, the final decision is made by elected officials which means that the budget is an inherently political document. This is not a bad thing mind you. In fact it is in the political process that citizens have the most influence on how the resources of their city are distributed. So, this is the paradox, how do we bring the desired level of rationality to the budget process without limiting the influence the citizens have on resource allocation? Or I can ask the question another way, "How then do we link our strategy to the budget in this complex, political and diffuse system?"

The answer is not complicated in theory, but it is extremely complicated in application. The first step is to establish priority areas of focus for our budget implementation. We did this at our meeting on the 28th of November. We established relatively broad statements that articulate what the council believes are the things we need to maintain and improve on to make Grand Rapids a better place to live and work. These statements also give the departments guidance in the implementation of their departmental budgets. These "Strategic Implementation Areas" allow the departments to develop departmental goals and measurements that will improve on these implementation areas and thus improving the City as a whole.

The next phase is to develop departmental strategic plans that focus the resources of that department on the implementation areas. We then create metrics to measure the progress of each department from four different perspectives:

1. Citizen Satisfaction

2. Operational Processes

3. Financial Efficiency

4. Learning and Growth

By creating a multi-perspective measurement system we avoid the problem of generating efficiency by negatively impacting effectiveness. Let's say for example that we are going to measure government efficiency by the per person cost of service delivery. With this measure we can run the city in a very efficient manner. We simply cut the budgets of all departments. However, at some point effectiveness of service deliver will be impacted. So, we measure ourselves based on more than financial efficiency. We first concern ourselves with how well we are serving our tax payers. We can do this via citizens surveys either by direct mail or online. We also must have continuous improvement in our internal process. Each department will develop process improvement plans within their departmental plans. Each year we will focus on processes that can either be eliminated, modified or created that will enhance service delivery and efficiency. Finally, we must give our employees the tools they need to succeed. Part of that is to make sure they are getting the training they need to not only identify and create innovative process to improve service delivery, but also to refocus on the fundamentals of their job.

Finally, we will begin to link the day to day activities of our staff to these strategies. By creating a direct link between the job descriptions and performance evaluations and the departmental plan we will begin to see alterations to the strategic implementation areas reflected in the day to day activities of our employees. This is the the critical link between the strategy and the budget.