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Implementing a strategic plan in local government requires committed team work. You can craft a brilliant strategic plan, but without engaged employees pushing it forward, that plan is likely to stall out.
Local government leaders and department managers know this challenge: How do you get staff not only to buy into the plan, but to actively participate in making it a reality?
In this post, we’ll explore four proven best practices for strategic plan implementation that focus on engaging your employees at every step. Along the way, we’ll highlight real success stories—from a city that achieved 100% staff participation, to a public library that turned its strategy into a game—to show these tactics in action.
Let’s dive in.
1. Involve employees and leaders early and often in planning
The best way to get employees invested in your strategic plan is to make them part of creating it. Don’t limit planning to a small executive team; bring in voices from all levels of the organization.
When staff across departments help shape the plan, they’re more likely to understand it and commit to it. Soliciting feedback from employees at all levels will ultimately strengthen your plan, because front-line workers often have solid insights when it comes to knowing what ought to be measured, the specific actions that can be taken, or how progress can be determined. The folks doing the day-to-day work can offer practical insights that top leadership might overlook!
And, it’s not just front-line staff who need to be involved—leadership engagement from the start is critical as well. Active leadership can make or break a strategic plan.
Really, every department should have a hand in creating the action items and performance metrics that roll up into the plan’s goals. When employees participate early, the plan becomes “ours”, which is hugely important for long-term commitment.
Spotlight: City of Minnetonka, Minnesota
One great example of engaged employees and leaders comes from the City of Minnetonka, Minnesota. Minnetonka’s leaders opened up their planning process to extensive input from staff (and even residents) before finalizing their strategic plan. They conducted a community-wide survey to gather public feedback, then held planning meetings with 6 department heads, 40 supervisors, and many of the city’s 170 full-time employees to brainstorm goals and actions.
Front-line employees—parks crews, maintenance staff, and more—literally had a seat at the table creating action steps that fed into the city’s performance measures and key outcomes. By involving staff in this way, the city ensured everyone could see their ideas reflected in the plan and understand how their work would contribute.
Their City Council was heavily involved in developing the high-level vision and priorities, and once those were set, it was up to city staff to flesh out the specific action steps to “make the plan come to life.” As City Manager Mike Funk explained to us, “Staff’s role is to create the work and the performance measures that feed up into the plan’s pillars”.
2. Empower champions and make participation easy
Even with a great plan in place, implementation can falter without the right support structure. To maintain momentum after the planning stage, identify a network of strategy champions and equip them (and all staff) with the tools and training to succeed.
Designate department champions or project leads who can act as the plan’s cheerleaders and coaches within their teams. Naming one person per department as the go-to “strategy guru” creates a point person who can answer questions, provide encouragement, and keep everyone on track.
These internal champions should be people who understand the value of the strategic plan and are enthusiastic about it. They don’t need to be senior managers either—often a passionate front-line or mid-level employee can inspire peers by example.
Spotlight: Port Moody, British Columbia
It’s worth noting that when you get the combination of champions + good, user-friendly processes right, the payoff can be huge.
The City of Port Moody’s 2023–2026 Corporate Project Plan builds on a strong foundation of strategic planning and staff engagement. The plan is structured around four priority areas that reflect the city’s long-term vision for excellence and community well-being:
- Sustainable Core Services – delivering reliable services, financial sustainability, and good governance.
- Healthy Community Development – supporting balanced growth, active transportation, and community wellness.
- Vibrant and Prosperous Community – advancing economic development, arts, culture, and placemaking.
- Resilient Natural Environment – protecting natural assets and leading on climate action and sustainability.
Crucially, the plan’s success stems from alignment between City Council and the Executive Leadership Team. Council set the vision, and staff developed a corporate project plan to bring it to life. This alignment, backed by visible leadership support, helped Port Moody achieve 100% staff participation in their previous plan—and created a strong foundation for their new one, which you can explore using their Envisio powered public dashboard.
Project leads and department heads are given ownership over strategic initiatives and are responsible for tracking progress. Progress is then reported frequently at open Council meetings, reinforcing transparency and keeping folks informed. Internally, updates roll up automatically to leadership dashboards, helping everyone stay aligned and responsive.
3. Highlight the human factor of success
Ideally, a strategic plan is able to function as a living document. That means keeping everyone informed about progress, wins, and challenges on a regular basis. Ongoing communication sustains interest and ensures the plan stays top-of-mind amid daily workloads.
Start by establishing a consistent reporting rhythm. Many local governments share strategy updates monthly or quarterly with leadership—but it’s just as important to share progress with all staff. This could be a quick all-hands update, a staff newsletter, or a dedicated intranet page. The format doesn’t matter as much as the frequency. Regular updates show that the plan is active, leadership is engaged, and staff contributions are seen and valued.
