Wow, we’ve been doing a lot of strategic planning this past year! Some of the communities and organizations we have had the pleasure of working with are listed below. And the start of 2024, is a great time to begin working on yours!
- Okanagan Regional Library
- Climate Caucus
- The Columbia Institute
- Whistler Chamber of Commerce
- Squamish Senior Living Society
- Village of Montrose
- Whistler Film Festival Society
- Resort Municipality of Whistler
- Whistler Adaptive Sport Society
- Whistler Valley Housing Society
What?
Strategic planning is an organization’s process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this direction. Ensuring that your team – Council or board and staff – is on the same page and on board with the identified strategies and directions is essential to success.
Why?
Strategic planning ensures alignment and shared direction, and for communities, it helps to ensure Council priorities are aligned with community goals. It facilitates being proactive and strategic rather than reactive and focusing on pet projects, and it helps you set and stay the course toward your vision and goals for the future. It provides a facilitated space to clarify these questions: What is the future we want? What is our role? How will we best deploy our resources to achieve it?
How?
The process for developing the strategic plan follows these three basic steps, and they are also the key components contained in the final plan, which can be in ‘plan on a page’ format for easy reference, or a longer document that contains more detail and context.
Where are we going? (defining success)
- Vision, mission and goals
Where are we now?
- SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), budget information, current plans, other leading practices. (Or go beyond the SWOT as explained here)
How are we going to get there?
- Strategic directions (or priorities)
- Key deliverables (or projects)
We would love to add your organization to the list of those to whom we’ve provided strategic planning support! Please reach out to Cheeying (choAT whistlercentre.ca) with questions about our strategic planning services.