Skip to main content

Strategic Planning

Strategic leadership provides clear priorities to guide your organization, helps you to allocate resources to pursue those priorities, and provides a means to assess your progress toward implementation and results.

Good strategic leadership is ongoing and related to many aspects of governing, as shown by the graphic below. Whether you want to pursue this full cycle of strategic planning or make progress in one or more areas, the School of Government can help through courses, advising, and publications.

Through our advising services and professional courses, School of Government faculty and staff members can support you when you have questions such as:

  • “We’re interested in understanding the trends that are affecting our community. Where do we find the information we need, how do we interpret it, and how should we apply it in designing our desired future?”
  • “My community has a strategic plan in place. Now what do we do to put the plan to work?”
  • “Our local government collects all kinds of data about our activities, clients, and services. How can this data help us learn from our experience and make progress towards our goals?”
  • “We spent a lot of time and money developing this plan. How can we focus the attention of our whole organization around our priorities?”

In designing and doing our work with clients, we:

  • Expect significant, meaningful engagement by those in the organization and others who are clearly affected by the goals and anticipated changes.
  • Model facilitative leadership and expect opportunities to build leadership capacity throughout the planning effort.
  • Encourage shared learning—a co-equal approach to framing the questions to help the organization improve and to apply to broader public administration interests.
  • Practice flexibility in responding to emerging needs or unexpected opportunities.
  • Discuss and demonstrate accountability and transparency and expect the client is committed to practicing the same.

See examples of how the School of Government might help you in setting priorities and getting results.