Another thing to remember is, it’s important to highlight stories, not just stats. Data matters, but it’s important to be able to translate that into a narrative that lands. It’s the human wins that resonate! If a team hits 100% of its targets, share how they did it! If a frontline idea sparks real impact, spotlight it. A quick weekly email or shoutout can go a long way in making strategy feel personal and relevant.
Finally, don’t rely on just one channel. Mix it up—emails, dashboards, staff meetings—because people absorb info differently. The goal is simple: every employee should know how the plan is progressing and where they fit in.
When that’s clear, engagement follows, and strategic planning implementation becomes much more straightforward.
Spotlight: Denver Public Library, Colorado
At Denver Public Library, the Strategy and Evaluation team knew that simply sharing data wouldn’t inspire staff. So, they made strategy fun.
To boost engagement, they created the “Road Atlas”, a gamified program that showed staff how their roles connected to strategic goals. Employees earned points by learning about the plan and updating how their work contributed to it.
The results? Teams competed, celebrated milestones, and embraced their role in advancing the library’s mission. Small rewards like pins and bragging rights kept things lively, but the real win was deeper understanding and buy-in.
Under their Operational Excellence priority on their 2025 – 2030 Strategic Plan public dashboard, you can see the ways that DPL is actively working to:
- Create a “People Strategy” that supports staff development and aligns with organizational goals.
- Evaluate and reimagine performance management to better connect individual contributions to strategic outcomes.
- Invest in learning and development to build the skills needed to deliver on the Strategic Plan.
- Foster deeper employee engagement through a work environment where staff feel motivated, connected, and invested in success.
These efforts are already in motion, with several initiatives on track, and others evolving through feedback and experimentation.
4. Celebrate incremental progress to sustain engagement
Research into workplace motivation shows that celebrating incremental progress—what some call “small wins”—can have an outsized impact on morale and momentum. For public sector leaders, this means emphasizing what’s been completed, not just what’s left to do. Completing a departmental milestone, hitting a target on time, or closing out an action plan step all serve as important signals: we’re moving forward.
This is especially valuable in organizations where goals are large and abstract.
The higher someone is in the hierarchy, the more distant the finish line can feel. But a quick win logged in the dashboard, or even a completed project phase shared in a team meeting—these are all moments that show movement, which nurtures motivation.
Leaders can go further by removing what one study calls “progress vampires”, meaning the procedural barriers, red tape, or communication gaps that block momentum.
Open conversations about what’s slowing teams down, followed by clear actions to reduce those blockers, helps foster a workplace where progress is possible, and where it’s recognized when it happens.
Strategic success isn’t only found in the finish line. It’s built in the steps you take to get there.
Spotlight: Catawba College, North Carolina
With 35 institutional priorities tracked in real time through their public dashboard, Catawba College has created a culture of transparency, accountability, and shared pride in progress.
From achieving full carbon neutrality seven years ahead of schedule to earning top national rankings in sustainability, affordability, and academics, Catawba’s frequent updates function as a way of celebrating their successes. Regular quarterly updates keep staff, students, and stakeholders informed and inspired, while public recognition of milestones reinforces a deep sense of purpose.
Behind the scenes, Catawba transformed its planning process from manual reporting to a dynamic, mission-driven system. With real-time visibility into progress, strategic wins are easier to see—and celebrate. Whether it’s recognition on a “Best Colleges” list or meeting a key benchmark in their climate action goals, each success is a chance to boost morale, build momentum, and remind everyone why the work matters.
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Engaging employees in strategic planning implementation is both an art and a science. As these best practices show, it takes a mix of inclusive planning, supportive leadership, and clear communication of big (and incremental) progress. Public sector work is often challenging, abstract-feeling, and complex. By involving staff from the start, empowering them with training and champions, keeping the plan visible day-to-day, and celebrating their efforts, you create a culture around your shared mission. These tactics are practical and proven, and they can transform your strategic plan from a static document into a living, breathing success story powered by engaged employees.
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Mary King
Mary King is a professional writer and researcher based in Toronto. She comes to Envisio with a Masters Degree, where she researched the relationship between the disappearance of urban public spaces, and high level decision-making processes in local governments.
For nearly a decade, Mary has worked as a community organizer, promoter, and supportive researcher in a variety of nonprofits and think-tanks, and her favorite area of focus was in connecting local artists with marginalized youth. Since 2017, her writings and research on policy, local governance, and its relationship to public art and public space has been presented at conferences internationally. She has also served as both a conference chair and lead facilitator on professional and academic conferences across Canada on how to better bridge academic research with local change-agents, policy makers, artists, and community members.
Envisio’s mission of excellence and trust in the public sector maps onto Mary's interest in local government and community mobilization. She loves working at Envisio because she cares about having well organized, strategic, and transparent public organizations and local governments. Mary is also a creative writer and musician and has been supported in her practice by the Canada Council for the Arts. Her stories can be found in literary journals across Canada.
